Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 15, 1995 TAG: 9508150031
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Last year at Grandin Court Elementary School, they had to combine a third- and fourth-grade class. The administration said it was because they didn't have enough money to pay another teacher.
This teaching method went out of existence long ago in the city schools, and it only takes one year of a bad experience to turn off a young student eager to learn. It's unfair to the teacher and to the student - one who is pushed too hard or one who is held back, so the teacher can have some semblance of order in the classroom.
It is hoped that the first priority this year will be to have enough teachers, and there will be no more combining classes!
PAULINE JOHNSON ROANOKE
Higher ethics can cure many social ills
CONGRATULATIONS to your editorial staff on the excellent ethical reasoning in the Aug. 8 editorial, ``Reducing ethics to body counts.'' If more of us would submit ourselves to the objective standard of morality that holds universal principles over utilitarian methodology, many of the difficult social issues we face today would disappear.
For instance, if young men fulfill their ethical obligations to young women they impregnate, more than two-thirds of our children will be born into wedlock, and illegitimacy will cease to be a top national priority. If children are taught the intrinsic value of human life, theirs and others, it's less likely that violence will accompany attempts to distinguish themselves among peers. If pregnant women understand that their children's lives begin at conception and commit themselves to preserve human life, then abortion, even if it remains legal, will indeed be rare.
These social revolutions will occur because an objective ethical standard demands the rejection of personal convenience for the sake of genuine virtue.
We are advised to listen to St. Paul, who warned against those who say: ``Let us do evil that good may result!''
CHARLES T. EVANS ROANOKE
One hands 'em out; one hauls 'em in
OUR GOVERNOR is going around the state handing out cigarettes while our president is waging war on tobacco. Take note!
As a registered nurse, I work with people who have risk factors for heart disease. There are very few things more devastating to the human body and more costly to the nation than smoking. I think both leaders deserve to hear from us.
ALICIA NICKENS VINTON
Moral absolutes do not change
IT TAKES someone with a totally warped and twisted view of American morality in the '90s to write a commentary such as the one that appeared on Aug. 8 in your newspaper (``Don't pine for the repressive '50s'' by Ira Glasser). Anyone who declares that America is a more moral nation today than in the '50s must have been asleep for 40 years.
Who is this ``we'' he quotes as having told ``us'' that at the root of the moral decline is the Supreme Court decision to outlaw prayer in schools? Moral decline in the United States has nothing to do with any Supreme Court decision, but has everything to do with individuals who have been so brainwashed that they believe evil is good and good is evil, and that anything one wants to do is OK.
Basic moral principles don't change. Abortion is still a politically correct term for murder. It was in the '50s and still is today. The practice of homosexuality is still sin. It was in the '50s and it still is. The traditional family is still the backbone of this or any other society. Changing the laws of the land does in no way change the moral absolutes.
The measurement of morality by civic virtue is a farce. The measurement of morality is and always has been by the principles set down in God's word - the Bible.
JANE LAM ORANGE BOONES MILL
by CNB