Inspirational Self-Education
Editor: Though there may be valid arguments against closing Baltimore City public schools for a week as a way to trim the budget, one of them cannot be that a loss of classroom time would threaten the educational process.
Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke's recommendation of independent study educationally sound. Each student should file a proposed plan of activity for the week and document the experience afterward.
Students should pick a topic in which they have an interest. Even the youngest could participate. It needn't be an academic exercise. Community service and business internships offer students a way to get involved in real-world experiences.
February would be an excellent time for older students to visit Annapolis and watch our legislators in action.
Students could interview older family members for an oral history, explore a literary theme, tutor younger children, organize a neighborhood study group. The possibilities are endless.
Of course, there are those who would squander the chance to do something meaningful.
But there are many, many more who will benefit from possibly the first opportunity ever offered to take charge of their own learning experience. Initiative and responsibility are required to survive and prosper in the adult world. Children need practice.
We can turn a school closing in February into a model of educational innovation that will inspire greater funding from all sources.
Malissa Ruffner.
Baltimore.
Universal Training
Editor: It was Associate Justice Owen J. Roberts who was appointed by President Roosevelt to head the commission to investigate the Pearl Harbor disaster and not, as you state in your Dec. 3 editorial, "the chief justice of the United States."
After he retired from the Supreme Court, Justice Roberts, in 1946 and 1947, headed the National Security Committee, a private organization working for universal military training (UMT) as a function of universal training for all young men. It comprised about 40 national organizations aggregating more than 20 million members. Joseph Clark Grew, our ambassador to Japan at the time of Pearl Harbor, and later under-secretary of state, was vice chairman of the committee, and the writer was executive secretary.
The justice and I met with President Truman four or five times, and on another occasion I accompanied Mr. Grew to the Oval Office. Each time the president would leave his desk and come forward to greet us. In response to his greeting, "Hello, Mr. Justice, how are you?" Mr. Roberts in his great booming voice would say, "All the better for seeing you, Mr. President." (I crib that response on very special occasions.)
What happened to UMT? Well, with high expectations we were waiting for Congress to pass the legislation when Czechoslovakia went behind the Iron Curtain, and the Army decided it needed Selective Service -- which the NSC did not support. Result: Congress passed the UMT and Selective Service Act. The Army made a feeble attempt to carry out the law but the two proved incompatible.
Now that the Army is a volunteer service like its colleagues the Navy and Air Force, UMT might be considered again -- this time as a part of universal training for all young persons.
#Worthington J. Thompson.
Snow Mill.
Bill of Rights
Editor: Please allow me to differ with Ernest B. Furgurson who said that when our Bill of Rights was ratified, "no other country had one."
The Bill of Rights, was passed by the first Continental Congress which, while drafting it, used and was guided by England's 1689 Declaration of Rights.
Many rules embodied in the Declaration of Rights and subsequently in our own Bill of Rights came from Great Britain' Magna Carta. These were rights granted by King John on June 15, 1215.
Frank Novak.
Baltimore.
Sun Errors
Editor: Errors appeared in the Dec. 2 story, "Kathleen Kennedy Townsend gives birth to fourth daughter." Her husband, David Townsend, was first appointed by me in 1974. His appointment was to St. John's College, not to St. John's University. The location of the college is not Washington but Annapolis. I am really surprised that The Sun made these two errors.
Richard D. Weigle.
Annapolis.
The writer was president of St. John's College, 1949-1980.
Duke's Spots
Editor: Tom Bowman's Dec. 10 article on David Duke's Maryland supporters dismissing his past as errors of youth belies the old truism, "A leopard doesn't change its spots." Inasmuch as Mr. Duke's racist activities continued (according to the article) into the late 1980s, one would have to be very hard-pressed to believe his views have changed one iota. Experience has taught us that prejudices are inbred and never disappear.
Norton B. Schwartz.
Baltimore.
Support of Wetlands
Editor: I would like to commend Rep. Wayne Gilchrest for his strong position of support for our nation's wetlands. Mr. Gilchrest was willing to request a scientific study of a wetland definition rather than make an expedient and political vote against wetland protection.
There are few Republicans in Congress who support the environment, and Mr. Gilchrest stood up against the so-called "environmental president," George Bush, who would have decimated millions of acres of wetlands with his change in the wetland definition. It would be refreshing to see more Republican legislators become concerned about the environment.
Vince Gardina.
Towson.
M?
The writer is a Democratic councilman in Baltimore County.
Reagan Decade's Legacy
Editor: The economic morass in which the nation presently finds itself cannot entirely be laid at the feet of President Bush.
It is largely the bitter legacy of the profligate Reagan decade in which the cycle of greed, white-collar crime, federal deregulation of major industries, soaring entitlements and record tax concessions to the super-rich was the order of the day in Washington.
This having been said, however, what exasperates a large segment of the American public in the current crisis of high unemployment and plummeting consumer confidence is the failure of the president to act boldly and decisively to turn things around. He constantly reacts to the national mood instead of setting the pace through executive leadership.
Mr. Bush's lack of resourcefulness reminds one of the days of Herbert Hoover who, in the midst of the Great Depression, stood for re-election on a platform espousing "individualism."
His subsequent defeat, said William Allen White, represented a mandate "to use government as an agency for human welfare."
Mr. Bush's decision to wait until January to address the nation's economic problems is typical of his procrastination. Evidently, he would rather spend the intervening time for speechmaking swings around the country, blaming Congress for his own deficiencies instead of calling a special session to take action.
This is a political tactic used by presidents whose popularity is on the skids.
Albert E. Denny.
Baltimore.
Shame Continues
Editor: Our congratulations to The Sun, reporter Suzanne Wooton and photographer Jed Kirschbaum on the portrait of Spring Grove Hospital. You offer stark documentation of the chronic (yet wildly expensive) neglect of people with mental illness.
This update to your 1949 "Maryland's Shame" expose once again brings attention to this lingering problem.
What makes this story even more tragic is that the state-of-the-art care of people who have mental illness is both cheaper and much more humane than the institutional model prevalent in Maryland. Around the nation, humane, community-based, flexible and home-like rehabilitation programs are supplanting mental institutions. Maryland has made some progress, but still lags behind leading states, most of which spend substantially less per-capita on care of people who have mental illness.
Today 3,300 Maryland citizens with mental illness, both men and women, have taken their rightful place as productive community members. They have done so with the support of rehabilitation services delivered by locally-based, private non-profit organizations.
These citizens are achieving levels of self-reliance never thought possible; all they needed was the right mix of services, the chance to leave bleak institutions and the opportunity to prove themselves.
It is ludicrous to suggest -- as Dr. Stuart Silver, director of the state Mental Hygiene Administration does -- that our state hospitals now only house "a core group that can't be taken care of in the community." Dr. Silver's own hospital professionals have admitted for years that about one-third of patients are merely warehoused because the less costly community alternative is not in place.
Let's close just one of our state's 12 psychiatric institutions (Spring Grove might, in fact, be one of the logical candidates) and reallocate its budget to finance community-based care. These are the kind of services that have proven their success in the last 20 years.
Jim Schmidt
Catonsville
The writer is president of the Maryland Association of Psychiatric Support Services.