I haven’t always agreed with Vicksburg Warren School District Trustee Zelmarine Murphy, but she was absolutely right in the Oct. 30 story about purchasing advanced calculators for students in higher level math courses.

You can give a child or young person the finest computer that has ever been made, but if he or she hasn’t learned basic numbers, it is a totally wasted effort and expense.

Back in the Dark Ages we learned to add and subtract in kindergarten and by first grade knew the multiplication tables upside down and backward. Latin was taught in the ninth grade because it is the root of most words in the Romance languages.

On the second day of school that year, we were told to put our Latin books away and open our eighth grade English books. For the next six weeks, we diagrammed sentences and conjugated verbs. Then, we were ready to take on “Gaul is divided into three parts.”

Education is in steps. A smart teacher knows if one step is missing, it takes less time to repair that step than to keep stumbling and falling while trying to reach the next one.

In today’s mad rush to nowhere, we need lots of smart teachers dedicated to enriching lives at a moderate pace. In teaching, as in art, less can be more.

L.C. Giles

Vicksburg