LETTERS
LETTERS Pray As You Go I rise in opposition to Charlie Peters’s comments in his June "Tilting at Windmills" column supporting school prayer. Why has this country become obsessed with amending...
...Another Satisfied Customer The June issue came yesterday and looking no further I think it stinks...
...CARL E. POHLHAMMER Pacific Grove, California As a parent of two adolescents enrolled in public schools, I wholeheartedly agree with Phil Keisling’s recommendations on ways to improve the public schools...
...However, in detailing the ills of America’s public school system and prescribing cures, Keisling has managed to miss its biggest malignancy...
...I have worked with thousands of students, teachers in training, and veteran teachers over the past ten years...
...Those dismissed might be the incompetent, but they might also be those who speak out or those who create administrative problems...
...LOUIS C. COHEN Norfolk, Virginia The Monomaniacs’ Lament Your reaction to the "monomania" in the peace movement ["Tilting at Windmills,’’ July/ August] is understandable...
...Its source of power, he declares, is based upon its admittedly superior knowledge of economic matters...
...If a child wishes to pray, or to meditate, orto recite the Lord’s Prayer, that is fine, but it is an issue to be decided at home, not in Washington...
...Volcker was lighting his cigar with what is left of our American dollar...
...Those who will stay in teaching regardless of the compensation may well be the most dedicated to the profession, yet most who stay under such conditions are not the best teachers...
...Saratoga Springs, New York Joel s. Koransky is a dermatologist...
...Doctors automatically wear gloves when evaluating most genital lesions...
...FRANCES SIMONE Hope Mills...
...I , too, would like to have somebody" wake me when the recession is over...
...The editor- replies: Pray...
...Many dedicated and competent teachers are hanging in there against almost impossible odds...
...But it won’t be easy...
...There was only one Catch-22 In this whole new political stew Monomania died When the world did collide With a dense-pak of nuclear brew...
...West Virginia Skinny on DOCIS Your statements about the risks a patient faces in the hospital ["Tilting at Windmills," May] are misleading and your statements about herpes are unnecessarily alarming...
...He is wrong in attacking credentialing...
...Beecher is manager of external relations for McDonnell Aircraft Company, prime contractor for the F-15 and F-18...
...Unfortunately, their ranks are diminishing quickly, with few fresh recruits in sight...
...Please advise whether in the photo on page 13 Mr...
...As a result, the observations Mr...
...and I think you owe them, one and all a public apology...
...They are not elected officials, their integrity and their public lives are not material for your public commentary or criticism...
...Providing easy credit in order to prevent it only blocks these required adjustments so that the economic problems persist and worsen...
...If the licensing process produced poor drivers we would not throw it out...
...Those patients who succumb to a truly hospital-acquired infection are either immuno suppressed cancer patients or are debilitated by a chronic illness or other infirmity...
...Would our schools be better off if the math teachers were paid like Reggie Jackson and the English and history teachers were given the minimum wage...
...Volcker does...
...What is more disturbing is your apparent mistrust in our medical system...
...I’ve sent copies of the article to a few representatives of Congress...
...I t is no more wrong to ask that teachers be credentialed than to ask that drivers be licensed...
...At the same time, in no manner, shape, or form do I think he is a sleep on the job and the inference on your cover is beyond excuse...
...Alter discusses how the Federal Reserve Board dominates members of Congress...
...That is the big and growing educational bureaucracy...
...I would add one codicil to Keisling’s recommendation for reforms in public education- fire incompetent administrators as well...
...I voted for Reagan, but I don’t than the cover creates the reaction for this letter...
...It hurts when I pee ‘And no issues I see ‘Save the single one found in my mania!’ The poor man was called ineffective, Immature and for sure non-elective...
...But these problems will not be solved by using the private school as a model, and they won’t be solved by cutting off the funds as taxpayers "revolt...
...Accepting for the sake of argument that you do not make teachers better by paying them more, is it true that you can make them better by paying them less...
...How is he going to get government off my back by supporting legislation for school prayer...
...Keisling makes that are on point will be lost on the persons most able to bring solutions...
...We stand by our facts and conclusions...
...Don’t focus your ire ‘But scatter your fire’ Was The Washington Monthly’s directive This man tried to be a good neighbor So he tripled his efforts and labor, Refusing to mingle With issues just single He took on the world as its savior...
...I believe that parents, teachers, administrators...
...GARY D. MARTIN San Juan...
...Alter begins by declaring that, even if the government managed to bring its deficit spending under control, economic problems would persist because of the policies of the Federal Reserve Board in maintaining high interest rates...
...Right now many of the best teachers I know are leaving for greener pastures...
...Unemployment is a necessary, temporary concomitant when an economy must adjust to changing circumstances...
...My list of the ten worst at our institution would only partly agree with the administration’s list...
...Louis, Missouri Mr...
...But why must we pass legislation...
...Quality teachers are vital to our nation’s future...
