Letters To The Editor

SPOKANE MATTERS

Good town with bad leadership

I read with great interest your “Great Divide” articles comparing Spokane to Seattle.

I’ve lived in Spokane for 14 years and have noticed several assets this city has. We probably have the most beautiful gothic church anywhere. The Inn at the Park is one of the most outstanding hotels in this state. On Sundays, they serve the greatest brunch in the entire West. We have an excellent local bank.

The South Hill is filled with some of the finest homes anywhere. Spokane is near a truly great hotel with exquisite dining and boating facilities in Coeur d’Alene. We have at least one outstanding hospital with leading medical and dental doctors in the area.

I’ve visited Seattle several times and found it a delightful cosmopolitan city that’s known nationally as the best place to live.

However, what amazes me is why Spokane is the biggest hick and ghost town between Boston and Seattle.

The City Council presides over rundown, empty streets and abandoned businesses. Delinquents are let out of jail for lack of space. Our murder rate is shockingly high. Who in God’s name claims that Spokane is an ideal place to raise children?

Throughout the articles, I sensed an air of complacency that can frighten a person who otherwise likes this city.

We need not compete with Seattle, but why shut down a restaurant with a splendid view of the falls in order to build an unneeded bridge with a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money?

Might we be able to elect a quality City Council this November? A. Fritz Albicker Spokane

Let blame reside with the ill-behaved

Re: “North Side residents lose court battle over disruptive neighbors,” Aug. 15:

Our culture and courts are advancing a changing view of housing providers’ responsibilities. Providers are being called on to take up the slack in our poorly integrated social order.

At the same time housing providers have been ignored in social planning, they’ve become the great burden carrier of the social order.

That any important social problems will be solved by shifting such a burden from voluntarily irresponsible individuals and placing it on housing providers remains unclear.

For example, Spokane District Court Judge Richard B. White said, “There was a clash of cultures in this neighborhood.” White reported he felt for people on all sides of the issue, adding, “She (the tenant) had to feel a little bit like a fish out of water in this neighborhood.”

There is increasing social emphasis on the benefits of homeownership. Renters face the prospect of being regarded as second-class citizens.

Housing providers can expect to face similar suits, not just for waste and nuisance but also if their residents just don’t fit in.

The plight of families who live next to renters who disturb the peace and threaten others is legitimate. Shifting responsibility from ill-behaved renters to housing providers is a faulty social tactic that holds us moms and pops responsible for others’ behavior and further infantilizes our culture. Jim P. Mahoney, president Inland Empire Rental Association, Spokane

Use right air quality numbers

May D. Berg’s Aug. 20 letter listed an incorrect telephone number for the submission of air quality complaints to the Washington state Department of Ecology.

The correct numbers for those who wish to get more information or provide comments regarding air quality are as follows:

Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority, 456-4727.

Washington state Department of Ecology, Eastern Regional Office, 456-2926.

Idaho Division of Environmental Quality, grass burning complaints, 1-800-421-8475.

Washington state Department of Natural Resources, Northeast Regional Office, 1-800-527-3305. Matt Holmquist Spokane County Air Pollution Control Authority

Fine emergency scene gawkers

The news media reported that roads near the recent forest fires were jammed with cars. Certainly, those who live in the area should be there, as should emergency crews. All others (gawkers, etc.) have no business being there and contribute to the damage and destruction.

The city and county should send police to such areas to check drivers’ licenses: If people don’t live in the area and aren’t part of an emergency crew, they should receive a first offense ticket (obstructing emergency crews) that carries a fine of $100. A second offense fine would be $250. This would be a great way to boost the general fund. Larry R. Treffry Spokane

PRIGGEE

There you go again

Staff cartoonist Milt Priggee’s Aug. 15 entry depicting the National Rifle Association ranting near a gravestone marked “Needless child gun deaths” is just another example of going off half-cocked. I assume he was referring to Initiative 676.

