Letters To The Editor
SCHOOLS AND EDUCATION
Inculcate enjoyment of reading
Having written for “Street Level” about reading literature, I was delighted to see Andy James’ comments about exposing students to the classics (“Street Level,” April 13).
The great authors did not write with the intention of boring children; they were master storytellers and can weave their magical spells if today’s audiences merely give them a chance.
I have tried over the years to divide my recreational reading time between contemporary writers and those of the past. When perused on a regular basis, the slightly different style of writing and use of language present no problem at all.
What worries me is the increasing number of children and young people who are bypassing reading because of the extremely strong influences of television and film. While we all know many kids who are enthusiastic about books, I fear the majority don’t share the romance of the printed page in quite the way their predecessors did. It would be a shame to have future generations turn their backs on the accumulated treasures of the literate past.
Read to your children. Let them see both that you read and what you read. With seeds thus planted, beneficial habits will bear a lifelong reward. And remember also that what works for reading works as well for our other precious classical arts, under assault from slender funding and the loud bashing of MTV. Music, dance, poetry and painting offer us all deep treasures if we will meet them halfway. Fred Glienna Coeur d’Alene
Bergeson opposed reading imperative
Dr. Terry Bergeson, superintendent of public instruction, has signaled a major retreat from Gov. Gary Locke’s often-repeated commitment that Washington state’s third-graders will read on grade level.
On April 1, Bergeson proposed an amendment to Senate Bill 5508: to eliminate the state goal that 90 percent of children will read on grade level by spring 2002, to eliminate the mechanism which measures growth in reading programs and to eliminate all building and district accountability for reading at the third grade.
Locke said in his inaugural address, “We will not break our promise to raise academic standards.” In response, the Republican Senate passed a statewide goal that “90 percent of third graders will read on grade level by the year 2002.”
Bergeson explains that a reading goal should not be established by the Legislature, but rather by the Commission on Student Learning or should be left to local districts. Bergeson’s amendment is designed to keep the commission’s task the same as it was four years ago by minimizing focus and accountability for reading at third grade.
Each year, a silent army of 20,000 of our children enters fourth grade reading at first- and second-grade levels. Within their ranks they carry most of our school discipline referrals, most of the future gang members, most of those who will be poor and most of those who will be incarcerated.
The social consequences of failure to teach these children to read well is immense. Nancy Kerr, president The Reading Foundation, Kennewick
Denver schools doing a poor job
Since education continues to be very newsworthy, here is an interesting story.
A Denver TV station recently ran a feature on local high schools. The station conducted a random survey of seniors at various school functions. Of the 68 students asked to calculate two-thirds of nine, 29 percent could not do it. How about 35 percent of 100? This must have been tougher, since 32 percent were unable to answer.
Another question was, “Name three countries in Europe.” One-fourth could not.
On the other hand, 96 percent correctly identified the recording artist who recently divorced Lisa Marie Presley.
Someone once said, “To educate men wisely we must know what we are educating them to become.” Perhaps we are not giving the schools enough money, since they are always asking for more. Well, since 1960, education costs have increased 260 percent in constant dollars.
Again, to educate men wisely we must know what we are educating them to become. Ralph E. Hewes Colville, Wash.
PEOPLE IN SOCIETY
Bigots, beware what you unleash
I am sickened and outraged by the persecution of two Kaiser Aluminum employees (April 11, “Employee at Kaiser target of racist graffiti.”)
When will we learn? Why do we think it is OK to hurt, frighten and torment our fellow man just because he was born different? The tables can turn (and often do); then we are the minority and it’s not a game anymore. We are the target with a flaming arrow headed right at us.
Why is it so easy to forget we could have been born like them? God was the one who gave us our differences; only he can help us overcome them. Jennifer L. Hayward Veradale
Stand against supremacists
I appreciate your coverage of the anniversary of the Northwest Coalition Against Malicious Harassment and the inspirational efforts of the Kootenai County Task Force on Human Relations that have joined with Coeur d’Alene business leaders to provide a forum to discuss and address North Idaho’s white supremacist problems.
