Letters To The Editor
October 28, 2009 - MidWeek
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Open letter to Governor Lingle, re: Education
As a resident of this state (43 years) and a retired public school teacher (20 years) I have never been so very deeply ashamed of Hawaii.
Your “solution” to the state’s fiscal shortfall is to punish the next generations. What message does that send to our youth? Perhaps it is, “You don’t really matter.”
“For the keiki” suddenly has a very hollow ring.
Some parents will not be capable of making proper arrangements. There will be accidents, possibly even deaths, suffered by children too young to be left unattended. There will be crime and unwanted pregnancies among unoccupied older youth. The state will be held accountable - as it should be.
No other state in the United States has come close to this irresponsible destruction of educational structure. Is this really the best you can do?
Raise the damn taxes. We’ll just have to pay them. Stop this abuse of Hawaii’s children!
Margaret B. Murchison
Honolulu
Better ideas
Thank you, Bob Jones, for saying what needs to be said in our - both local and national - political environment: It’s fine to criticize, but do so constructively by offering a better idea. It’s something both Democrats and Republicans should practice more often. It’s not enough to just say no, no, no.
Edwin Lee
Honolulu
Aging gracefully
Like Jade Moon, I too saw a TV ad for a “neck thingie” that is supposed to make your neck skin look younger.
To me, “aging gracefully” includes an acceptance of our aging. If God, an Intelligent Designer or Mother Nature had wanted us to look 25 at age 50, we’d look that way naturally.
Jeanette Nakamura
Aiea
Not too intelligent
Some additional ideas on Bob Jones’ recent column on creation vs. evolution. Why couldn’t evolution be God’s (Muslim or Christian) process for creation? One does not have to exclude the other. The Koran and Biblical stories are just human explanations of existence.
I do not believe in any Christian or Muslim creator God, hell or heaven. But evolution cannot explain the magic and mystery of life and a spirit life after death. A spirit phenomenon experience convinced me of an afterlife. Only some super power of force could create that.
As for “intelligent design,” we have bodies that are very frail and weak compared to birds and animals.
Consider that we spend a lot of time and money trying to preserve our hair and teeth. Yet 100 years after we are dead, hair and teeth are still left.
Consider the mental incompatibility of men and women, incurable diseases, old age and end-of-life suffering, severed limbs that won’t restore - doesn’t sound very intelligent to me.
Fred Metcalf
Honolulu
Faith and science
As one who is a person of faith and also an avid science fan I find it very sad that some who have responded to Bob Jones column seem to regard people who have faith in God as backwards or fossilizing. Science is objective true, but people are subjective. That is their attitudes towards religion and experiences they have had in the past often play a larger part in their interpretation of the evidence they find than most are willing to admit. Carl Sagan said “that we should follow the evidence no matter where it leads.”
But in a society that is used to ridiculing any alternative explanation to the status quo (Darwinism), it is doubtful if there is absolute objectivity going on in every single lab and university in the world. I am not saying that we should teach the Genesis story in public schools, but to present evolution as an absolute fact and the only respectable scientific position is not only intellectually dishonest but also insulting to the many brilliant minds that don’t subscribe to this theory. True “Free Thinkers” don’t discount faith and religion altogether.
David Wilson
Ewa Beach
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