About redistricting
I have to admit that I am not very knowledgeable about redistricting. However, I do find it ironic that the very people who have issues with the way redistricting should be handled in the state of Arkansas seem to be the same people who are adamant that accepting majority voting nationally (i.e., California and New York votes having a bigger impact is OK in this case) should be the standard. Does this seem odd to anyone else?
LLOYD KASSLER
Bryant
Out in the wilderness
I was immediately saddened, then angered, to see that Perry County hasn't made much progress in the almost 60 years since I graduated from Perryville High School in 1962. As I read about the Bigelow administrator "ripping out the pages" of the current yearbook of a timeline of the school year's significant events, I thought, who could argue that this has been an extraordinary year, and most appropriate to note in the yearbook? I would call that great journalism and smart, thinking seniors.
I went off to college in the fall of 1962 to Arkansas Tech, and absolutely loved every class I was in. One day my biology professor asked me to stay after class, and when alone stated he did not want to embarrass me in front of the class, but I seemed to be unaware of evolution. I confirmed that, in fact, this was the first time I had ever heard of evolution, but that it answered so many questions I had had, and made perfect sense. That was the kind of poor education I had received, born out of a deliberate withholding of information based on intentional ignorance, and connected to the prevailing religious ideas in the community.
These two events are connected in my mind, and both make me weep for the intellectual wilderness Perry County education remains in. We must provide a quality education to our young people, including ideas, theories and facts to our students. We must trust them to be the recipients of the most current thinking and truths, and know we have equipped them to think and reason for themselves.
What on earth could the Bigelow administrator have been thinking when she ripped those pages out? Did she not understand that there was nothing included that every student and parent had not seen a dozen times plus in the news this past year? Was her head so far down in the sand?
SHARON MARCUM
Little Rock
Terrible ideas in D.C.
On Aug. 10 of this year, the U.S. Department of Labor issued notice that it would be releasing $10 million to Mexico to be used to improve gender equity in the Mexican workplace. For what fiscal reason, when the U.S. debt stands at over $28 trillion and growing, and when we are in the midst of a recession, does Congress not understand that the U.S. cannot keep funding the international community? Taxpayers cannot continue to sustain this type of senseless spending.
Congress must slow down its mad rush to spend, spend, spend. Our economy needs a chance to rebound. Recently the U.S. Senate passed a $3.5 trillion "infrastructure" bill. To offset some of that amount, the president has suggested selling off some of our oil reserves. With the price of gasoline at over $4 a gallon in some sections of the U.S., this is a terrible idea. It is apparent that the current administration and congressional leaders care only about their agenda and nothing more.
RUTH M. WALDON
Little Rock
Just fanning flames
So now the latest attempt to change our culture has shown up in a yearbook issued at Bigelow School in Perry County. Two pages were devoted to a "timeline" of political news items that have no place in a yearbook that should hold special memories of students' achievements and activities. The book should be only about them and not the U.S. Capitol riot, police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Daunte Wright, the deadly pandemic, or the global movement for racial justice. None of this is appropriate to insert in a book of happy memories. It's not a book to use as a political platform or opinions.
The uproar is over the removal of those two pages after public backlash. Now comes in the Student Press Law Center from Washington, D.C., to demand that the yearbook be reprinted and the school issue an apology because the pages weren't just removed, they were "ripped" from the yearbooks.
The yearbook adviser/teacher resigned after the backlash, as she should have. She had no problem allowing these controversial subjects to fill up two pages, saying they outlined important world events.
The claim that students are graduating with a deficit of civic knowledge should be addressed in a classroom or by teachers, not by using a yearbook as a civics book on current events. Totally inappropriate. Looking at a normal yearbook should make one smile and not be reading or looking at somebody's political agenda.
The fire is raging and outsiders are fanning the flames. Somebody stand up and put out the fire.
JOCEIL WOODS
Searcy
Stick to other topics
Bradley Gitz is infuriating in his attempts to write about subjects he obviously knows nothing about. Does he know anything at all about how X and Y chromosomes work in determining sexual traits, let alone how variations such as XXXy or Xyy occur; or mutant sex-determining genes; or the movement of sex determination to autosomes; or the range of development of gonads; or differences in hormone levels even in one gender, let alone across genders; or the psychological impacts of any of these variations?
Obviously not! He states either you are born with a penis or not and that is that. Wow, if medicine were so simple, then simple-minded people like him would be our physicians.
BRUCE HAGGARD
Conway
Bruce Haggard, Ph.D., is an emeritus distinguished professor of biology.