I suppose you at least have to give Ezekiel Schmidt a little credit for not camouflaging his true agenda.

In his April 10 letter (“Why question just teachers?”), Mr. Schmidt insists education critics are actually concerned that teachers aren’t “shoveling enough capitalist ideology down the kids throats.”

As opposed to what? Communist or socialist ideology?

Schmidt was responding to an excellent Guest Opinion by Liv Finne (“Schools need better teachers, not more money,” April 3) of the Washington Policy Institute that made the obvious point that there is no correlation between teacher salaries and the quality of education the schools provide.

If there were, she pointed out, U.S. students wouldn’t do so badly on standardized tests despite the fact that we spend more on education than any other country.

Ms. Finne never suggested we needed to do a better job of indoctrinating students with any ideology. Just the opposite, I’d say.

One of the primary reasons students can’t perform as well as they should in the basics of math, science and reading is precisely because too much of their time is already taken up with indoctrination of all kinds.

But if any economic philosophy is going to be taught and glorified in our schools, it seems sort of reasonable that it be capitalism.

You know, the system we use in this country? The one into which we expect our students to one day graduate and make a living?

Mr. Schmidt’s fears that our students will be overexposed to capitalism only betray his own sympathy for communist or socialist ideology. And I thank him for helping us connect dots between the garden-variety leftism he and his fellow travelers profess and what their actual agenda is for our children.

Normally liberals are more cautious about letting the truth slip out that way.

JOE MEZZANOTTE

Port Orchard