Steinbach Gems
Count me among those readers who will sorely miss Alice Steinbach's columns.
Her wonderful way with words made each column a gem. I especially enjoyed her mastery in mixing ironic humor and the essential verities of life and parenthood.
I look forward to her feature articles.
Jack Meckler
Randallstown
Pound's 'Madness'
With regard to Daniel Mark Epstein's March 27 review of the newly-published letters between Ezra Pound and his publisher/friend James Laughlin of New Directions, I beg to take exception to his statement at the opening of the review (and pursued by inference) that Pound descended into "madness" during World War II.
Certainly Pound was afflicted with a psycho-pathological disorder, regardless of the fact that the "insanity plea" was used to avoid a treason trial.
It was believed by the doctors and psychiatrists in attendance, and the government lawyers (and Pound's own lawyer, Julien Cornell) that Pound was mentally troubled, erratic in attitude (never violent or crazy, as "madness" would imply), but from all accounts never considered "mad."
Indeed, Pound had great reason for his mental disorder leading into World War II, especially considering the fact that he was trapped in Italy and unable to obtain a new passport to return home.
He and his wife were without funds. He had experienced the destruction (artistically and fraternally) of World War I in 1914, when so many creative talents were lost: his friends T. E. Hulme and Gaudier-Brzeska and even Rupert Brooke.
As for his anti-Semitism and political stance against Roosevelt and Churchill, they were certainly not the singular province of Ezra Pound. It was not a politically correct era.
But Pound seems to reap the whirlwind, in that regardless of his recanting his anti-Semitism, and dead since 1972, his human failings are still paraded across his otherwise unique and brilliant accomplishments. His confrere, H. L. Mencken, shares his luck.
That Pound "used" his friend/publisher to his own advantage is an ironic turn of events, considering the relationship between writer and publisher over the past several centuries.
But it is writers such as Pound, Carlos Williams, Dylan Thomas and Tennessee Williams who have kept New Directions afloat.
Thomas Cole
Baltimore
Hopkins Doctors
Your April 10 article about the dispute between the Johns Hopkins Health System and Prudential left the mistaken impression that all Johns Hopkins physicians are restricted from treating members of HMOs not owned by Prudential.
In fact, this restriction applies only to physicians employed by the Johns Hopkins Medical Services Corporation, a subsidiary of the Johns Hopkins Health System.
By contrast, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, on behalf of its full-time faculty physicians, has entered into agreements with numerous other insurers.
These university physicians serve as the principal medical staff of the Johns Hopkins Hospital and the Johns Hopkins Outpatient Center, treating patients at the hospital, the center and non-medical services free-standing sites. They can and do provide care to members of some of the largest managed care organizations in the region . . .
In addition, the full-time faculty of the School of Medicine who are based at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center contract with other HMOs through their physical group, Chesapeake Physicians P.A. and treat patients at Bayview and at many community sites operated or served by the group's physicians.
Michael E. Johns, M.D.
Baltimore
The writer is dean of the medical faculty, vice president for medicine, Johns Hopkins University.
The Best?
"This is not a perfunctory process. It's a serious inquiry into who would be the best person." -- Lloyd N. Cutler, White House counsel [on the nomination of a Supreme Court justice].
Regardless of race, color, religion, sex, national origin or age, Mr. Cutler?
Philip Myers
St. Margarets
Students with Disabilities
The April 7 letter, "Teachers at Risk," contains several inaccurate statements regarding discipline procedures for students with serious emotional disabilities.
As we configure programs for students with disabilities, we recognize that students with serious emotional disturbance often need highly structured programs. Students with serious emotional disturbance most often attend separate special education schools and classes.
In fact, of all students (493) with serious emotional disturbance in Baltimore County, 66 percent are educated in either separate schools or separate programs (Intensity 5 outreach) specializing in educating students with this disability. Another 20 percent of these emotionally disturbed students are educated in separate special education classes.