Bill Wassmuth, the coalition’s executive director, has suffered personally due to his strong interest in educating folks about the dangers and scary goals of the so-called Christian patriot/militia movement. Fortunately, he continues to declare the importance of diversity in the face of adversity in our region.
North Idaho’s problems have spread to our area, sponsored by like-minded associates. Overtures have been made in Western Montana, in hopes of spawning like-minded interest there.
It would be nice, and important, if chambers of commerce, county commissioners and school districts would take a more active interest in the importance of diversity and would support diversity of language as the official policy of Stevens County and neighboring areas. We are becoming known nationally as a hotbed of the disciples of Richard Butler, Pete Peters and Louis Beam. The only way to counter this deep image is to stand against their goals and muster courage to democratically combat hate groups’ plans. James Gordon Perkins Colville, Wash.
LAW AND JUSTICE
Inroads against choice troubling
The Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate Montana’s law requiring teenage girls to obtain parental or judicial approval before undergoing an abortion added to my growing concern with increasing restrictions on my daughter’s ability to choose.
Like most fathers, I respect and trust my daughter. I believe her to be educated, sensible and comfortable seeking help from myself or her mother when faced with such decisions.
But I am also realistic. An unwanted pregnancy is traumatic, regardless of one’s age. My daughter may not want to share such a personal decision with me (let alone a judge), but that would not make her decision careless or wrong.
Also, not all parents have such relationships with their children. Some may be absent, neglectful or abusive, meaning that sharing such a decision could mean serious emotional or even physical danger to a teenage girl.
Those of us who raise daughters (and sons) capable of intelligent decisions need to note recent activity threatening our teenagers’ ability to act on their own conscience.
Those who don’t have this confidence in their children, who would rather subject their daughters’ personal lives to a judge’s scrutiny, should consider the possible consequences: a judicial process that can dangerously prolong the decision or unsafe abortions that can cause irreversible emotional and physical damage.
Do we want to cultivate a generation of educated and responsible individuals? Or do we simply impose our beliefs on them and enforce them by state and federal legislation? It’s time we made that choice. Dennis Bennett Albion, Wash.
Drug abuse not a victimless crime
A recent letter concerning the three-strikes law and the death penalty states that drug users are doing a victimless crime.
This is idiotic. How do you suppose people who use drugs get the money? Who do they put in danger while they are under the influence of drugs? Whose children get ignored, beaten and threatened because of drugs?
Drug crimes are not victimless. These people need to be punished, not put in rehabilitation. If they wanted to stop, they would have already been in rehabilitation.
You do the crime, do the time! David A. Farman Greenacres
WASHINGTON STATE
Casinos are boosting employment
The fact that the state’s welfare caseloads are falling should finally sink into the heads of the welfare reformers. Indian tribes and their casinos are the biggest reason that a lot of people are back to work.
Politicians like to take credit for there being more jobs. In reality, the government is always taking more away from the tribes, so more casinos go up. More people - both Indians and non-Indians - go to work for the casinos, and the big politicians applaud themselves for doing a good job. But it’s not the government making more jobs, it’s the tribes or the tribal council on your reservation.
Hooray for the tribes! We are going to finally beat the government with its own book.
I’m not anti government at all. I just wish the president, governor and all the other big shots nationwide would realize how many thousands of jobs the casinos have made - and quit patting themselves on the back for something the haven’t done.
Crooked politicians across America have made a mess of things. Tribes and the strong-hearted American Indians are rebuilding and reclaiming the work force not to take your job but to make more jobs so even more people can work. This could be what the government calls equal opportunity. Gene Brisbois Spokane Indian Reservation, Fruitland, Wash.
Welfare reform plan no good
Gov. Gary Locke must veto the Legislature’s welfare reform plan. It doesn’t do enough to help welfare recipients find livable-wage jobs, nor does it protect their children.
