Regarding the T.O. Acorn Aug. 26 editorial “Classrooms reopen next week,” as our children approach another school year, we might wonder how they will change over the next nine months. Will they have new skills, be able to recite more facts, have deeper understandings, be better inspired to create and innovate, be better communicators and have improved self-respect?

Aren’t these changes that we wish for our children? Achieving these goals requires a partnership between the parents and the teacher–and yes, the student.

Each must share in the responsibility for success. Parents and the child must attend all parentteacher conferences with a focus on these goals, and, regardless of class size, the teacher must be prepared to view each student as his only student for these few minutes.

We must stop using our children as pawns in the childish “blame game” played by adults and institutionalized in No Child Left Behind. The key message there for our children is that they aren’t responsible in any way for their own education.

We need to think deeply about the examples that we set for our children–because we do act out in their presence, and they are proficient imitators.

In this political year, our children see Democrats and Republicans behaving as though party loyalty is the only reality, a message that street gangs have applied effectively.

We need to put the values we seek in our children into practice.

Television ads for candidates routinely teach name-calling and distortions of the truth as virtues.

When we practice the “seven deadly sins” in front of our children or allow others to do so without rebuke, we cannot blame their teachers for how they turn out. Nick Fotheringham Thousand Oaks