...He comes close to spotting the problem when in his prescription for dealing with classroom disruption he says that ". . . teachers must be given far more authority to rid themselves of troublesome students...
...Jonathan Alter’s excellent "Defrocking the Fed" [June] shook me from my lethargy...
...Alter quietly ignores the fact that the Federal Reserve is not committed to high interest rates, only to a steady, sane growth rate of the money supply...
...Puerto Rico Rather than contributing to solutions for the admitted problems of public education, Mr...
...JOSEPH GERACE Mayville, New York Class Wars: Readers Strike Back With "The Class War We Can’t Afford to Lose" by Phil Keisling [June] you have once again published an article that should be required reading for every lawmaker and opinion-shaper in the United States...
...Many of the infections acquired by hospitalized patients are brewing prior to hospitalization...
...Why has this country become obsessed with amending the Constitution or passing unnecessary laws...
...Please Include an SASE Suffice it to say that your treatment of the F-15 Eagle and the F-18 Hornet in the April issuer35 Ways to Cut the Defense Budget...
...North Carolina and Charleston...
...It reminds me of a limerick: There once was a man from Albania Who thought he had caught ‘monomania...
...President Reagan often talks of getting "government off the backs of the American people...
...Would that it reach and be read in every home...
...approve of everything he does and I don’t approve of everything Mr...
...To correct the matter involved, and draw logical conclusions from those corrections would require more words than you would welcome in a letter to the editor...
...educational leaders, and plain old ordinary citizens can work together to bring about needed change in public education...
...TIIMOTHY J. HEECHER St...
...But single-issue citizens are a direct result of the concentrations of power and lobbying in your town...
...Frankly, I am frightened over what is and isn’t happening in our public schools and teacher training programs...
...There is a very strong anti-union bias, the article is replete with logical inconsistencies, and the attitudes of the writer give credence to illusions and misconceptions held by a large part of the public...
...Yes, there are problems in public education...
...As an English education "specialist...
...Instead the educational establishment can attack the weaknesses in the article and ignore its strengths...
...The way things are now, even if the perverse selection process of college "education" courses were eliminated and teachers’ salaries raised substantially the good teachers would still be prevented from doing their best and would be driven from the profession by mounds of pointless paperwork and stifling and insulting rules...
...Jonathan Alter, Phil Keisling] was laden with errors of fact and unwarranted conclusions...
...I have had the pleasure of working with and knowing many of them...
...If Pentagon officials and defense contractors and government bureaucrats and military officers get to spend about 28 hours per day on their single issue (hyping a bloated and self-destructive defense budget), and if they get paid top dollar while they’re doing that, what can concerned citizens do except try to focus their energies on the same single issue...
...How does it strengthen academics to take money from the English teacher and give it to the math or science teacher...
...MICHAEL MAUKER Teaneck, New Jersey See "Tilting at Windmills" for the editor’s reply...
...There are problems in teacher preparation, in school administration, in curriculum, in inner-city schools...
...I resent the hell out of that...
...This situation is tragic...
...The top of the cover insinuates that senators’ wives are prostitutes...
...Keisling contributes further to the problem...
...The basic problem with both dismissal and merit pay is in deciding who will get either...
...Were government deficits to be reduced, interest rates, given the Fed’s present monetary policy, would decline automatically...
...Had he said, "Teachers must be given more authority," period, he would have been closer to the mark...
...Don’t go to the hospital unless, having diligently investigated the hospital-and your doctor’s reputation-you’re convinced it’s absolutely necessary...
...college professors...
...Your readers should know, however, that facts demonstrating the superiority and usefulness of both the F-I5 and the F-I8 do exist and can be made available to anyone who contacts my office...
...ASA HAHEK Chicago, Illinois Fed Up: Two Views Jonathan Alter’s article concerning the Federal Reserve Board made use of the entire bag of tricks of "yellow journalism," including half-truths and unflattering and irrelevant photographs...
...Even most lay people know that herpes is transmitted by skin-to-skin contact and therefore know not to touch a genital eruption...
...Alter believes that it would be better for Congress, with its ignorance of such straight forward economic concepts as "MI b" and velocity (which Alter calls "jargon"), to set monetary policy...
...The editors reply: We stand by our facts and conlucions...
...we would change it to correct the problem...
...A book title from the radical reformist literature of the sixties aptly describes this tragic situation"our children are dying" both intellectually and spiritually . To warm the chill created by Keisling’s article, I would like to inject a positive note...
...JOEL S. KORANSKY, M;D...
...If a child wishes to read the Bible in the morning, no one is stopping him or her...
...If administrators make the decisions, merit pay will go to "Teacher’s Pets," to those who do not rock the boat...
...I think he, too, deserves an apology...
...ALFRED A. FOTE Santa Monica, California I commend you on your magazine...
...Perhaps you could suggest what your readers should do if they become ill...
Vol. 14 • September 1982 • No. 7
