‘Feeding the Fire’

The New York Sun’s editorial “Feeding the Fire” [March 24, 2005] opens with an excellent question: “Why did the Orange revolution in Ukraine succeed in ousting the government there, while the Tiananmen Square uprising in Communist China was crushed?” The answer, I believe, is that George H. W. Bush, who fears that democracy leads to chaos, was president in 1989.

I was teaching at Hebei University in China during the spring semester of 1989. During the six-week period known as Beijing Spring, students asked me, “Why doesn’t President Bush say anything?” At the time, I had no idea. Then, after the massacre on June 4, Mr. Bush still didn’t say anything. In 1991, he allowed Saddam Hussein to crush rebellions by Iraq’s Shiites and Kurds. Apparently, Bush 41 looked upon Saddam as better than the possibility of democracy and chaos.

Democracy, needless to say, does not lead to chaos. The most stable countries on earth are democracies.

GEORGE JOCHNOWITZ
Manhattan

‘Lake Failure’

The New York Sun’s editorial on the United Nations [“Lake Failure,” March 29, 2005] criticizes the American Jewish Committee for welcoming Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s statement, made in Jerusalem earlier this month, calling for closer ties between the U.N. and Israel and urging member states to correct the injustice of Israel’s exclusion from one of the five regional blocs that determine the all-important committee assignments.

You suggest that we live in a dream world, oblivious to the daily realities of the U.N., including Mr. Annan’s decision to lay a wreath at the gravesite of Yasser Arafat the day before his Jerusalem speech. No other organization has devoted as much time and effort over the span of decades to pointing out the failings of the U.N. when it comes to Israel and the Jewish people. Indeed, only the AJC has an institute, U.N. Watch, founded by the late Ambassador Morris Abram, devoted exclusively to holding the U.N. to the standards of its own charter.

We part company with your editorial on two important issues. You’ve all but relegated the U.N. to the dustbin of history, declaring its work null and void. We recognize the reality that, like it or not, the U.N. is here to stay, that it has its strengths and its weaknesses, that Israel is a member state, and that we have to fight the good fight to ensure fair treatment for the Jewish state, indeed, for the Jewish people. Incidentally, that’s exactly the same approach taken by Israel, which also welcomed the secretary-general’s visit to Jerusalem, his participation in the ceremony opening the new museum at Yad Vashem, and his forward-looking remarks on Israel and the U.N. And the editorial suggests that if we make any positive comments at all – as we did in the case of Mr. Annan’s speech in the Knesset – then we are ipso facto guilty of ignoring all the misdeeds done by the U.N., and afflicted by naivete or worse. That’s just plain nonsense.

DAVID A. HARRIS
Executive Director
American Jewish Committee
Manhattan

‘School Reform So Far’

In “School Reform So Far,” [Julia Levy, Page 1, March 17, 2005], Schools Chancellor Klein lambastes the educational pundits, who, he says, have never taught children to read. My opinion is based on 20 years of experience as the principal of P.S. 171 in Manhattan.

When I left P.S. 171 in 1998, this elementary school had by far the best reading test results in the East Harlem district. We achieved this through a content-rich, phonics based approach, avoiding fad programs that lacked research support. In contrast, the curiously named “Balanced Literacy” program since mandated by Mr. Klein for 80% of the city’s elementary schools is heavy on procedure, light on content, and leans toward unproven ideas resurrected from the “whole language” scrap heap.

Balanced Literacy, first implemented in the 2003-2004 school year, appears to be ill-adapted to inner-city schools. To justify the use of the program, Mr. Klein appears to refer to the experience in Region 8 in Brooklyn. Yet the results on the 2004 fourth-grade New York State English Language Arts (reading) test, can, at best, be described as mixed. Yes, one of the districts within the region scored 3 percentage points higher in students reading at or above grade than in 2003. This was District 15, which includes the middle-class Park Slope area. But the remaining districts, all of which have a lower average socio-economic standing, performed poorly in 2004. In District 13, the decline was five percentage points; in District 14, there was a decline of 10 points; and in District 16 (Bedford-Stuyvesant), the decline was a disastrous 16 points. It is time for the chancellor to rethink a program that does not allow teachers to teach and that is failing the students of our poorer districts.

LORRAINE SKEEN
Manhattan

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