“Half-cocked” is an interesting expression, although one that seems to be fading from common usage. Originally pertaining to a firearm, the half-cocked position of the firing hammer was supposed to be a safe position when the firearm was loaded. To go off half-cocked indicated that the firearm discharged prematurely when in this “safe” position. Webster’s Dictionary also defines half-cocked as: “to speak or act thoughtlessly or too hastily.” Priggee did it again!

I urge everyone to read and study Initiative 676. It won’t take more than an hour or two. This is a very complex piece of legislation that will require a very large and very complex (read expensive) bureaucracy to be implemented, and has far-reaching consequences well beyond what the authors have led us to believe.

However you decide to vote, read I-676 before voting. G.K. Wilder Colbert

The real Priggee will be revealed

If memory serves me correctly, staff cartoonist Milt Priggee invariably caricatures the National Rifle Association negatively, as he did on Aug. 15.

The debate on Initiative 676 may well show Priggee’s true colors. Is he a true satirical cartoonist whose only goal is to make people think? Or is he a cheap knock-off of Adolf Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, using negative caricatures in emotional contexts to promote an agenda? Will he attack the fallacies on both sides of the I-676 issue to promote thinking, or will he come down only on one side? Time will tell. Francis E. Kent Four Lakes

Only gets to you if you let him

This is in response to letters from all those whining about staff cartoonist Milt Priggee’s cartoons.

As a teenager, I am predisposed to think all adults are total nitwits, but thanks to all those lovely letters to the editor, I am now convinced of that. It is now extremely obvious that most people over 25 are narrow-minded, easily provoked and set in their ways.

I do not always agree with Priggee’s views, but I try to understand them. The people who claim to have been offended by Priggee are not taking responsibility. A person chooses to be offended. No one can offend you unless you let them.

As far for Greg Gower’s letter, and in connection Greg H. Simpson’s, they haven’t taken any time to understand Priggee’s point. First, you can never avoid offending anybody. Secondly, a waste of paper? Oh please! That was one of Priggee’s most poignant cartoons ever; a whole page would have made good use of his point.

I recommend to all others that they should try to be understanding, if not tolerant. Lack of the aforementioned is what gives us Southern Baptist boycotts, Ku Klux Klans, United Aryan Nations and, long ago, “commie bastards” fever. If there’s to be hope for the new generation, you “adults” better start making an example of yourselves. Emily N. Himmelright Spokane

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION

Reform faulty teaching

Kathleen B. Hill’s letter of Aug. 18, “Dynamic teacher deserves only praise,” illustrates one of the most common misconceptions about public school reform. She stated “rote memorization is on its way out.”

Unless the day arrives when a student’s brain can be wired directly into a computer to download data, children will always have to memorize to learn. The real issue is what they are required to memorize.

Whole language or “look say” reading models require the child to try to memorize literally thousands of words. This might make sense if English were a picture-based language like Chinese, but English is a phonetic language where the clue to decoding the meaning of words is in the sound, not the shape.

When I volunteer with children, it’s all too easy to spot the ones who have been deprived of intensive, systematic phonics by the kinds of reading errors they make. A child who sees the word “chair” and reads “couch” is accessing a memory file filled with pictures of furniture. There are tens of thousands of words in everyday English vocabulary, but only 44 sounds. The youngsters who read fluently and confidently are able to “sound out” even words they have never seen before.

Teachers who see themselves as social engineers also help their students memorize well the mantras of political correctness that are so popular with the teachers union.

Memorization out? I don’t think so, but it is up to parents to hold teachers accountable to teach real academics. Deborah A. Icenogle M.D. FAAP Spokane

On autopilot and in a dive

Thank you, staff writer Grayden Jones, for your coverage of state schools Superintendent Terry Bergeson’s presentation to “sell” education reform.

