I find your editorial about trust as the key to the Pine-Richland school crisis (“In Pine-Richland book wars, a lack of trust makes solutions impossible,” Jan. 15), to be right on target.

But in this case trust is both the solution and the problem. Because it can’t be taken for granted, it has to be won.

The right claims — uncompromisingly — that they have found the absolute truth, while the left argues — quite forcefully — that there is no such thing. It defeats the purpose of education. Respect for the other must be integral to any educational system, even if the other is not respectable.

Respect-inducing agreement could be achieved if a course covering what we know with factual certainty about human beings, such as the role of the brain in subjective experience, or the objective development of sex in evolution, were taught.

Success would depend on good faith, but that’s always the case. Trust me.

Francisco Garcia-Julve
Lawrenceville

First Published: January 19, 2025, 10:30 a.m.