Letters to the Editor

Parenting column offered bad advice

In a recent Parenting Power column, John Rosemond responded to criticism about his belief that you should put children in their rooms for the entire day if they disobey their parents. What he unfortunately fails to point out is that there are levels of misbehavior and different responses that are appropriate depending on the behavior that is being exhibited.

There are also ways to set up routines that encourage compliance and cooperation.

For the example given, of the child who wouldn't get dressed for school, the following strategies would be helpful:

• Set up a morning schedule that includes something the child enjoys doing and make a rule that this activity can't happen until the child is ready for school.
• If the child grumbles about getting ready for school, ignore the grumbling and state calmly that as soon as he is dressed, he can do the thing he enjoys (TV, playing, etc.).
• Give a time limit for compliance and then state the consequence for not getting dressed — then walk away.
• If the child still does not get dressed, it may be appropriate to send him to school in his pajamas and keep him in his room for the rest of the day when he returns.

It would be very helpful if The Advertiser had a parenting column with concrete, realistic advice instead of lectures about the way the world used to be.

State of education is indeed outrageous

I applaud your Oct. 2 publication of Arnold Bitner's commentary on the state of education in Hawai'i. Like him, I, too, have wondered why there isn't widespread outrage over the state of the educational system here.

Right down to overhearing, at a school Christmas party, our daughter's teacher and a friend discussing a mutual acquaintance who moved back to Idaho after two years on Maui because she found the schools so bad and wanted a better education for her two children. They thought moving to Idaho was too drastic a step, when she could have sent her kids to Seabury Hall for $13,000 a year each.

I said nothing, but the question "Why stay in Hawai'i to pay twice $13,000 per year for something that's free in Idaho?" popped into my mind immediately. To say nothing of where a reasonably normal family is going to find that extra $26,000 per year.

My amazement extends to the lack of outrage over the Felix process. Voters should be questioning why there is so little to show for the vast amount of money that has been spent. Voters should be wondering why the Department of Education shows so little inclination to cooperate with the process that it has had to be extended three more years and counting over the original projections and demanding that enough heads roll to ensure the message gets through.

Instead, I sense a self-pitying "Poor Hawai'i. Those Mainlanders just don't get how special and different we are here." Seventy percent illiteracy isn't something to be proud of, folks.

The time for making excuses has passed

Recent test scores show that our children are suffering from a broken public education system ("Scores recede on state assessment," Oct. 3). Gov. Linda Lingle is proposing major reforms that would fundamentally change how our schools operate. But a lot of stakeholders are desperately resisting change.

For years, many blamed the children and their conditions (low-income, non-English-speaking, etc.) for low scores. However, at a recent education forum at the State Capitol, experts who successfully reformed their school districts showed that these factors are not insurmountable barriers to student achievement. In Houston and Seattle, where rates of poverty and non-native English speakers are much higher than Hawai'i's, reforms have produced dramatic improvement in test scores.

The time for making excuses has passed. Our system needs to change.

Water will be gone if we don't act now

We live in paradise. Blue waters and black-sand beaches. Waikiki sunsets and year-round, spring-like weather. All of this is ours for the taking. And the only sort of taking we seem to do is taking advantage of what we have been given.

As we all know, there are many aspects of the Islands that a Mainlander would not expect. Likewise, with the rising issue of water troubles, the question of what to do comes up frequently. But the answers of how to do it are seldom answered.

At the rate we are going, there will be no more fresh water by the year 2020. Enjoy the island's clean water while you can, because if nothing is done quickly, it will not be there for long.

Public transportation benefits everyone

Thank goodness the bus strike is over. Now I can actually catch my breath and not worry about shuttling our family around from one place to the next, usually from the Windward side to town and back several times a day. And I know I'm no different from other families.

For the past month, many have had to endure hardship with no means of transportation, or have had to burden others for rides to school, the grocery store, the doctor's office, work, school functions, outings and so forth. Others like me who do the driving have had to struggle through enormous traffic jams, as everyone else seemed to resort to cars for transportation.

My 79-year-old mother-in-law and 16-year-old daughter rely heavily on the bus to get around. Believe me, our household will run more smoothly now that bus service is restored.

The bus strike taught us some valuable lessons. The first is that public transportation is needed, and it is important to our everyday lives. Another lesson is that public transportation benefits everyone, not just the bus riders.

New bus passes for seniors make no sense

I have a problem when people who are neither senior citizens nor bus riders make policy affecting senior citizen bus riders.

