To the Editor:
This year’s general election is critical and involves everyone’s considered choices as we cast our ballots in early voting before 11/3 or on election day, 11/5.
An appeal to critical thinking, to fellow citizens who include former students from Masuk, University of Bridgeport, Edith Wheeler Memorial Library, C.H.Booth. Please, my friends, pause to remember the choices you’ve made in the past to craft an essay thesis and/or debate claim you set out to prove.
Recall the evidence you carefully gathered from experts. Include values you tapped from first-hand experience. Bring to mind fallacies such as circular reasoning, hasty generalizations, either/or and false dilemmas that extinguish validity.
Now retired from teaching, I hold dear my former students and our hours together of study. My challenge today: apply what you know to the important decisions you’ll make when you set in motion the privilege to vote. Go into this process mindful of what you claim for the quality of life that future generations deserve.
Your choices will cause lasting effects. Base the decisions on whether the candidates on the ballot satisfy your claims for the future. It’s within your power to infuse the future with life. The power comes directly from the U.S. Constitution.
Use the gift, the envy of billions across the globe, to select the candidates that revere the same constitution. Identify otherwise divisive claims, weak evidence and fallacies. You hold the keys.
I look forward to sharing the path of respect for education, justice and civility.
Joan Verniero,
Author and Educator
Monroe resident