Threats are not enough. Real welfare reform requires adequate jobs, training, child care and health care. Without those, welfare reform is wishful thinking.
We want to see welfare rolls reduced. But it can’t be done on the cheap. If the Legislature isn’t willing to pay the price of real change, our state’s poorest children will surely have to. Peter L. Berliner, executive director The Children’s Alliance, Seattle and Spokane
GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS
Reform timing raises suspicion
One of the few college courses I took was a political science course titled “Government by Elite Consensus.” The theory being that we do not have a true republican form of government, wherein our elected officials make the decisions based on loyalty to their constituents, but that the direction of government policy is determined by a small group at the top of the economic ladder.
Nothing in my experience has enabled me to dispute this assertion.
For several decades, the elites have led us down the path of social responsibility, which tells me that I am not only my brother’s keeper but your brother’s keeper, too. This has led us into the the entitlement quagmire we now find ourselves mired in.
We now see welfare reform as the current model across the nation and, although I have long awaited this day, I can’t help but wonder why its timing coincides with the unemployment rate dropping to its lowest level since women entered the work force in large numbers in the 1970s.
This drop in unemployment, with its upward pressure on wages, can of course be reversed by a quick infusion of former welfare recipients needing and willing to work for the lowest wages allowed by law. James A. Kesting Hayden Lake, Idaho
THE ENVIRONMENT
Take a lesson from nature
I am responding to the log-it-or-lose-it letters attacking Paul Lindholdt’s comments (“Street Level,” April 6) regarding salvage logging.
Some people feel it’s a waste if one tree falls, dies or is otherwise wasted. But is this true?
The basic system of nature is cyclical. Just like the seasons cycle from spring to winter (life followed by death and back again), so do plants and animals. In the forest, the cycle is birth and maturation followed by death, decay, recycle and renewal.
In the thinking of the use-it-or-lose-it crowd, the focus is birth followed by maturation and then use. The long-term problem with this is the soil that plants grow out of depends on the recycling of dead plant material. In a forest, this means dead trees fall to the ground to become new soil. This process feeds billions of macro and microorganisms that are the living soil that supports all plant and animal species.
Forests existed for thousands of years before modern civilization decided to help them out by cutting them down. I’ve lived and enjoyed recreation in the forest my entire life and have yet to see one I thought would look better clearcut than having some disease or insect-infested trees in it. I watch the forest around my house go through cycles of life and death. I cut fire wood and craft buildings from its wood, but it remains a forest.
The national forest belongs to everyone. It is there the forest should stay a forest -through all the cycles of life. Timothy J. Coleman Republic, Wash.
Research shows burning is best
During the last few months I have studied what is called “prescribed burning” and led a discussion group on that subject. While I agree with letter writers Russ Hudson and Duane Cocking (April 9) that there is warm and fuzzy thinking among environmentalists, I have found that cold, hard reality awaits with a 2-by-4 for Hudson and Cocking.
The economic argument for salvage ignores the advice and experience of silviculture experts from colleges and universities, foresters from the Bureau of Land Management and, I suspect, even the biologists working for the timber companies.
Lumber and fiber in many areas is uneconomical to salvage except with subsidies. And thanks to firesuppression policy, forests are loaded with deadwood and debris that need to be allowed to burn out. In the normal course of historical record, this would have thinned out the overcrowded “dog hair” forests we have locally.
Research I did reading and interviewing on my own suggests that to do the salvage required, instead of burning, would result in a glutted wood market with prices and jobs in the cellar. There would be piles of unwanted lumber and pulp and lines of people unemployed.
I suggest readers go to the library and carefully examine the subjects “prescribed burning” and “fire ecology.” There are sound economic reasons for burning the forest that Hudson and Cocking need to inform themselves of. What you will find will indeed suggest that we will have to burn the forest in order to save it. Allan Foster Spokane