ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 28, 1996 TAG: 9603280008
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: LETTERS
EVERYONE is concerned about the current status of public primary and secondary education. Few appear to have any insight into how to upgrade that status without increased spending.
As no fan of public education, perhaps I should watch silently as the public-school system continues its slow slide toward extinction. However, during that slow slide, millions of innocent children will have their futures undermined by neglect. This is unacceptable.
Change creates new winners and new losers. Those who expect to be losers will always oppose proposed changes. But problems can only be resolved by change.
As I see it, the central problem is teacher certification. It's a time-consuming, costly, counterproductive barrier to entry into the teaching profession. Such barriers to entry into moderate-paying professions are more potent than are costly barriers to entry into higher-paying professions. When teaching is to be a second or third rather than first career, the barrier becomes more potent because, in most school systems, only long-established teachers tend to be well-paid.
To soak taxpayers to make teaching more highly paid isn't the answer. It's for the state to stop certifying teachers and start certifying principals as competent to hire and fire teachers based on their own judgment.
There are many intelligent, well-educated adults working in other professions who are naturals for the teaching profession, and would gladly try it were the barriers down. The majority of them would make far better teachers than the mediocrities who constitute the lower half of the current population of certification-protected teachers.
Train principals to recognize such prospective teachers, to recruit them, and to provide them with advice and support they'd need to make a rapid, low-cost transition to the teaching profession. By using judgment they've developed through experience, such principals could greatly improve public education without increasing its cost.
MIKE MARLOWE
BLACKSBURG
The wrong time to go for a gun
I REFER to the news article, "Gun couldn't save her from violence," in your Feb. 29 edition:
A robber burst into Rosemarie Delsie's beauty parlor, and she went for her gun. She was shot and killed. I quote Karen MacNutt, Boston attorney and National Rifle Association member: "If Delsie had done nothing, she was 150 times more likely to be injured than she was by resisting."
How pathetic and utterly ridiculous. The odds are probably the converse of that. She was probably 150 times more likely to be injured by resisting. (If so, that makes MacNutt's thinking in error 300 to 1.)
If someone has you cornered with a gun and you go for your gun, you're going to be shot. It's that simple.
LESTER H. HALSEY
MOUTH OF WILSON
Still trying to nail down the funding
I AM writing to correct a statement in your March 20 editorial, "Catching flak for feminists." You said: "This trivializes the recognition of such groups as WomenWork, an alliance of women volunteers who recently built a Habitat for Humanity house for a family in the New River Valley."
I wish we were in the position of having already built a house, but in fact we're still in the fund-raising stage. We're working on getting our first $10,000 so we can start construction, and are more than three-fourths of the way there. Our current efforts are therefore all in planning, publicizing and carrying out fund-raising events, not in hammering nails, let alone standing back to admire the house we built.
I do appreciate your mentioning our project as a community-oriented effort being featured during Virginia Tech's Women's Month, but we can't take credit for having already built a house. Not yet!
MURIEL KRANOWSKI
Public Relations Committee
WomenWork
BLACKSBURG
LENGTH: Medium: 79 linesby CNB