‘Amorous Busboys’

Andrew Wolf, ordinarily incisive in his analysis of New York’s school system, misses the mark in “Amorous Busboys” [Opinion, July 29, 2005].

Today’s undergraduates work harder than those of the postwar generation. Today, a much larger percentage of traditional students than ever hold full-time jobs while attending school full time as well. But today’s job market’s demands have changed. Hard work is not enough. Development of networking skills, judicious selection of internships, and participation in enriching activities such as Students in Free Enterprise are now as important as hard work to land a first-rate career.

The public school system has not responded to the shifts. Coupled with the public schools’ weak preparation with respect to the three R’s, as Mr. Wolf has emphasized, the result is that the public schools no longer prepare New York’s first-generation college students for upwardly mobile careers, as they once did.

MITCHELL LANGBERT
Associate Professor, Department of Business and Economics
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn

Stem-Cell Debate

Finally, someone with a brain. Thanks for William F. Buckley Jr.’s article “Bearing Down on the Stem-Cell Debate” [Opinion, August 3, 2005]. Politicians are far too often being persuaded by powerful groups to ignore the simple fact that an embryo is a human life. The reality is that upon conception, the human embryo has precisely 46 chromosomes containing one’s entire genetic makeup (a person like no other). Destroying it (also known as first-trimester abortion) ends someone’s life. Support for embryonic stem-cell research legitimizes and benefits the billion-dollar abortion industry. Research that may begin by using discarded in vitro babies will end at the abortion clinic (if not already). No one knew after 32 years of legalized abortion, doctors would be aborting babies at the rate of 4,400 a day in America. The effects of abortion have been devastating for women; what will embryo exploitation entail? If, indeed, abortion is a “sad, tragic event” as pro-abortion Senator Clinton admits, we have to stop the madness on both fronts.

RAQUEL LACOMBA WALKER
Flushing, N.Y.

Intelligent Design Theory

Many a confirmed agnostic, not to mention panic-stricken humanists of the garden variety sort, bristled at the notion of President Bush’s even hinting that the intelligent design theory should be offered as an alternative option in the present public education curricula [John P. Avlon, “He Said, She Said Science,” Opinion, August 5, 2005]. The question is, why not?

If high school children are being taught to learn only one way of looking at the world and how it may have come into being, then what is wrong with providing them with an alternative way of looking at the same reality, only through a lens which allows them the option to consider that, perhaps, what looks very much like design may have been in fact caused by someone who intended for nature to operate in a purpose filled fashion, something that is often clearly manifested before our very eyes? Why should they be left with the solitary option of accepting what is presumably the only correct theory, taught as meaningful and purposeful instruction in academia, from a teacher who is himself inescapably confined to a system of thought that claims the reality we all observe is simply the result of meaningless and purposeless occurrences haphazardly set to motion by mere chance and random forces of nature? Furthermore, isn’t the diversity of alternative ideas the banner of those who often claim to have an open mind?

MIGUEL A. GUANIPA
Whitinsville, Mass.

---

Please address letters intended for publication to the Editor of The New York Sun. Letters may be sent by e-mail to editor@nysun.com, facsimile to 212-608-7348, or post to 105 Chambers Street, New York City 10007. Please include a return address and daytime telephone number. Letters may be edited.