Disrespect education and risk our future
I remember what it was like to start first grade, meeting a room full of strangers and the teacher who greeted us as if we were hers. That was 1956. I was only 6. Teachers were people we respected, they gave us support. They not only taught us our school lessons but also how to be good, responsible, caring people.
Those days are gone, unfortunately. Teachers don’t have the respect today they once had. They’re paid an unfair wage, too often they spend their own money on school supplies, many children can’t afford the items needed for classwork and homework.
We hear about cuts to education while corporations are benefiting from tax cuts. Without an education we have a workforce that can’t do the job. I was taught education is the road out of poverty; evidently that lesson isn’t taught any longer. These young people are our future. They will be in authority over us in years to come; I can’t say that thought gives me comfort, especially when they’re uneducated. Just a thought
Carolyn Griswold
Leonard Pitts: ‘Pitiful thinker’
Poor Leonard Pitts: He despairs over divided America. He scrambles “back through history for suitable parallels,” and he lists Vietnam and slavery, but he says, “Nothing so momentous or urgent divides us now.” And he says people who disagree with him “have nothing to say to me. Nor I to them.”
But I have something to say. In a nation falling below population replacement, ending abortion is urgent. It is a war on the unborn (not women) in which women, in the guise of controlling their own bodies, take ownership of their children’s bodies (like slave owners) to murder them in the womb.
Momentous also is LGBTQ “dignity.” Equating barren relationships to fruitful ones does not create fertile conditions for raising a new crop of humans.
Pitts says he puts “a premium on inclusion, compassion, and decency.” But there are no unqualified goods. The inclusion of child molesters among Catholic priests violated children. Compassion for molesters shipped them off to other parishes but continued the cruelties against other children.
And decency toward the indecent only implicated non-molesting priests in their crimes and corrupted the Catholic Church. Only pitiful thinkers place a premium on buzzwords.
Dr. Brian Hale
Red Bank
HCDE: Prioritize fiscal needs, wants
The proposed Howard baseball renovation is a primer on why Hamilton County residents don’t trust HCDE with their taxes. Friends of Howard School is forced to beg for donations to fund a literacy program because high school students cannot read at grade level. The administration is instead considering a $1.9 million renovation for a field that 3 percent of the student body uses. Is this a good use of available resources? The paper-thin justification is that sports “keeps kids out of trouble,” but look at the headlines. How many professional athletes, the best of the best, have been arrested recently?
Such misdirected spending is why voters are so against a school tax hike until a district-wide resource stewardship plan is in place and is proven to work.
Any business would cut unnecessary costs before raising prices. HCDE should do the same, starting with its inflated administration (new C-suite, anyone?) and obvious pipe-dream projects. Out of all districts in the state of Tennessee, HCDE is No. 3 in money spent per student but near the bottom in academic achievement. Such poor money management has to change.
Charles McCullough
East Ridge
Drop opinions from TV news
Several months ago I wrote to the WTVC and WDSI newsrooms complaining of a new, biased tone in the 10 p.m. newscast. I now see that the cause for that decidedly partisan view of the news is that the station/s and many others nationwide are parts of Sinclair Broadcasting Group.
I had never heard of Sinclair but have since learned that it is a decidedly conservative organization that contributes heavily to Republican causes. Sinclair recently had its many stations recite and repeat a declaration opposing “bias” and “fake news.”
But Sinclair’s “Terrorism Alert Desk,” and especially its “Bottom Line With Boris,” are biased. Promoting biased opinion as news is “fake news.”
Those who tune in for the news want news, not opinion. Arguing that other news sources are biased and providing “fake news” does not excuse you to do the same.
Grady S. Burgner
Ooltewah
Bus crash blame is widespread
Johnthony Walker was not the only one responsible for the deaths of the six children in the bus accident. The parents had complained both to the school and the bus company about the reckless driving of this bus driver and nothing was done about it.
That bus driver should have been relieved of his duties and fired as soon as this problem of speeding was brought to their attention. The safety of our children is number one and the school and the bus company failed to take any action.
I hold them at fault for the deaths of these children as well as Johnthony Walker. I think those parties should have been in court as well.
Mary Coleman
Women, you are a positive ‘force’
Barbara Bush was a force. Oprah said, “A new day is on the horizon.”
If a man is a force, he is strong. If a woman is a force, she is an intrusion, defensive, anything but strong. Doesn’t she know her place? Pause and ponder. Eleanor Roosevelt (we didn’t elect her!). Rosa Parks (how dare she!). And then there is Eve (temptress. It’s all her fault). Women to be accused of attitude, often challenged, shunned, but seldom silenced.
There are ways, compassionate ways, to speak your mind. Yes, sometimes we women get overzealous in defense of our views, our children, our place. Many men have grasped the power spotlight by being bold and uncompromising, bullying their way to the top. The women I know prefer to practice intelligent curiosity, cautious optimism and unrelenting compassion.
We have been quietly tolerant, dutifully diligent to the family because the goal was and is more important than the path. I would rather be remembered for what I did and what I said rather than resting in silence. Barbara, may the “force” continue in your absence.
Barbara M. Traynor
Support clean air, act for good health
The Times Free Press recently shared an opinion piece by Dr. Clif Cleaveland about the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) disregard for human health. Dr. Cleaveland is right to be concerned, and the dangers are not limited to chlorpyrifos. EPA has also proposed a series of rollbacks to the Clean Air Act that would increase dangerous pollution in the air we breathe.
Last month, the American Lung Association released its annual “State of the Air” report, noting that nearly 134 million Americans – more than four in 10 – are still exposed to unhealthy air. Here in Hamilton County we have seen major air quality improvements thanks to the Clean Air Act, but we still received a “C” for ozone pollution. Clearly, we have more work to do – particularly to protect the 75,244 children in Hamilton County who are more vulnerable to dirty air.
Unfortunately, clean air safeguards are under attack in Washington, D.C. I urge President Trump, EPA Administrator Pruitt, Sens. Alexander and Corker, and Rep. Fleischmann, to fully fund, implement and enforce the Clean Air Act for all pollutants. Families in Hamilton County depend on it.
Christine Hart
American Lung Association
Nashville, Tenn.