The 14 percent of the students with serious emotional disturbance who receive services in regular education classrooms for a portion of the day are those students whose individual needs have been determined through an Admission, Review and Dismissal team as warranting such a placement.
Students with disabilities may be disciplined (suspended/expelled) in a manner similar to students without disabilities. Students with disabilities, including serious emotional disturbance, can and have been suspended and expelled.
Federal and state law as well as federal courts require certain procedures be followed if a student with disabilities is to be suspended for more than 10 days. This means that any student, regardless of disabling condition, can be suspended up to 10 days.
The procedures required by law include determining the relationship of the behavior and the student's disabling condition.
Staff members, including teachers, administrators and psychologists, are included in this determination process.
If it is determined that there is no causal relationship between the behavior and the disabling condition, the student is disciplined as any other student. If there is a causal relationship, decisions must be made as to that individual student's educational needs and placement.
There are a number of options when a causal relationship exists between disability and behavior.
These options include: a recommendation for increased and/or additional special education services, a recommendation for a more structured and intense special education setting, home and hospital instruction, employment of consultants with expertise in behavior management, intervention by school psychologists and school social workers, a change in school attended, a reduced school day and, as a last resort, an injunction.
Marjorie Rofel
Towson
The writer is director of the Office of Special Education, Baltimore County Public Schools.
____________
The "Teachers at Risk" letter states, "especially the severely emotionally disturbed ought to be segregated from the general population." He claims a teacher was punched in the face by a severely emotionally disturbed student.
What made that child so angry that he had to strike out? If the teacher couldn't handle this situation, why is he/she teaching in the first place?
I am sick and tired of these children being labeled disruptive, trouble-makers, disturbed or behavior problems. These children are human beings with the same rights as everyone else.
A lot of times, teachers and parents have an attitude about children with disabilities, and pass it on to children without disabilities. When this happens, and it happens all the time, children with disabilities don't have a chance in the classroom.
If a person has a closed mind or bad attitude going into the inclusion program, it will never work, because the "normal children" will have a closed mind and bad attitude toward children with disabilities. The teachers are there for all children.
If teachers can't handle this, they should seek employment elsewhere and not blame their inability to teach in class on children with disabilities.
What the letter writer should be concerned about is that Baltimore County schools don't have enough money to properly educate teachers and parents about children with disabilities. They have the same emotions, (happiness, sadness and, yes, anger) that children without disabilities have.
If everyone stops labeling these children, and would be more open-minded and considerate, maybe inclusion would work for everyone.
Patricia E. Gauger
Hampstead
Comcast Quality
One wishes that Comcast Cable would put as much effort and energy into providing programming -- such as American Movie Classics, Comedy Channel, Home Team Sports as a regular, not premium, service, among others -- instead of excuses (which have also received uncritical publicity in the pages of The Sun).
Subscribers to virtually every cable franchise other than Comcast in the greater Baltimore and Washington areas receive these and many other services which, the cable programming charts in your newspaper clearly demonstrate, are absent (across the board) only on Comcast systems.
If Comcast has more serious theft problems than United Artists, which publicly at least seems not to share Comcast's obsession, it is because Comcast's main programming focus in Baltimore County is to market the Playboy Channel on pay-per-view on the large population of college undergraduates in Baltimore County.
On my Comcast converter box, there are often three, even four channels hawking this fare at something like $4 a peep.
The audience for this stuff, mostly young males just past their puberty, is notoriously disposed toward gadgets like illegal cable converters that get them something for free.
Scratch any Comcast subscriber, and you will find someone who is going to switch to Bell Atlantic or any other competing service once the "information superhighway" comes on line.
In the meantime, how about some reporting on why Comcast's service is so inferior to every other cable company in the region (including even Multivision, which Vice President Al Gore castigated on the 1992 vice presidential debate).
Or a soft feature on what possesses Comcast to waste money and effort on advertising, publicity and stories on cable theft that, on balance, only serve to remind people of the awful service it offers.
Paul Arnest
Baltimore