Online schools not the answer

11/6/2012
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

We have come a long way from a piece of chalk and a black­board, but let’s not be so fast to re­place teach­ers with tech­nol­ogy (“Vir­tual schools,” ed­i­to­rial, Oct. 8).

If there are ex­cess funds for ed­u­ca­tion in Ohio, they should be dis­trib­uted to school sys­tems that are go­ing to in­vest in our chil­dren’s so­cial ed­u­ca­tion as well as their tech­no­log­i­cal train­ing. There can­not be a price tag put on the value of know­ing that to­day’s kids will re­ceive a top-notch ed­u­ca­tion as well as the so­cial skills nec­es­sary to suc­ceed.

Chil­dren should have ev­ery op­por­tu­nity to learn in a struc­tured, su­per­vised on­line en­vi­ron­ment, but not at the cost of re­plac­ing our teach­ers and de­ny­ing stu­dents the op­por­tu­nity to de­velop so­cial skills.

I am the proud par­ent and step-par­ent of a Rogers High School grad­u­ate and five Hawkins Ele­men­tary School stu­dents. I would not re­place their ed­u­ca­tion with a com­puter at any price.

RICHARD ARENS
Mor­row Road

Trickle-down the­ory is all wet

The trickle-down the­ory didn’t work in the past (“Ohio eco­nomic re­ports give mixed re­sults,” Oct. 20). Times have changed.

Trickle-down fooled us once. Pol­i­ti­cians shouldn’t in­sult us by call­ing the pol­icy by an­other name.

BARBARA RAY
Wa­ter­ville

Re­mem­ber the old Un­cle Sam?

Hooray for the good old days, when Un­cle Sam lived within his in­come and with­out most of ours.

MABEL BAKER
Lake­side Avenue

Despite crit­ics, keep pub­lish­ing

Read­ing the Oct. 24 Read­ers’ Fo­rum, I see how some days you just can’t win (“Cap­tion shows anti-Rom­ney bent,” “Blade shows a pro-Rom­ney bias”). You were scolded by both sides of po­lit­i­cal thought about the same news ar­ti­cle.

I am sure I am not the only in­di­vid­ual who ap­pre­ci­ates your ef­forts. I’ll be wait­ing for to­mor­row’s edi­tion to be on my door­step.

I hope your pub­li­ca­tion does not go the way of News­week mag­a­zine, which is dis­con­tin­u­ing its print edi­tion.

SCOTT KLEINHANS
Crit­ten­den Avenue

Is Cold War loser now the win­ner?

Pres­i­dent Obama said in the last de­bate with Mitt Rom­ney that the Cold War has been over for 20 years (“Obama, Rom­ney spar sub­tly over for­eign pol­icy in de­bate,” Oct. 23). The next day, a Rus­sian space­craft was launched to de­liver an Amer­i­can as­tro­naut to the In­ter­na­tional Space Sta­tion.

We no lon­ger have a space pro­gram. So who won the Cold War?

ALAN KINE
4th Street