School Woes

To the Editors:

The answer to the trouble with U.S. high schools [Nov. 14]: abolish all "education" departments, shoot all "doctors of education," and fire any high school teacher with an education major instead of a major in an academic subject.

Richard C. Telford

San Francisco

High schools are in trouble the same way a surgeon is in trouble when the careless family doctor sends him the patient after the appendix has burst.

Go back to the first-grade teacher; then the second; then the third. There you will find the seeds of failure nine, ten or eleven years later.

June Franklin

Merion Station, Pa.

You were well advised to point out the interrelationships between the problems in our schools and those of society in general. My concern is that the classroom teacher not become the solitary whipping boy in the national debate about education. Teachers cannot be all things to all people. Of the many hundreds of teachers I know personally, not a single one can walk on water.

Dick Blottenberger, President

Portsmouth Education Association

Portsmouth, Va.

School is designed for teaching basic skills and developing worthwhile potential. It is not intended for the teaching of basic behavior patterns; and teachers should not be charged with such an impossible task.

Louis D. King

Iowa, La.

"Back to basics!" is a valid battle cry as long as it doesn't get caught in the whirlwind of nostalgia. Like it or not, the American high school cannot return to the hornbook and the birch rod. Where do young people learn the self-discipline that makes an individual choose the challenge over the sure thing? Where do they learn to cope with a society so materialistic that adolescents hold jobs to support their "affluent life-styles"? Where do they learn to deal with adults who think a "democratic institution" and "a learning institution" are mutually exclusive?

The lack of interest, the disenchantment, the disorder in the schools is a mirror of the society that produced them.

Marilynne Babiak

River Grove, Ill.

As a former school superintendent, I would like to see us omit the word compulsory when we discuss our public schools as free and public. Compulsory attendance was once the only weapon communities had to force parents to allow their children to attend school beyond the primary grades. Most parents needed the children to help on the farm or earn money. This is no longer the case.

Schools, particularly high schools, have become massive day camps in the hope that enough interesting trivia can be organized to keep the students and parents reasonably happy and out of each other's hair. Let's make going to school to learn a privilege--not a jail sentence.

Wayne E. Nesbitt

Edwards, Calif.

When are we going to stop blaming parents, teachers and society and maybe point the ringer at the student? As a recent graduate I know that often I had teachers who did their best and who would have had more success if only the students had made more of an effort.

Deborah Barrell

Palo Alto, Calif.

Why do people assume that when teachers are "low-paid" they are "highly dedicated professionals," and when their salaries become more realistic in the light of today's world it is assumed they no longer care about their students or their schools? Some would have us believe that in order to be a good teacher you must be a fool or a slave.

Caroline Vecchione

Matawan, N.J.

I stopped dead when I read, "Those billions add up to more than the country spends on national defense." They'd damned well better. A nation, or any group of people, for that matter, that places defense above education and personal growth in its priorities is pretty sick.

David L. Hibbert

Stockton, Calif.

Hurrah for Nader

Ralph Nader [Nov. 14] may be "spreading himself too thin," but he certainly goes a long way. You state that Nader "is far more effective as a propagandist than a lobbyist." Well, so what? If he can cause several hundred "apathetic" students to become concerned about the pitiful state of this country, then he's a step ahead of our so-called leaders.

Hillary L. Nelson

Northampton, Me.

As a three-year veteran of the Ralph Nader organization, I see it as almost (but not quite) amusing that TIME blames one man, Nader, for the failure of Congress to pass legislation to curb corporate bribers, gougers, polluters and cheats.

Maybe it is because Congress and the President have not stopped catering to the big bucks of Big Business lobbyists who know the corporate accountability Nader proposes means an end to the excess profits they depend on. We have to remember that Crusader Nader did not kill the corporate giants; he merely pointed them out. We citizens are to blame if there is no followup.

Frank Warner

Stowe, Pa.

What Helms Did

Richard Helms [Nov. 14] was willing to risk his career to protect the security of his country; some Senators are willing to risk the security of their country to promote their careers.

J. Louis Williams

Fairfield, Ohio

I can't for the life of me figure out how the American people are to have any effective voice in their own foreign policy if the essential information about the behavior of the American Government can be kept from them by the invocation of national security or, alternatively, executive privilege. Whatever the merits of our involvement in Chile, it is clear that the American people were entirely excluded from any voice in making the decision, and as I read the Helms affair, it was the intent of Richard Nixon to prevent the Congress or the people from ever finding out the true nature of what was done.

Roger L. Alexander

N. Olmstead, Ohio

I hope that when Helms reckons the cost of his adventurous career, he also adds in the lives lost to murder and torture in Chile since Allende was removed from office.

Tom Ayres

Ann Arbor, Mich.

Russian Revolution Remembered

One of the aspects of "The Russian Revolution Turns 60" [Nov. 14], which concerned me was the author's failure to mention any of the assistance given to the Communists during the past six decades. Lance Morrow does not seem to remember the famine during the early years and the food and supplies that were sent, primarily due to the efforts of Herbert Hoover. He has forgotten that foreign capitalists and corporations have been involved in the industrialization of Russia. He does not even recall Lend-Lease.

Robert Hauser

Glen Ridge, N.J.

I must disagree with the author when he says that the home of the Bolshevik Revolution has paradoxically become more of an empire than it was under the Czars. From the early '20s, after it became obvious that the world revolution expected by Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks was not to be, the Communists had to readjust their thinking. The survival of the Soviet Union was then seen as the essential element needed to preserve the revolution until the time would again be right for the world revolution. The more appealing the Soviet Union is, the better chance there is for foreign embracement of communist ideologies.

Steven Click

Elmira, N. Y.

Faith and Infallibility

It is with a growing feeling of dismay, alongside a real sense of amusement to see in your story "Was Vatican I Rigged?" [Nov. 14] what a Catholic priest will do to explain away his loss of faith. Perhaps Father August Hasler believes that the Second Vatican Council was the only true council in church history. And so now begins the task of pulling apart Vatican I. Then perhaps he'll start on the Council of Trent.

Father Hasler suffers from a sickness common to the modern liberal. If something is difficult to accept and believe, it therefore must be untrue, so toss it out!

(The Rev.) James Lynch

Toronto

If the Pope is not infallible because Vatican I was rigged, he would still be infallible unless Vatican II (which reaffirmed the dogma) was also rigged.

Harold J. Dilger

Sparta, N.J.

ERA Tactics

The National Organization for Women's economic boycott against states rejecting the proposed Equal Rights Amendment [Nov. 14] is nothing short of political and economic blackmail. Whatever comes of its passage, the 27th Amendment should stand on its own merits and should not rely on scare tactics designed to intimidate rather than educate voters.

Craig M. Miller

Bay Village, Ohio

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