Letters to the Editor
noillusions
Published Letters: 24 Editor's Choice: 5
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If only...
[Read the article: Sinfully bad TV]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]If only...Mr. Atkinson had a big, rich, powerful patron to help him get his view out. If only...the bulk of Christians in this country had not forgotten how to think for themselves. If only...prideful, 'look how Christian I am!" people like James Dobson and Pat Robertson were not seen as the spokesmen for the rest of us sane Christians. If only....
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Oh, please
[Read the article: The catastrophe that never ends]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Let's not forget that had the Arabs WON the war, there would not have been a Jew left in the region. They would have been massacred or expelled with nothing but the clothes on their backs. Also, not all of the native Palestinians were chased from their homes - some were told to leave for a while by the Arab forces until the fighting was over, and many waited on hilltops with empty sacks waiting to loot the Jewish homes the moment they were able. Has Israel contributed mightily to the mess that is Gaza et al.? You bet, but let us not buy into the total victimhood of the Palestinians, either. After all, the Arab countries invaded the Jewish territory, not the other way around, and generally the losers of wars have to deal with the hardships that go with it.
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Demanding statistics and 'facts'....
[Read the article: Building a hate for learning]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...is precisely what is killing public education. Parents, school boards, government agencies, all constantly demand 'accountability', and yet the only people ever held 'accountable' are the classroom teachers. There is no punishment for the parents who never bother to involve themselves in their children's lives or school; none for the principals and superintendents who would rather run their teachers into the ground than see test scores stay static instead of going up, up, up; none for the state and federal level policy makers, the vast majority of whom have never seen the inside of a public school classroom; and none for the students, who bring their attitudes and issues with them every day, with the teachers expected to play parent for 8 hours without having the right to DO anything to ensure order. Everything is data driven, with schools being run like a corporate drone factory, cranking out 'product' by using 'processes' and 'feedback'. What do we do with all this data? Praise the administrators if it is good, flay the teachers if it is bad. Just like the business world.
Why do we lag behind other countries? The reasons are legion, but one of the biggest is our continual worries about the 'self-esteem' of our children. If you have a student who loves working on cars, who is GOOD at working on cars, and who works on cars every day after school in his dad's or cousin's auto shop, why is he FORCED to sit through 4 years of high school? I'm sorry, but he has no interest in Chaucer, or the Moghul Empire in India, or trigonometry, and he will be bored, disruptive, and disengaged when having it crammed down his throat. Going to a 'vocational school' will hurt his self-esteem? How, exactly? Does it not hurt his self-esteem MORE to struggle and struggle through coursework beyond his ability, with all of his peers watching the struggle? We have stigmatized working for a living in this country, and our schools are filled with the results. I have seen students who knew what they wanted to do, and already knew how to do it, being held back for a year or even two years, just to satisfy the myth of the 'well-rounded' high school graduate. Four years of high school will benefit the aspiring accountant, but ask that accountant to reproduce the Shakespeare sonnet they memorized in 10th grade and you will get the same answer as you would get from the guy fixing your transmission.
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These well-informed writers are missing the point
[Read the article: Wimpy Rambos]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]OK, fine, the Dems take to the airwaves and say all the things this article tells them to say. They trumpet the lies, mistakes, and foolishness from the highest rooftops. Where will this get them? Nowhere, because America has developed a willfully ignorant public mass. People in general do not read, nor do they research political issues, nor do they do anything other than watch a bit of TV news that takes no stand one way or the other. Who reads Salon? An overwhlemingly anti-Bush crowd, who don't need to be swayed any further. Do you honestly think a clear, well-thought-out critique of Bush policies will see ANY play (other than out-of-context soundbites) on FOXNews? And even if it DID, how many Limbaugh/Hannity saturated minds would it change? A few thousand, at most? We have lost our ability to think deeply about issues as a nation, and consequently are led by a few million zealots browbeating the other 290 million of us into submission with illusions, half-truths, and outright lies. After all, if 31 percent of the country still thinks Iraq was behind the WTC attack, what is left to be said that could POSSIBLY get through to that group? Nothing. Salon preaches to the choir, just like FOXNews. And the people in the middle are increasingly stone deaf....