Letters

An important subject

I have a question regarding the bill Mr. Kim Hendren submitted to the Legislature requiring teaching of cursive writing in Arkansas elementary schools: Assuming the schools do not have a block of unused time just waiting to be scheduled into the curriculum, which subject should be eliminated?

While there is nothing inherently wrong with teaching cursive writing, there is another subject of much greater importance. Speakers of languages other than English (in Northwest Arkansas, mostly Spanish) are rightly being given considerable expensive help to become bilingual. In the meantime, native English speakers are not being given equal assistance learning a second language. Upon graduation, which group will be in demand in the work force? Just take a look at all the employment ads desiring bilingual speakers and you realize this skill might be nearly as important as a college education.

Perhaps we could implement this vitally important Spanish language curriculum K-12 and include cursive writing in art class, where it belongs.

SHEREEN WEST

Siloam Springs

Still living in the past

I can't think of enough adjectives to describe my shock when I opened the editorial page on Martin Luther King Day and saw a huge tribute to ... Robert E. Lee.

Really? Hopefully, most Arkansans would also condemn the choice of honoring Lee on MLK Day. Where's the editorial honoring Dr. King?

Can you play to any lower common denominator?

Newspapers at their finest should inform, educate and promote a civilized society. The Democrat-Gazette lately reminds me of some people who are ignorant and don't know it, so broadcast their stupidity. But you know better.

You are obviously playing to the backwaters.

Shame on you. Your advertisers should be boycotted until you come into this century.

CAROL BURT

Morrilton

Editor's note: The annual editorial tribute to Martin Luther King Jr. is published each Jan. 15--on Dr. King's birthday--and was published this year as well.

Plates and privileges

Re Neita Phillips' letter: I hope she and everyone else knows what a disabled-veteran plate looks like. It will not have a placard or a wheelchair on the plate. Examples of the disabled-veteran plate start with DV or DAV. These people are disabled and that is a handicapped plate. Veterans who have those plates should also be carrying a driver's license that has the word "handicapped" on it.

I have seen these heroic military people's cars sprayed with fish oil or spray paint and damaged in various ways.

People who say that veterans shouldn't park in a handicapped space, your police department will tell you they can park in any handicapped space, any time.

JIM MARTIN

Little Rock

Don't preserve past

I appreciate Ed Bethune's recognition of the importance of creating a national holiday in honor of MLK. Appropriately, Ed's letter followed Kelly Duda's excellent guest column, "A wrong message." It is way past time to isolate the MLK honor from the racist confederacy and drop all this stuff about the great Southern revolution to preserve segregation.

Regrettably, Arkansas took the final step to join the racist Republican South this last election by refusing to elect any Democrat to a statewide office.

As a lifelong registered Republican with substantial Republican credentials, I take no pride in the conversion of my party to the racist teabagger/Republican group. This marks the ending of the Era of Excellence of Winthrop Rockefeller, the first Republican elected governor since Reconstruction. I applaud the continuation of that philosophy by subsequent Democratic governors Dale Bumpers, David Pryor, Jim Guy Tucker and Mike Beebe, as well as Mike Huckabee, Republican.

You often hear this referred to as the progressive philosophy of Rockefeller, but I prefer the correct classification. It was the switch from the traditional Democratic (and, Republicans, this is a correct use of the term) conservative philosophy of Orval Faubus to the liberal philosophy of Rockefeller. I do take pride in my membership in the Rockefeller administration. It was my privilege to be a part of changing history.

Another irony, the strengthening of the two-party system in Arkansas was the core of the campaign by Rockefeller and now that same core should be at the heart of every future Democrat's campaign in Arkansas. Competition really is beneficial for both parties.

BOB SCOTT

Rogers

Send general on way

What delicious irony! I opened Monday morning's paper, fully expecting to see the usual paean to R.E. Lee, but unprepared for Kelly Duda's well-reasoned guest column pointing out that the full editorial page's subject sends "a wrong message."

I am only sorry that I didn't write the same thing several years ago.

An Arkansan by choice, not birth, I have extolled for years the many virtues of this small, special state as one-time women's editor at the Arkansas Democrat and as a former travel editor for the Department of Parks and Tourism. But I do not include the ongoing reverence for the "late unpleasantness" among those attributes. I think it's high time somebody told Paul Greenberg to get over it.

Robert E. Lee was a leader who deserves to be remembered in the history books; if you want to bake him a birthday cake, go right ahead. But I believe Martin Luther King is a far more pertinent hero to be celebrated in contemporary America, so I am amazed that his official holiday is given short shrift in favor of a 19th Century general who lost his war.

Dr. King's war isn't yet over, nor is it won, but giving the words of 150 years ago such prominence rather than promoting the effort MLK sought to bring peace between the races seems thoughtless at best, if not downright churlish.

MARY DEE TAYLOR

Little Rock

Editorial on 01/26/2015

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