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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, April 24, 2003

Letters to the Editor

Why does prison chief need consultant's help?

I find it difficult to believe that Hawai'i's prison director is considering spending taxpayers' money to bring in a Mainland consultant to evaluate the prison system he is responsible to maintain.

This sounds like paying someone else to do the work required by a paid state employee and spending taxpayers' money without first using local expertise to resolve this issue.

But why doesn't the prison director possess the fundamental expertise and qualifications his position calls for in order to protect public safety by maintaining a sound prison facility?

Or is this just another classic case of appointing state directorships to the "best friend" and not the "best qualified"?

Andrew Watson


Simple, old-fashioned education worked

My childhood education in the '50s resembled Cliff Slater's. School was a haven of organization and certainty. I had my desk, my books, etc. It wasn't fancy, but it worked.

We had final exams each year. Most students passed, but some failed. They eventually graduated and actually knew how to function in society. Teachers were respected, and we were taught to respect one another.

When I went to college, I found that my simple, confining, old-fashioned grade-school and high-school education served me very well. That foundation has helped me lead a constructive and fulfilling life.

I have witnessed my child's "education," and I really believe that we need to return to a simple model that is easy to understand and evaluate. Current practices are formless, like a whiteout. You don't know where you are or where you are going.

The only way we can evaluate our kids' progress is through standardized tests. I don't trust any of the grades my kid gets in school.

I have followed the local educational debate in your newspaper, and as the years roll by, little changes. How many generations must pass before we sober up and realize that smoke, mirrors, cotton candy and roller-coaster models only make our kids dizzy?

We have taken a simple process that clearly worked and fashioned a wildly amorphous process that continues to fail year after year after year. Educators can't even agree on the value of textbooks. If parents could spend their education dollars freely, there would be instantaneous and dramatic educational reforms.

David T. Webb
Mililani


Pot less harmful than most prescribed drugs

I would like to explain something to Jeanette McDougal (Letters, April 20) about medical marijuana. First, as a 100 percent disabled Vietnam veteran, I take a large number of Veterans Administration-prescribed drugs; all affect my liver, and many will cause me great harm if I stop taking them.

For pain relief for the metal in my neck and knee, I take Oxycodone provided by the VA. This drug is very addictive.

As for tar from the marijuana, last spring I was tested at the Fort Miley VA center in San Francisco for sleep disorders. My lungs used 100 percent of the oxygen I breathed in. It was the highest percentage the hospital had recorded. I have smoked marijuana since 1969 when I was in the Air Force.

Of the medications that I take (heart, depression, thyroid and pain), marijuana is the safest. No drug is risk-free, some are just less toxic to the body, and marijuana is one of them. I am proof that marijuana is less harmful than most.

George R. Quarles
Forestville, Calif.


Hawai'i students are part of scientific study

One of the world's great migrations is about to begin, and, thanks to the students of Hawai'i, we know when it will happen.

Tomorrow, kolea birds (aka Pacific golden plovers) will fly 3,000 miles to Alaska. Over 600 students have taken data. Did you know that your kid is a respected scientist?

Students at Kualapu'u Elementary (Moloka'i), Mililani and McKinley highs, Kapa'a Middle (Kaua'i), Iolani kindergarten, Pa'ia (Maui), Kamehameha and many other schools participated, as did many adults.

I started Kolea Watch as a UH-Manoa GK-12 project, funded by the National Science Foundation, which knows people learn science by doing science. Hawai'i's students proved them right. The UH program is now showcased nationwide with its cutting-edge UH Lab School teaching techniques.

Mahalo to Aloha Airlines, Bishop Museum, Hawaii Audubon Society, Hawaii Nature Center, Kohala Foundation, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Waipa Foundation and others for support. Join the project at http://www.hawaii.edu/bird and see great results at http://www.k12.hi.us/~lincoln.

Gustav Bodner


New laptops should mean better results

We complain when the government buys old technology as a useless waste of taxpayers' money. Yet we seem to complain even more when the government buys the latest technology as an even greater waste of money.

The recent public debate concerning laptop computers purchased by the Legislature is bordering on absurdity. Few would argue that personal computers are an integral part of every modern office, along with fax machines and copiers.

A laptop computer is still a computer, only in a more utilitarian form, i.e., it is smaller and more portable. In theory, at least, we will be able to get greater efficiency and more work from our legislators if these tools are used to their best advantage. Not having these computers would only give them reasons to excuse their failings.

Having equipped our legislators with the best tools available, we now have the right to expect a better work product.

Ultimately, it's the voters who will have to decide whether our elected officials have used the tools we have given them to communicate more effectively and pass needed legislation.

Roy Yanagihara
Kane'ohe


Pali Golf Course is in terrible shape

A short time ago, an article mentioned that the city was looking at a proposal to possibly let the Pali Golf Course out to a private contractor for operation and maintenance.

Something must be done, and fast.

