Alternative schools needed to help zoned high schools
The problems at Southern High School, as stated in the article "It's a school, but the aura is of prison" (Oct. 30), are almost certainly not the problems of the hard-working and obviously over-worked staff and administration. The problem lies in the concept of large zoned high schools.
Zoned high schools have students who never attended middle school, never achieved at middle school or were too old or too difficult to remain in middle school. They did not have to achieve anything to be sent to a zoned school.
A typical zoned high school will have more than 200 special-needs students and hundreds of students involved in one way or another with the prison system.
Robert Booker, the city's public schools chief, is quoted as saying that he plans to open an alternative high school for disruptive students, possibly before the end of the school year. In addition, he should make sure that those schools that have plans for an effective Twilight School program get the resources necessary to have the program in place.
Furthermore, he should encourage, or rather insist, that principals drop, or find alternative placements, for students who disrupt the process and deprive our good students (the vast majority, by the way) of the education that they deserve.
Jonathan L. Jacobson
Baltimore
The writer is academy principal at Frederick Douglass High School.
Misbehaving children don't belong in paper
The Sun does not reveal the names of children who appear in Juvenile Court. Why is the coverage of misbehaving schoolchildren different? The stories will be equally interesting or dull with pseudonyms and the subjects less likely to be branded as evil or odd.
Dorothy Siegel
Baltimore
Pollard's punishment excessive for a spy
I am not sure what Alan Stubbs means when he states that Jonathan Pollard has been receiving hero treatment ("Hero treatment is improper for traitor Pollard," Oct. 28, letters to the editor).
Certainly after serving 12 years in prison -- much of that time in solitary -- of an unreasonably harsh life sentence, Jonathan Pollard has been treated more poorly than any spy in recent U.S. history, with the possible exception of those whose spying have led to the deaths of our operatives in foreign lands. Typically spies over the past 20 years have served sentences of two to five years.
Even more striking was the case of Michael Schwartz, an Army sergeant who spied for Saudi Arabia and received a dishonorable discharge with no imprisonment. What was the reason for a sentence for Pollard that exceeded the agreed plea bargain?
Was it the embarrassment of our intelligence services at their ineptitude, which, according to them, allowed Pollard to remove daily one cubic foot of file, equivalent to more than 40 pounds of material? Or is it a pro-Arab, anti-Israel bias in our intelligence and defense services?
Whatever the reason, Pollard has served more than sufficient time for his crime and considering similar breaches of U.S. security, excessive punishment has been imposed.
Nelson Marans
Silver Spring
Support helped Dixon overcome hardship
I was struck by Paul McMullen's article ("On scales of heart, Dixon heavyweight" Nov. 3) on University of Maryland basketball redshirt freshman Juan Dixon.
Mr. Dixon has found a way to excel despite a childhood and adolescence marred by tragedy. His mother and father battled heroin addictions and ultimately succumbed to AIDS while their son was in high school at Calvert Hall.
Mr. Dixon has overcome the odds with the support of a wonderful extended family, great coaches and his own passion for success.
As a pediatric resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital, I have found that the hardships of Juan Dixon's childhood are not at all uncommon in Baltimore. The young man's achievements are amazing, and we should applaud him and his family. But we absolutely cannot forget that for every Juan Dixon, there are 10 other children who are not so lucky.
Kip Baggett
Baltimore
Wasted childhoods rare for gymnasts
There has been much media attention on the legal emancipation of 1996 Olympic gymnast, Dominic Moceanu. She feels that her earnings as a professional athlete were being squandered and misused by her parents.
This issue notwithstanding, I have seen a renewed attention over the issue of whether gymnastics may somehow detract from a young gymnast's childhood.
The gymnasts who appear in the Olympics and in professional shows are the exceptions. They are the extreme of ability, talent and dedication that are as evident at an early age as prodigies in any other field. The vast majority of gymnasts who attend classes and practices are in recreational levels of participation.
This is a sport that allows the athlete to experience multiple levels of achievement. Whether she learns a handstand, a cartwheel or qualifies for the state championships, reachable goals are available for every athlete.
The Baltimore area is rich in gymnastics clubs that emphasize the physical and mental enrichment of the participant. It is unfair to hold a blanket evaluation of the sport based on the sacrifices of a few when hundreds of thousands of children are in the hands of very capable coaches and supportive parents.
Lauren Player
Baltimore Critics of Sen. John Glenn's return to space as a publicity stunt have missed the point. Aside from valuable medical experiments on the aging process, Mr. Glenn has allowed the medical community to affirm that aging is not for the timid.
On behalf of millions of senior citizens, we lift our dose of Maalox and say, "Godspeed, John Glenn."
Leonard S. Jacobson
Baltimore
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I admire the courage of John Glenn at his age to return to outer space.