The main point is that as a senior citizen and a bus rider, I have a piece of plastic in my pocket that reads: "Aloha and Welcome! Seniors — Ride With Us Through 10/04." It was issued by the city Department of Transportation Services.

To me and 70,000 other senior or disabled bus riders, this was a contract to provide a clearly defined service for a clearly defined price. Suddenly I am told that my contract will soon be worthless. This is not a big financial deal, but it certainly is a stupid way to do business. Rather than void all 70,000 passes at one fell swoop, they should have decided to simply let the passes expire on the dates that were agreed to in the contract.

In their plan, 70,000 riders will have to get new passes in a very brief period of time. Worse than that, this mob scene will have to be repeated every two years.

As it stands now, 3,000 passes naturally expire every month. All 70,000 outstanding passes will have expired before the proposed pay raises come into effect. What's the rush?

This is not what we expect from June Jones

What a disappointing game against Tulsa. And this is what we get for paying June Jones over $900,000 per year? A defense that collapses twice in a row against arguably the worst of the WAC? A predictable long-passing passion by a guy who skipped classes last season even though he was injured? A ripping-off of the eight-decade-old true name of the University of Hawai'i football team, alienating students and alumni?

No one ever expected the guys to beat USC this year, though without the help by the refs they might have made a game of it. UNLV is tough this year, but this season was supposed to be June Jones' march into big time. Now he and the team sputter and fume against the wannabes of the WAC, consistently displaying the lack of discipline when it's so vitally needed, usually in the form of an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty.

This is not what we alumni expect from our head coach, now in his fourth year and expecting twice his old salary. Bring back the Rainbows that used to take on Iowa, Notre Dame and BYU, and bring back the university to its senses.

Driving fines should go to the counties

Regarding Glenn Bunnell's Oct. 4 letter "Have the scofflaws pay for police raise": He doesn't take it far enough. It's about time that monies generated by county police departments, by way of fines they issue, go directly into the counties' individual coffers and not those of the state.

We need to get in step with the other states. Let the Sheriff's Department patrol the highways and freeways and issue citations. Monies generated through their fines can be directed into the state's coffers.

Wasn't this a proposal of our governor? What's the holdup? Certainly not rocket science.

Constitution bypassed on Hawai'i

The commentary from Earl Arakaki in the Advertiser's Sept. 28 Focus section was followed up by William Burgess' letter in the Oct. 2 editorial section, and both adopt the same peculiar stance to issues of justice, law and history.

Arakaki's essential premise is that he and the other plaintiffs are merely trying to right a constitutional wrong. But there are other constitutional issues involved.

Consider the U.S. takeover in Hawai'i. The American Constitution is very clear about how the U.S. may acquire foreign territory. But instead of the treaty of annexation required by law, the Senate and House of Representatives passed a joint resolution in 1898 to bypass the uncomfortable truth that there simply weren't enough senators who could be convinced that annexing a nation friendly to the United States was in their country's best interest. Had Americans observed their Constitution in 1898, we Hawaiians would not be troubled by their Constitution today.

Burgess insists that no lands were stolen when the U.S. took over Hawai'i and that the crown and government lands were public lands before and after the takeover. However, the crown lands were actually the private property of the monarch.

When the Republic of Hawai'i took those lands from Lili'uokalani and gave them to the United States, it offered no compensation to the queen, who maintained to her death that she was the rightful owner of those lands. Those lands, almost a million acres, were clearly stolen.

Moreover, crown and government lands were much more accessible to ordinary native subjects for homes and farms under the kingdom than they have been under American rule. With the loss of the kingdom's government, crown and government lands immediately were leased out to the largest sugar businesses in Hawai'i and became a major part of their corporate holdings and resources for the next century. Many historians, including American and European scholars, have concluded that financial gain was at the heart of the movement to end the monarchy.

There are laws and there are laws. Arakaki et al. would have us believe that some parts of their Constitution are more sacred than others. But they make truly despicable arguments when they imply that they wish only to care for all of Hawai'i's poor. I have met many people who actually work with Hawai'i's poor and homeless. None of them are, or ever would be, plaintiffs in this case.

The terrible truth is that Arakaki, Burgess and the others represent a reprehensible American type that sees laws only as opportunities for personal enrichment. People in Hawai'i, not just Hawaiians, should repudiate this suit and its plaintiffs for using a civil rights ideal against the people for whom such laws were formed to protect.

If these plaintiffs win, the state of Hawai'i may have a few more million dollars to commit to public education, but Hawaiians will have even fewer reasons to trust the integrity of American laws, and very significant motivations to regain our sovereignty.