To the editor:

For lots of folks, home ownership is still the American dream. The tax on home ownership occasioned by the necessity to support the public school system is an obstacle to the achievement of that dream. While property taxes don't present an insurmountable hurdle, they do raise the bar. Taxes are a burden, period. And, hopefully without making too fine a point, can you really own your own home if your are only allowed to live in it so long as you can continue to pay "rent" to the community?

Further, simply because you find something you want hard to get on your own -- whether it's an education for your child or a lake project to enhance your property value -- and you can advance arguments that society will somehow benefit in the process of your getting what you want, does that excuse using force to get it from someone else? Like it or not, majority rule and mob rule produce the same end result when it comes to the extraction of money or property from those who can't be convinced to cooperate voluntarily. Try not paying taxes -- or not selling your bottom land at a price over which you have no control -- and see if in the end someone doesn't show up with a gun.

Virtually everyone has a common goal. We all want the world -- starting with our own lives, our own homes, our own communities -- to be better. We just have different ways of achieving that common goal.

A well-educated population is one way to a better world and certainly one worthwhile goal. And there can be no doubt that well-educated children are an asset to their community (note: not their community's asset). I, however, can only speak for myself when I say there must be many ways to achieve this one goal.

We are stuck in a mode of education represented best by the specter of the little red schoolhouse. It's time to get unstuck and move into the next millennium educationally.

GREG TLAPEK

Cape Girardeau