It’s no wonder Bergeson has had to spend so much on public relations. In June, at a reading seminar for teachers at Shadle Park High School, Bergeson compared our reform effort in Washington to an “unfinished airplane” already flying. Does this give new meaning to her statement, “Once people get the idea in their head of what this is about, we’re going to be on the most exciting journey ever”?

Contrary to Bergeson’s protests, the Higher Education Coordinating Board, a state government agency established by education reform legislation, says, “The Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) will be the foundation on which minimum freshman admission standards are built.”

“High Skills, High Wages,” a publication put out by the Workforce Training and Education Coordinating Board, another state agency, definitely links the CIM to employment.

Why would such a PR blitz be needed for an elementary school exam? Maybe one reason is that children can actually score higher on the test with an incorrect answer than those with a correct answer. Obviously, academic knowledge is not the purpose of the test.

Parents, don’t be fooled. Your children deserve better than an unfinished airplane. Administrators, don’t follow the rank and file. Get a parachute and get off before it’s too late. Muriel C. Tingley Medical Lake

Reform? Caveat emptor

When has it become necessary to use a marketing agency to sell the public education system to parents?

It used to be that when our children came home and it was obvious they knew how to add and how to read, the system sold itself.

Now, state schools Superintendent Terry Bergeson is using our tax dollars to convince parents that educating students to become productive citizens in our global economy is more important than educating students to be intelligent, creative individuals who can think for themselves.

The fourth-grade assessment results to be released Sept. 4 is education reform. It is already here! The only thing needed now is to get parents to buy it.

Bergeson is trying to sell it to you. Make sure it’s not snake oil. Julie M. Bauer Colbert

OTHER TOPICS

Rosemond criticisms justified

Kathy Brainard is absolutely correct in attacking John Rosemond.

Rosemond claims all parenting in the ‘50s was great but today’s parents are so overly indulgent and worried about their children liking them that most children are spoiled brats, that if we raise children with a heavy hand and strict style we can have a family like the one portrayed in “Leave it to Beaver.”

His advice is narrow and apparently, the audience it is directed toward is also. Certainly, the poor don’t worry about overindulging their children, and children raised in violent and abusive homes are not being served by a columnist advocating a stern, dictatorial approach. And for the rest, his approach still doesn’t work.

I was particularly surprised to read his advice recently for how to tell children that their parents are getting divorced. He advocated waiting until the last minute, then just telling them that one of the parents was moving out. No explanation, end of discussion. I think that is fine when you’re discussing what the family is having for dinner, but harsh when life as the children have known it is about to change drastically.

We are raising our children with clear guidelines for behavior, but it is tempered with respect for the adult they will become. Their opinions count and they are given leeway in many decisions affecting them. We are confident they will become adults capable of making choices based on sound principles, not from fear of punishment or reprimand. Atania N. Gilmore Spokane

Beliefs set females up for rape

The Roundtable commentary by Hilary Cosell, “There is no vacation from exploitation of our girls” (Aug. 15) is an extreme view.

Females are second-class citizens until males see us as equal human beings. We are equally due respect, political rights, judicial and economic equality. Women and girls are equally born and die, are hungry, scared, secure in ourselves, lighthearted and angry - all human traits.

What Cosell’s article said to me was that girls and women will be raped, no matter what they wear, because she saw danger in the clothes on the racks. I do not believe that.

Females are at a disadvantage if they believe they are at a disadvantage. If they believe they will be raped, they are courting rape, no matter what they wear. Belief in one’s own self, and the good of others is not an idle, brainless belief. Belief in a future where women are as equal as men can only come when women no longer fear men, but see that some of the world’s attitude is maintained by their own lack of knowledge or belief in themselves.

Culture and tradition have a time lock on many women. The mind is the leveler or divider. What we think is what we get. With a will to create a better world, women will find a way for themselves in a world we will live in together, without fear of men or war. So, don’t take Cosell’s article as fact; it isn’t. P. Joanne Peters Kellogg, Idaho