Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 19, 1995 TAG: 9503180010
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Later, you discover that many club members send their children to fish in another pond. Your children can fish there also, if you have the money. But if you fish from it, you cannot stay in the club. Worse, the club wants no government money used to fish in that other pond, even though you can use different kinds of tackle there and the fish are usually better. The club tries to control how other folks fish, even to fish from their own ponds or from church or private ponds.
All this sounds fishy to you? It should. The club is the Virginia Education Association and the National Education Association. Proposed amendments to the VEA's structure will be voted on by the 1995 VEA Delegate Assembly. Emphasis is on closing ranks, eliminating private-school employees and associate members (those interested in advancing the cause of education). Why? Because at a time when the public is increasingly disgruntled with the outcome of our public-education system, the NEA has decided to remove any members who might have an interest in any of the alternative education proposals currently at issue. The VEA is following the NEA to remain part of the club.
Approximately 40 percent of NEA members send their children to private schools, yet they're very militant at controlling any alternative education systems - be they private, parochial or home schools. They resist allowing government to share funding or resources on charter schools or a voucher program. Hypocrites! The losers are the poor, who by reason of insufficient funds must send their children to the very schools NEA and VEA members keep many of their children away from.
Education needs support from those interested in our children's and country's future. These proposed changes in the VEA bylaws won't sit well with a public demanding change. Our teachers can do better! But if changes are approved, then our education system will be no better than any other. We'll simply have a sinking boat in a lonely pond.
BEN POE
WOLF CREEK
Racial stereotyping cuts both ways
REGARDING Gloria Jean Coan's Feb. 27 letter to the editor (``Aunt Jemima image still disturbs many''):
When I see something wrong, like her, I cannot remain silent and allow evil to triumph.
It's interesting that she thinks it's ``scary'' that an African-American woman could be responsible for a display of small statues that ``dehumanize'' black women. How? By portraying them with horns and a tail? No! By showing them wearing a red dress with a scarf around their heads. And, my God, they were also ``laughing and grinning!''
The statues Coan describes sound unflattering at best, but ``dehumanizing''? Reality check, please.
Perhaps, in her grand quest to be offended, she's overlooked her truly dehumanizing reference to my race - ``White smiling faces watching black people lynched and burned alive ... some observers even brought picnic baskets.'' I and mine are no more perpetrators of the atrocity that she describes than she and her family are victims. Look who's stereotyping now!
DAVID P. LODUCA
ROANOKE
Viewers' patience is being sorely tried
SINCE retiring, I have a lot of leisure time. Some of this time has been spent watching infamous trials on television - the Kennedy rape case, the Bobbitt man-eater case and presently, the O.J. Simpson murders case.
I've learned a lot about trial procedures, the decorum of lawyers, witnesses and judges, but above all, how a trial should always be centered toward a fair and expeditious conclusion. The Simpson trial is really a trial for observers to test their patience and sense of truth.
I'm so sick of delays, sideboard discussions and the general liberal attitude of Judge Ito. If this trial continues at its present pace, it will bankrupt California. Let Ito take control and use his authority to move along this trial, even if he upsets some of these prima donna attorneys.
Is it any wonder that Simpson looks bored half the time?
COYE WITT
ROANOKE
And don't let it fly the coop ... THE GOVERNOR has obviously decided to emphasize prisons over education, and I feel it would be appropriate that our state slogan and state symbols be consistent with our new emphasis.
Therefore, I think an appropriate state slogan would be "Virginia Is For Losers," and the state bird could be shown in a cage. Then we could simply make it a generic bird, and have it called a Jail Bird as opposed to the cardinal.
I'm sure there would be bipartisan support for the above-mentioned proposals.
BARRY WOLFE
ROANOKE
The great adventure started in Fincastle
I APPRECIATED Ray Garland pointing out in his Feb. 23 column (``The culture vultures sacked Allen's game plan'') that all the governor's proposed cuts in state aid to museums, including Explore Park's living-history museum program, would have saved ``only $5 million and change, or about what is spent on Medicare in a day.'' But I find no merit in his implication that Explore Park's theme - to honor and perpetuate the memories of Meriwether Lewis, William Clark and other intrepid Virginians who participated in the opening of the American West - is misguided just because the 1804-06 Lewis and Clark Expedition was ``launched not from the banks of the Roanoke but from the Missouri.''
Explore Park's theme is valid from a geographical standpoint because nearby Fincastle - Roanoke didn't exist at the time - is as much a part of the Lewis and Clark story as any location farther west. Fincastle was an important jumping-off place for western-bound explorers - the last place to gather and get supplies before departing to Kentucky through the mountains. Clark married Judith Hancock of Fincastle, and Lewis frequented the Hancock home on his way to Kentucky and St. Louis. After the expedition, Clark edited his journal in preparation for writing the expedition's official narrative in the Hancocks' Fincastle home.
The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, the main body of experts on that historic event, appreciates this Virginia connection. Reproduced on the cover of the February 1995 issue of its quarterly journal, We Proceeded On (which is published in Montana), is a color photo of Fincastle. And included in the program of its 1995 annual meeting, to be hosted by the foundation's Home Front Chapter in Charlottesville July 28-Aug. 3, is a pilgrimage by bus for Lewis and Clark fans to historic Fincastle.
So, we at Explore Park make no apologies for our plan eventually to devote half the park to an American Wilderness Park zoo replicating the wildlife-viewing experiences of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, beginning with a Western Virginia habitat and its typical animals, and continuing through the Great Plains and Northern Rocky Mountain's habitats to that of the Columbia River Basin.
Why leave the responsibility for teaching younger generations about Lewis and Clark only to museums in the West, when the story started here? We at Virginia's Explore Park don't intend to!
M. RUPERT CUTLER
Executive Director
Virginia's Explore Park
ROANOKE
Endorsing fiscal irresponsibility
I WAS disappointed to see your March 4 editorial (``A good thing the Senate said no'') supporting rejection of the balanced-budget amendment.
Families and most states have to balance their budgets. Why should the federal government spend billions that we don't have?
President Clinton and the liberals worked hard to defeat the balanced-budget amendment, despite the fact that 70 percent to 80 percent of Americans support it. They politicized a nonpartisan issue, and wanted to exempt Social Security from any possible future cut. Social Security and Medicare make up more than half of annual federal spending. It would be irresponsible to not consider reducing them in the future.
This amendment would have required a balanced budget by the year 2002, subject to ratification by three-fourths of the states. Clinton and the liberals have shown that they don't want their runaway spending to be stifled; they don't trust the American people to allow this to be put to a national debate; and they don't care what the majority thinks.
I expect liberal opinions in your news and editorials, but that editorial endorses fiscal irresponsibility. I wish we had term limits for newspapers.
MICKEY MIXON
ROANOKE
by CNB