preview

Personal Opinion Essay: Lyndon B. Johnson Elementary School

Decent Essays

As you are well aware, the elementary school you now administer, Andrew Jackson Elementary, is being renovated and expanded. As a member of the community, I’m writing to you that the name of the school should be up for reconsideration. I believe it’s an opportunity while the school is being redeveloped, that the name of the school should be instead renamed Lyndon B. Johnson Elementary. A name for an institution, like a school, is significant to its serving purpose and the community. I believe it's more appropriate to name the school after President Johnson for various reasons, including his many commitments to education, ending poverty, and attempting to develop the American society free from racism and racial tensions. I do believe that renaming …show more content…

Prior to his political career, Johnson was himself had seen poverty in a Hispanic community in a small town in Texas, where he was a teacher. His experiences as a teacher would be recalled again when he became President. His largest priority in his series of plans was to make education more accessible in areas of the country where it was not of a competent quality. He believed that through education, people’s lives can change for the better, as it was his way out of poverty in rural Texas (Dellek, 193). The Elementary and Secondary Education Act was one of the most expensive bills he had passed. The legislation focused on funding local elementary, secondary and high schools to improve quality and offer better resources for academic purposes. These purposes included better opportunities for handicapped and non-English speaking children, hot lunches for children during school as well as the priority he had to desegregate schools (Dellek, 196). Not only did he focus on education for young children, but to young adults as well- a bill was passed to help war veterans attend college, as well as the Higher Education Act of 1965, legislating better funding to programs in colleges and universities, providing resources as well as scholarships and loans to end the issue with crime and unemployment. Johnson also oversaw the National Defense Education Act, a policy to aid and promote the study of the science, and math, with added subjects to elementary and high school curriculum (Dellek,

Get Access