Letters to the Editor
Argiri
Published Letters: 30 Editor's Choice: 5
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Amen, amen!
[Read the article: Building a hate for learning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]May more parents stand up against this mind-numbing, sanity-eroding makework and idiocy, and may more educators come to realize how counterproductive it is.
There are few other things that so effectively generate hatred between parent and child and between child and teacher as homework. Eight hours in school is already enough and too much, and much of the material taught there is, in my opinion as an assessment professional, dispensible. Enough already!
We should have five- or six-hour school days during which meaningful material - math, reading, logic, science, and history - is taught. The pace should be brisk and intense, with some built-in practice time and no tolerance for disruption. Then, when the lessons are over, the day should be done for all concerned. No interminable research "projects." No stacks of scrawled crap for the teachers to drag home and grade, no makework for the kids to drag home and procrastinate over. If this were the case, I'd anticipate better test performance and far less overall educational alienation - the "swing voters" in any given classroom might actually find school tolerable or even worthwhile and elect to learn something there rather than rebelling and becoming, as is their current tendency, discipline problems and failures.
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My two cents...
[Read the article: Don't justify my love]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm sure Madonna means well, but I'd be even more impressed by her generosity if indeed she had offered to relieve the poverty of David Banda's father with direct financial support...providing Mr. Banda and David a safe and clean place to live, an income, a chance for Mr. Banda to get an education and then a good job, and for David to enter a good private school when he turns six. That would have made a difference in the whole family's life and shown true altruism.
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Back to the basic facts of the situation...
[Read the article: Don't justify my love]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dear Velora,
Little David had a father who could not care for him because of a lack of material resources, and who is better equipped than the Material Girl to take care of a material problem? The best way to help the poor may, after all, be to give them funds, education, and other resources that can open up some choices for them - not to take from them. Where a child has a caring parent who simply lacks resources, and a very wealthy and charitably-motivated person wants to help the child, I'd vote for helping the parent AND the child...and leaving the child with the parent. And the less noise made about it, the purer the charitable motivation will seem. The media blitz around thie adoption takes a great deal of the spiritual shine off. It's not that such publicity is inevitable, either, because Nicole Kidman and the lately-much-maligned Tom Cruise, while they were married, managed to adopt two children with very little publicity.
For those who want to adopt, there are numerous true orphans here and abroad. I await with interest the American celebrity who adopts a teenager who's alone in the world and wanted by nobody, a teenager who's several years behind in school and a tad antisocial after a decade in foster care, or a post-institutionalized Eastern European child well past the little-and-cute stage. I'd really like to see that. Meanwhile, I do make contributions to help those in need and would send Mr. Banda something if I had the contact information, even though money cannot relieve grief.
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Hey, don't feel too bad...
[Read the article: Trial by fryer]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I once had a meal at a new, fake "southern" restaurant in Boston. They made out pretty well with most of their food by following a cookbook, but they followed the best yuppie wisdom rather than tradition with their greens. They served kale lightly steamed with its pretty florets still intact. It did look much more attractive than it does when cooked the real southern way, which means boiled hard and then simmered for hours and hours on a hot stove until it submits. Mostly-raw kale would give a horse colic and put a human being in great digestive distress. I hope it tasted bad enough to dissuade those not in the know.
I admire anyone with the figurative balls to open a restaurant. The only thing more exhausting would be a day care.