September 28, 1981

Despite concerns expressed by officials of the Reagan Administration about the economic and constitutional feasibility of tuition tax credits, the Administration plans to continue to support the idea.

Americans have traditionally valued schooling, viewing it pragmatically as providing mobility and opportunity for their children. Though confidence has diminished, demands of the constituents remain strong. Among these is the expectation, bordering on the unreasonable, that education can somehow solve ills that the larger society cannot.

On the night of Nov. 7, 1975, two members of the Board of Education of the Island Trees Union Free School District in New York State slipped out of a school sports festival and talked the night janitor into admitting them to the high-school library. Armed with a list of "objectionable books" that they had received at a conservative political conference two months earlier, they searched the card catalog for volumes they would later label "mentally dangerous." They found nine, many of which deal with the experiences of Jews, blacks, or Hispanics.