The spirit of our birth
Listen, my children, and you shall hear/Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,/On the eighteenth of April in Seventy-Five ...
As a child growing up in Cambridge and Lexington, Massachusetts, I listened, but for me it was the dawn of the 19th--Patriots Day when the battles of Lexington and Concord set off our Revolutionary War and led to our constitutional form of government.
Throughout high school in Lexington, I marched at dawn in the school band from the eastern edge of town to the Battle Green in honor of the rides by men like Revere and by the sacrifices Lexington's Sons of Liberty made to stall the Red Coats long enough for those in Concord to hide our arsenal, which the British were coming to confiscate.
While in Cambridge, across the Charles River from Boston, my grandmothers prevailed upon their DAR sisters to enroll me in the Children of the American Revolution. The spirit of our birth as a nation was in the very air I breathed while I was growing up. It is a part of me.
I am deeply troubled by how distorted and misunderstood that spirit has become, trampled under the feet of greedy, grasping extremists. We have let ourselves become a nation of mysologists, people who fear reason and reasoning, which are at the heart of our beloved Constitution that was written during the Age of Reason.
NANCY MILLER SAUNDERS
Durham
We need less of that
More on the issue of usages of less and fewer--I have examples for those under the dome in Little Rock.
Gay-bashing is passé, even with Republicans nationally, and we need much less of such hatred; we need fewer bills like House Bill 1228 by Bob Ballinger.
We do not need less California wine, a la House Bill 1934 by Dan Douglas, we need fewer inane attempts to start a trade war with a state 12 times our size. The author said he was making a point. Let's pray for fewer such points.
Our poor working people need to get less of a screwing in legislative sessions, and we need fewer elected officials who think it is okay to do so.
PAT FLANAGIN
Little Rock
How far we've come
In 1989, Ronald Reagan described this country as a shining city on the hill.
In 2015, Tom Cotton described us by saying that at least we don't execute gays.
LEWIS NEIDHARDT
Sherwood
All out of proportion
I have no objection to gay couples having the same legal and civil rights and benefits as do heterosexual couples. However, I do have a problem with the insistence of changing the definition of marriage. I believe civil unions allowing and affording individuals of all sexual orientations equal legal standing would be--and should be--the solution to what has become an issue that has become entirely blown out of proportion.
I do not wear my sexuality on my sleeve, throw it in others' faces, nor make it an issue in my life. It is my personal business. It is only an issue if you make it so.
DAVE AUSTIN
North Little Rock
Extremes not normal
Many years of studying the research methodologies, specifically of social sciences, has given me a perspective on many issues in my life. Extremism does not represent normal and never will!
Usually, it is a common practice of mine to steer away from getting involved in others' ways of understanding the world that we all share. Yet, as we increase in age, we do increase in wisdom and the compelling urge to share it with others. Controversy tends to make most of us a little more urgent in our pursuit to get back to a noncontroversial state. Pick a controversy and you will sense a divide (i.e., "us versus them") mentality. Nevertheless, this is not a true perspective.
We live in a country based on majority beliefs (both spoken and unspoken). When the majority beliefs are driven by outliers, it leads to an imbalance and an extremist approach to change and progress. I consider myself an accepting, caring, compassionate, understanding, and empathetic individual. However, I am also sometimes extreme in my own beliefs, but have come to realize that this is not productive. I try to see it from a basic principles standpoint--what I thought most of us believed in: democracy and majority rule. This allows me to keep my personal beliefs and freedoms while also accepting the majority's, which provides a sense of balance and true democracy.
If we all could just get along and try to see things from this perspective, we might have less bickering and negative consequences. That would lead to a more unified, rewarding society, with the idea in mind that there will always be outliers and extremism, and that individual perspective goes beyond color, race, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, and other individual traits we tend to stereotype as belonging to "them."
SHANE HAMPTON
Fayetteville
Explore ramifications
I've been reading your ongoing support for merit pay for educators. Let me preface by saying that while I am in NEA, AEA, I'm not radicalized. I rarely vote for the politicians they endorse, nor do I agree with all their policies.
While merit pay sounds good on paper, there are pitfalls you don't mention: 1. Merit pay based on test scores is inherently dangerous. Many will teach to a test if poor students need to be successful. Most, if not all, standardized tests meet a minimum criteria, so it seems what you advocate is teaching the minimum of what students should know. 2. If you think teachers won't cheat, you're sadly mistaken. It's a sad statement, but true. 3. If we must teach to a test, why not teach to a rigorous test such as the ACT? Not only is this test needed to enroll in most universities, it is on a much more rigorous level than almost all state-mandated tests. 4. Probably only 30 percent to 35 percent of teachers teach a core course, i.e., tested. That leaves 65 percent to 70 percent of teachers who would have no access to merit pay at all.
Please, look at all the ramifications. Don't rebut something simply because a group comes out against or for. In this case, teachers' unions. They are not always right. Nor are they always wrong.
JOHN McLAREN
Crossett
Editorial on 04/10/2015