I have been playing the Pali course for more than 40 years, and I have never seen this facility as bad as it is now. The greens are horrendous. They are so full of weeds that they are impossible to putt on, and it's not possible to even call them putting greens. If the erosion on some of the fairways is not stopped, it will no longer be called a golf course. I have heard the excuse "no money or no rain" and even that the contractor who installed the cart paths on the back nine is to blame. My response: baloney.

The maintenance personnel and their supervisors must be embarrassed at its condition; if not, they must have no pride in their work. I was wondering if any people from the city administration ever check that facility.

The scenery and layout of the Pali Golf Course are two of the most beautiful on O'ahu. I sure hope something is done, and done soon, and if it's necessary, then I'm all for this proposed maintenance contract to be done by a private contractor.

Glenn M. Bunnell


Aggressive malihini should pay attention

This recent open fracas over malihini leadership and the French Connection is deceptively hilarious and totally misses the point. It's not about the 2,000 gainfully employed Hawai'i workers or the few hundred who may be laid off with the merger; it's about profits.

Banks have just released quarterly earnings showing net profit increases from 12 percent to 56 percent. Where do profits and earnings go? To the malihini stockholders and foreign owners. Where do profits come from? From the hard-working small to medium businesses and the struggling workers around the Islands.

A word of caution to the aggressive malihini: Beware of the "kama'aina passive resistance." It has frustrated many to pack 'n' leave.

F. Wang
Mililani


Fans at Sunday's game were also emotional

It wasn't reported, but the "spectrum of emotions" mentioned in Sunday's coverage of the UH men's great volleyball win was also shared by the crowd. We were frustrated when the guys lost their focus, then were elated by the tenacity they showed in winning in the last difficult minutes of the first game.

Where I take umbrage, as a spectator, is when we rightfully vocalized anger en masse, after a flawed call by a line judge, by booing to the rafters. The arena announcer started a warning speech that came dangerously close to sounding like an oppressive society script, " ... will not be tolerated!" Though everyone booed louder, the disturbing choice of words lingered.

Fans come to the arena to support our team and get away from political mayhem. Whooping and hollering, dancing and waving banners have been and will always be what makes the UH synergy unique.

Public relations mavens force the handle "men of war" on us instead of what our teams really are — "Rainbows" — and it has been fitting like a square peg in a round hole. We are all emotional for a reason.

Kate Paine


Bring in the CDC

Asia has SARS.

Middle East has WARS.

Hawai'i has CARS (Catastrophic Automobile Road Syndrome).

Will someone in authority please alleviate our congestion?

Richard Ornellas


Equitable school system? Hah!

Phineas T. Barnum lived a century too early and too far to the east. This legendary impresario believed there is a sucker born every minute. He would have absolutely adored The Honolulu Advertiser, or at least those members of its staff who have taken the bait by swallowing the bald-faced lie that "Hawai'i has long been recognized as having one of the most equitable school systems in the country" ("Principals' spending authority advocated," April 20).

The people doing such "recognizing" are the same folks identified by the word "some" in this line: "If Hawai'i follows the model of Edmonton, Seattle and Houston, some say the endlessly debated issue of what to do about school governance might become irrelevant." These individuals desperately want the discussion of how our monstrously bloated, inefficient school system should be governed swept off the table, and they'll grasp at any straw to divert public attention.

The facts are quite simple, really. Schools in affluent areas are well provided for. Those in poor areas get the leftovers. When teaching in Wai'anae, I waited five years for my department head to scrounge up enough used math textbooks so each of my students could have one. At the brand-new school where I taught next in a booming economic area of the state, there was seemingly no end of the bounty that was lavished on our school.

Not surprisingly, the affluent areas are most sought after by teachers, while the poor areas make do with whatever they can get. The result? High turnover and turbulence in poor schools. Education there is catch as catch can.

In seeking to divert public attention from the lack of stewardship within our present lash-up masquerading as a state Department of Education, those who will suffer most if the comfy status quo is upset are rushing with all their might to promote this new idea as the panacea for all that ails our public school system.

The simple truth of the matter is that whatever humbug spending scheme is trotted out as window dressing to divert public attention, the state DOE — and its equally useless appendages, the Supe and the BOE — amount to a cancer that is destroying any chance our kids have for a real education in public schools.

The evidence for such a conclusion? There is no academic curriculum, nor is one being proposed. There are no measurable performance standards, nor are any being proposed. There is not even a common grade scale, nor is one being proposed.

Genuine accountability would cure this cancer. That is why there is so much ferocious, widespread resistance on the part of the movers and shakers to the federal No Child Left Behind law, a law that threatens to link measurable results with future funding.

The bottom line is that the movers and shakers in the government power food chain — both elected and appointed — are pitted against innocent children and their trusting parents. That trust has been betrayed.

It is an uneven fight. It is most regrettable The Advertiser has decided to weigh in on the side of the movers and shakers to the added betrayal of our public school children.

Thomas E. Stuart
Public school teacher