Choosing what's best for students

9/7/2006

A Sept. 3 article regarding home-schooling was both intriguing and disturbing. The Associated Press reports in this article that the home-schooling movement (as an alternative to public education) is "loosely organized" and only "now moving to action." That is incorrect.

Home-schooling is not a new alternative (note how many of our presidents were home-schooled) and one that more and more parents (including many people from various religious and cultural backgrounds) are pursuing. Home-schoolers have been active in their communities for decades, and have made their concerns known for years.

As a home-schooler and an evangelical, however, I am concerned about the movements to completely disengage our children from the public arena, and to encourage endorsement (by a national religious organization) for parents to withdraw from public schools.

Although many parents do face moral and philosophical (albeit even religious) challenges in their local public schools, there are school districts that are willing to listen, and make the necessary changes.

Parents, individually, need to assess their children, and be encouraged to make their educational decisions based on their own research. Movements to make wholesale withdrawals from the public educational system tend not to present the entire picture, and encourage a mob mentality with regard to attacking the established school system.

We made our informed decision based on what is ultimately best for our children, and would encourage others to do the same. TPS has its issues, but do not disengage without first engaging, and attempting to express your concerns.

Thomas C. Moylan

Eastbrook Drive

I watched the one-year anniversary of the Katrina catastrophe and I'm sickened by what I've seen. Our present administration sends millions of dollars to Iraq, but our own Louisiana and Mississippi citizens are begging for help. Is this America? What's wrong with this scenario?

If I have to hear one more comment from our President that he's going to make things better, I'm going to throw up!

virginia m. nichols

Sylvania

I wish politicians would stop talking in platitudes about things they have no control over. No politician can create jobs, good-paying or otherwise. If they think they can, tell us how. No more platitudes!

What this country needs are good-paying jobs in factories producing hard goods. "Made in America" used to mean quality.

The United States won World War II, not by being morally right or having better fighting men, but because we out-produced our enemies. We built thousands of tanks and floated one Liberty ship each day, something inconceivable in Europe or Japan. Now we can't even make our own bullets.

Our manufacturing jobs have gone off-shore, and the people who sent them there are given obscene amounts of money, which they use to build multimillion-dollar estates in Florida, where they can't be touched.

Even God doesn't get this kind of money.

Huge companies file for bankruptcy, and the CEOs get a raise!

Able-bodied, capable people are hurting because they can't find jobs paying enough money to support their families. Most working families require two or more incomes to be reasonably comfortable.

Our "American Dream" is for sale, and our great country suffers because of it.

RICHARD M. REDER

Foxcroft Road

We hear every day about all that's wrong with America.

Our respect for life and our moral integrity are declining. Medical and fuel costs are skyrocketing. Wages are dropping, jobs are outsourced, and our economy is a mess. We're killing the planet at an alarming rate, yet I see very few changes.

What happened to the greatest country in the world?

Most Americans are struggling just to survive; some are even failing.

When oil companies brag of record profits, we know only too well where they came from. What a slap in our faces!

I understand that the wheels which turn America are very complex, but I also know that you and I, the working Americans, pay 100 percent of the bill. The path this country is headed down isn't working.

We can split atoms, splice DNA, and create clones, yet in 30 years can't seem to perfect solar and wind as viable energy sources.

We have great potential as Americans. We have the power to influence the rest of the world. We should be setting a better example before it's too late.

The task is great, yet the solutions are simple, if we just think.

Joseph St. John

Arden Place

The Blade's Aug. 23 editorial condemning Sen. George Allen's reference to an Indian-American volunteer for his opponent as "macaca" was on target, but overlooked crucial facts.

Yes, "macaca" is, as The Blade said, a "very rude racial term in French ('macaque,' meaning 'monkey') that white racists and colonialists in Africa use to refer scornfully to Africans."

But you missed the mark when you said one could believe or not believe Senator Allen's claim that he did not know what the term meant and that he didn't mean to insult the volunteer.

The choice would actually be clear if the editorial reported that Senator Allen's mother was herself a colonialist in Africa - a French-Tunisian who immigrated to the U.S., taught her son fluent French, and that the "macaca" word is one with which she surely would have been familiar.

As a second-generation Indian-American, and with three sons who are third-generation Americans, I, like The Blade, would hope that Virginians will find Senator Allen to be neither senatorial nor presidential material on Nov. 7.

Patriotism means leading Americans to a higher-common purpose - not trying to deride or divide them.

Subodh Chandra

Cleveland

Mr. Chandra is a former Cleveland law director and former candidate for Ohio attorney general.

In regard to The Blade article about the new Regional Growth Partnership study as a template for the area's future, it is important that readers understand that the recent economic studies referenced in that article are not competing studies.

The Hammer Silar George Study, the BGSU/UT identification of industrial drivers and clusters, and the RGP's recent study provide the successive building blocks for a well thought out regional economic development approach that builds upon current strengths and enables us to be strategic in our efforts to cultivate and grow our future strengths.

Those studies have given us an understanding of our current economy, and our potential economic strengths, and have emphasized the important role that universities and other partners must play in growing and cultivating our economic future.

Now, with the RGP's new study, we have the detailed information we need to be effective and strategic in our current economic development activities.

Finally, with the addition of the LCIC, which was recommended by the Hammer Silar George Study, we have all the pieces in place to move forward - that is new for us. Now we have to join together to make it all work for our whole community.

Sue Wuest

Assistant Director

Urban Affairs Center

University of Toledo

Is anyone else disturbed that politicians must say in their commercials they "approve this message" as they are speaking it?

Has it really come to that?

Michele Mackey

Oregon