But what does this accomplish? I can't recall any published reports about the beneficial gains of the expeditions to date. Wouldn't it be interesting to enlighten the taxpayers about total cost vs. worthwhile results?
John Hanson
Baltimore
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I do not think it is too far-fetched to suggest that the recent outpouring of adulation for John Glenn reflects an almost pathological American craving for heroes.
Turning to Mr. Glenn is akin to a spurned lover seeking affection on the rebound: Now that our love affair with Bill Clinton is over, we've set our sights on what seems like the next genuine article. This is an absurd quest.
Mr. Glenn's qualifications as hero are all not fabricated. He's been a middling politician with questionable ties to financier Charles Keating. He's a dull speaker, too.
In short, he's hardly the stuff heroes are made of. He just happened to have been in the right place at the right time in 1962. But let's not bother to look any further. The kind of heroes we seem to demand these days just don't exist, and probably never did.
Amy Bernstein
Baltimore I am pleased to see that The Sun remembers one of its own, a rare journalist who is still enthusiastically read almost a half century after his death.
Not only is H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) still read, but, as Les Payne points out in his Opinion Commentary piece "Mencken's 'outlaw perspective' makes him still relevant today" (Nov. 3), he also retains the power to influence contemporary young writers.
Henry Louis Mencken still lives, not only because Mencken the writer was a model essayist but also because Mencken, the man, was a fascinating combination of seeming contradictions.
Baltimore's Mencken Society was formed in 1979 to preserve the memory of H. L. Mencken and to encourage new generations to read and enjoy his works.
As the Mencken Society's webmaster, I would like to invite The Sun's readers to visit our Web site at www.mencken.org to learn more about the Sage of Baltimore and his works.
Oleg Panczenko
Baltimore
Patients, providers are only invariables
When are we going to learn a lesson from our recent experiences with the business of medicine? After the insurance companies abandon Medicare HMOs, after the physician management companies fold, after initial public offerings and mergers, after Wall Street loses interest in health care, what will be left?
We will have patients who need care and health professionals dedicated to providing that care. But they will have to do their job with fewer dollars because the dollars from profits squeezed out of health care are now invested in computer chips, oil rigs and digital TV.
Dr. Chester W. Schmidt Jr.
Baltimore
The writer is associate dean for clinical practice at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
Palestinian concession needed for settlement
The article "The Wye bother peace summit" (Nov. 1, Perspective) by Phyllis Bennis illustrates quite effectively why Israel should protect its own national interests in negotiations, and ignore the high-minded platitudes of pompous think-tankers like Ms. Bennis.
Ms. Bennis takes the low road in placing blame once again on Israel for expecting too much from the Palestinians.
Pity the poor Palestinians, whose reign of terror over the Western world Ms. Bennis would rather forget. In contrast, perhaps there is a better read for the "Wye bother" peace summit.
The Palestinians have long been known for never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. Years after the Oslo accords, the Palestinians have yet to remove clauses calling for the destruction of Israel from their charter, and yet again, at Wye, the Israelis had to renegotiate for their removal. Some victory.
The Palestinians continue to demand various territorial concessions from Israel, without offering any territorial concessions of their own, to create a lasting peace.
The Wye accords may result in little more than the Bosnia-ization of the West Bank, with a Middle East version of the doomed Vance-Owen Peace Plan.
The end result of this will be renewed conflict as the parties attempt to create contiguous, solid territories from the fragmented piecemeal zones the Wye accords dole out. The Palestinian Authority cannot make promises to Israel and the United States on one hand, and then make concessions to terror groups such as Hamas on the other.
When the Palestinian Authority eventually obtains enough domestic power to act in a trustworthy and responsible manner, a true settlement might be reachable.
However, the Palestinians will have to recognize some hard facts and will have to be ready to make their own territorial concessions to win the same from Israel.
Rather than pressure Israel into making dangerous concessions just to puff up the standing of a wounded and vulnerable U.S. president, pressure should be applied on the Palestinians to put their house in order and prepare for needed territorial concessions of their own.
Mark Hotz
Baltimore
City can't demolish itself out of poverty
Gerard Shields' Oct. 27 article ("In Baltimore, renewal means moving the poor") describes Baltimore's efforts to renew a blighted city by disbursing, and thereby deconcentrating, poverty. Many of the problems associated with poverty -- crime, unemployment, drug use, family dysfunction -- are exacerbated by concentrating poor people in one location.
These ghettos are often isolated from social services and jobs that are essential to removing barriers to economic stability. Solutions to the problems of concentrated poverty include providing the poor with the services that help remove barriers to self-sufficiency and increasing decent, affordable housing in safe neighborhoods with good schools and access to jobs.
Demolition and a mobile Section 8 certificate is a public policy wrought with potential failure. The concept of helping people leave substandard units and poor neighborhoods is a good one, but it is unlikely to work unless changes are made to open other neighborhoods for them.
