Letters to the Editor
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‘Tragicomedy in Albany’
A billion here, a billion there, is talking real money. Josh Greenman has grand plans for New York City’s court-ordered education spending windfall [“Tragicomedy in Albany,” Opinion, September 21, 2004].
Despite the fact that New York City spends more for each pupil than virtually anywhere on earth, the court has deemed a lack of money to blame for the abysmal performance of our government-run schools. Are the judges a product of the system?
Home-schoolers with no formal training – and no public funding – produce better-educated children than the public system with all its masters degrees and billions of dollars can achieve. The problem cannot be lack of money.
The fact that so many children are lost, academically, by third grade, never to acquire a basic education, speaks volumes for the system’s pedagogy. Progressive education thwarts normal child development.
Phonics is the proper method of reading instruction. Yet, “whole language” is the method of choice in New York City. Phonics teaches children how to break the code of what they observe as hieroglyphics.
They learn to read by sounding out and blending a small number of letters into words. Phonics is the only teaching method consistent with the alphabetic nature of the English language and with the nature of cognition.
Whole language teaches hieroglyphics. The large volume of dyslexic, Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit-Hyperactivity Disorder and various other “learning-disabled” children is attributable to the pedagogy of “whole language.”
To achieve academic excellence in our school system, we must abandon the progressive education pedagogy and, most significantly, “whole language.” It’s not a funding problem; it’s a teaching-disability problem.
EDWIN R. THOMPSON
Manhattan
‘Draft Dodger’
As noted in The New York Sun, “Senator Kerry is starting to bellyache about the possibility of a draft” as he hits the campaign trail [“Draft Dodger,” Editorial, September 23, 2004].
It should be noted that there is legislation currently in Congress to reinstitute the draft. H.R.163 is sponsored by New York’s own Rep. Charles Rangel, a Democrat like Mr. Kerry, and the bill’s 14 cosponsors are also Democrats, one and all. Not a single Republican in the group. The related bill in the Senate, S. 89, is sponsored by Senator Hollings, a Democrat. It sure isn’t the Republicans who are trying to bring back the draft.
KENNETH H. RYESKY
East Northport, N.Y.
‘Bill O’Reilly’s Big Head’
The Red Cross campaign by Bill O’Reilly also meant that he was doing what Rush Limbaugh always refused to do: become an activist, thus running the risk of inflating one’s sense of power that feeds on the desire for more power (e.g., Canada, France), becoming a demagogue like those in some American movies (e.g., Andy Griffith’s best movie), and, surprisingly, starting to trim one’s sails as one anticipates running for office [“Bill O’Reilly’s Big Head,” Alicia Colon, New York, September 17, 2004].
Note that Mr. O’Reilly has trouble reading, particularly names; this tends to produce feelings of inferiority that might lead to trying to overwhelm people.
RICHARD L. SCHAEFER
Dubuque, Iowa
‘The Wisdom of Russell Kirk’
Gerald J. Russello has published an excellent essay on Russell Kirk’s influence on the contemporary conservative movement, which has found a home in the Republican Party [“The Wisdom of Russell Kirk,” Page One, September 1, 2004].
Although it’s fashionable for many conservatives to cite him as a major influence, I doubt that Kirk would be pleased by today’s conservatism, which is narrowly focused on politics at the expense of culture, a powerful force in the effort to revive what he called the “moral imagination.”
In an excellent analysis published in the intellectual quarterly, Modern Age [Winter 1996], professor Claes Ryn, a Swedish protege of Kirk’s who taught me in graduate school at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C., faults conservatives for their obsession with obtaining and holding onto political power and showing little interest in philosophy, art, ideas, and literature except as vehicles to advance their cause at the polls.
“Many supposedly intellectual conservatives seem to consider ideas and culture from afar, as it were, feeling no deep personal need for or intimate connection with them,” professor Ryn observes.
“More or less consciously, they tend to assess either thought or imagination from the point of view of whether it advances or undermines the political cause that they assume to be incontestable. Does the book, lecture, play, movie, or song help or hinder the cause? Although such works may enlighten or entertain, they do not strike these individuals as having intrinsic and independent authority.”
By devoting all of their energies to the grubby world of politics, conservatives have actually empowered their adversaries on the left by allowing them to keep their grip on society’s cultural institutions and, as a logical consequence, continue to exert a powerful influence on society despite Republican control of Congress and the presidency.
DIMITRI CAVALLI
Bronx
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