Many landlords in the city and county discriminate against prospective tenants with Section 8 certificates and those who rely on Social Security, alimony or disability payments for income. Discrimination in housing based on the source of a person's income often prevents qualified tenants from having access to housing in stable areas where they can have good schools and are close to jobs.
As long as landlords are able to turn away otherwise qualified tenants solely because of their source of income, victims of domestic violence, persons with disabilities, and mothers moving off welfare will find their choices in housing limited to those neighborhoods Baltimore is demolishing.
Low-income households will always exist, in part because low-paying jobs exist. But there are ways to help the low-income find housing while also helping communities.
We need look no further than Montgomery and Fairfax counties to find zoning policies that promote mixed-income housing that disperses poverty and puts people near jobs.
Deconcentrating poverty would strengthen Baltimore and benefit low-income families, but fair distribution won't be achieved with a wrecking ball.
Replacing demolished units with decent housing in stable areas, providing support services and good schools, and offering economic opportunities will allow the poor to move out of poverty, a goal worth achieving.
Becky Sherblom
Baltimore
The writer is executive director of the Maryland Center for Community Development.
Balto. County must grasp the need for regionalism
When it comes to regionalism, it is long past time for Baltimore County Council members to retreat from thinking that belongs in the dust bin of history. Too many have the idea that a wall separates the problems of the county and the city.
What these officials don't understand is that if there is a wall, it also separates each jurisdiction's vitality and opportunities.
Baltimore County and Baltimore City are unique. Only a handful of counties like Baltimore County exist in the nation -- no incorporated towns within its borders.
So the county is already like a regional government. Hand in hand with that is the fact that Baltimore City is one of a handful of cities not within the borders of a county.
That wall mentality can be directly linked to these unusual political boundary lines.
What drives every issue, from education to crime, from environment to race, is the economy. There can't be enough teachers or enough police officers or trust between races and religions without a thriving economy.
We cannot have a thriving economy without cooperation between the city and the county.
The county and city are umbilically tied to each other. One cannot succeed without the other. We now compete globally for jobs. We don't compete with the city of Norfolk or the city of Philadelphia -- we compete with the region of Norfolk, the region of Philadelphia and the region of Leipzig, Germany.
Five years ago, the Greater Baltimore Alliance was formed to market the Baltimore region. This alliance needs to be strengthened.
A regional effort is needed to increase the supply of well-trained workers. We have too many working-age people who can't fill out application forms, set their alarm clocks, read, write or add.
Between 1986 and 1990, two Baltimore County Council members and then-County Executive Dennis Rasmussen understood regionalism. This understanding has to come back to Baltimore County officials.
Mel Mintz
Pikesville
The writer is a former Baltimore County Council member.
Dalkon Shield inventor was no monstrous figure
I was very disappointed with the way reporter Michael Ollove described the unfortunate and still controversial outcome of the Dalkon Shield, the IUD device, developed by the productive imagination of the internationally well-known scientist Hugh Davis in the early 1970s .
In the scientific-medical fields, many discoveries have shown negative side-effects or undesirable effects, but it doesn't mean that inventors were monstrous.
Take the example of Albert Einstein. If he had known that his discovery would be misused to kill hundreds of thousands civilians, he probably would never have disclosed it.
We need to take a look at the benefits of the nuclear energy in daily life and in medicine; I don't think Einstein was monstrous.
Many studies have shown the controversy of the Dalkon Shield, public health issue. A 1984 study published in a British medical journal concluded that "fears that the Dalkon Shield may be associated with a higher incidence of pelvic infection than other intrauterine devices may have been unjustified."
Most of the recent articles and the colleagues who still have an interest in this sensitive medical incident agree to the unfair singling out of the Dalkon Shield, and what perhaps a lot people from this country don't know is that hundreds of thousands of women in Europe and in Asia were using the Dalkon Shield as a mechanical method of contraception without a significant number of major complications after its withdrawal from the U.S. market.
I think in the end of 1998, more than two years after the loss of the genius Hugh Davis, who also was the inventor of different surgical devices, we need to give respect and honor not only to him but also to his family, which lived and suffered at the time.
It is time the public knows about the important contribution of Hugh Davis in the control of natality throughout the world.
Abdel K. Brahimi, M.D.
Washington
The writer is assistant medical director of the Washington Hospital Center's angiographic core lab.
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I read with interest "Destroyed by his own invention" (Oct. 25) about Hugh Davis, the maker of the Dalkon Shield. I also read the letter (Nov. 1) written by Davis' daughter.
It seems so many times when an article is written about someone, his or her many positive, warm and generous ways are lost through the cracks and never make it into print.
I give The Sun credit for printing the story about Hugh Davis and the letter from his daughter.
Marge Griffith
Pasadena
Pub Date: 11/07/98