The language of math gives students options

Let's see if I have the column "Math requirements don't add up for many students" ("Opinion*Commentary, Aug. 2) right: Requiring mathematics is bad because (1) the math required is pointless, usually mindless manipulation of symbols that students will never use, so (2) students fail and that keeps them from getting into or through college.

Furthermore, this required math is usually taught by bad guys on the bad side of the "math wars" -- namely the bad teachers who "drill and kill" their students.

Well, here's a response from a bad guy.

Who are the column's authors to say the math is pointless? A lot of mathematics does involve the manipulation of symbols -- which is often mindless. But that's not necessarily bad. Don't think so? Then explain to me why 2 + 2 = 4. Forget that, just tell me what "2" is.

The language of mathematics is written in symbols; so learn the language. If you don't, you can forget many fulfilling professions because, while it may be invisible, math is really important. Honest.

And who are the writers to say students will never use it? What crystal ball do they possess to see a student's future or undiscovered talents?

Why do students fail math? Two reasons: They don't work or they've been too long away from the symbols.

The solution to the first problem is to flunk them, as only math (and science) teachers have the courage to do, apparently, in this touchy-feely age of grade inflation.

The answer to the second problem is for the teacher to be a good teacher and for the student to work.

Frank Grosshans

Baltimore

The writer is a professor of mathematics at West Chester University in Pennsylvania.

Relax requirements for college math

I agree 100 percent with the column "Math requirements don't add up for many students" (Opinion*Commentary, Aug. 2) and I am a bit relieved that I am not the only one who feels this way.

Not only is this issue relevant for students just out of high school, but to us older adults who would like to or need to get a degree.

As a 45-year-old instructional assistant in the Howard County public schools, I have been very distraught with the new No Child Left Behind Act, which will require all instructional assistants to have at least a two-year degree or pass an assessment test by 2006.

I earned 15 college credits 25 years ago, and have been considering returning to school to complete my associate's degree. However, the courses I would need to take at Howard Community College all require a particular math class, which has a prerequisite of intermediate algebra, which, in turn, requires another two prerequisite courses in intermediate algebra and geometry.

All the remedial work needed to complete the math requirement for the two-year degree is very daunting and discouraging. I have not taken algebra since high school, and remember none of it, not having used it in my past careers or now as a teaching assistant.

Very few people use such math skills in their jobs. And unless I actually teach algebra, geometry or calculus, such a requirement for a degree is unnecessary.

Colleges need to make their curriculums more attainable for people of all ages who might be interested in continuing their education.

Eileen Schurter

Columbia

Schools can't add to black pride

Gregory Kane's criticism of the lack of a black heritage curriculum in the Baltimore public schools seems to imply that in this majority-black city, our schools should contribute to black pride and help us overcome the hateful effects of slavery ("Lessons in black history learned outside city schools," July 28).

But Mr. Kane's view, which is widely shared, that school instruction will elevate character is a seductive fallacy.

As a 60-year-old black female activist who is a college graduate, I have a fair understanding of people's triumphs through tribulations.

And I have discovered that information that comes from outside one's immediate environment -- one's parents, family and other interpersonal relationships -- does not penetrate to one's core.

The denial of our worth as persons is still being imparted from one to another, particularly from parent to child. Overt instruction cannot correct such covert carnage.

Those of us with decent survival skills must intervene ever more vigilantly and valiantly to inspire self-worth among those in our surroundings.

City public schools simply do not have that ability.

Orisha Kammefa

Baltimore

Tough love can be the best medicine

Listen to the plaintive cries of the bleeding hearts who have no clue about what behavior modification is about: "[A private residential school] isolates the kids from outside contacts and applies psychological pressures to conform to the program. Children break ... psychologically" ("Going Beyond Tough Love," July 31). Boo-hoo-hoo.

The teen-agers who are candidates for this kind of retraining obviously have rejected their parents' authority and believe they can do what they want with impunity. These kids are way beyond reasoning, and a radical approach is the only alternative.

They need to be psychologically broken before they can become responsible adults.

How is this approach any different from the methods used by the military on young people in basic training? Granted, the armed forces have a different motivation than the schools, but their goal is the same: to get everyone on the same page so that individuals adapt to a set of acceptable standards of behavior.

That's the "program" to which these poor, unfortunate children are being pressured to conform.

I bear witness to the effectiveness of such methods. I know a 17-year-old troublemaker who, making his last appearance before a judge, was given a choice: Enlist in the Marines or go to jail. He chose the Marines.

When he returned home after basic training the positive changes in him were nothing short of miraculous.

Moreover, as a result of his "brainwashing," his self-esteem was better than ever. He was proud of the way he had turned his life around.

David Ferrera

Baltimore

Eroding the supply of affordable housing

Former Baltimore Housing Commissioner Daniel Henson's letter defending the HOPE VI program actually buttresses the arguments of its critics ("High-density public housing was a failure," July 20).

Mr. Henson claims the real purpose of HOPE VI in Baltimore was to reduce density and produce mixed-income communities on sites where public high-rises once stood.

And indeed the focus on eliminating high-rises, reducing density and creating mixed-income communities became the de-facto purpose of HOPE VI, according to the National Housing Law Project, whose critique of HOPE VI was the subject of the article that raised Mr. Henson's ire ("Housing plan found to do 'more harm than good,'" June 28).

But rather than improve the living environment for residents at these distressed sites, the majority of the residents were "priced out" of the renovated developments by higher-income renters and owners.

While it is unclear how many of the original residents were relocated to other, less attractive public housing, were given difficult-to-use housing vouchers or got lost in the vortex of the housing market, it is clear that, when the dust settled, Baltimore and other HOPE VI locales experienced a net loss in public housing units available for the poor.

In Baltimore, 74 percent of the affordable housing units were eliminated -- nearly 3,000 of the 4,000 units were destroyed.

The loss of these units comes at a time when the Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that in Baltimore only 45 housing units are affordable and available for every 100 households whose income is extremely low -- less than $21,330 annually.

Many have fought for decent, affordable housing in Baltimore. But Hope VI reduced the supply of this precious commodity, leaving homelessness and hopelessness in its wake.

Peter Sabonis Jeff Singer Baltimore

The writers are, respectively, director of the Homeless Persons Representation Project and CEO of Health Care for the Homeless Inc.

Let drug companies pay for prescriptions

While millions of America's seniors anxiously await a resolution to the heated debates over who will bear the brunt of a prescription drug program, the country's most profitable industry, the pharmaceutical manufacturers, is flooding doctors' offices with millions of dollars in free prescription drug samples and encouraging physicians to solicit free drugs for their patients.

During just one recent slow summer week, pharmaceutical representatives unloaded almost $10,000 of free prescription drug samples at the small medical center next to my pharmacy.

Patients were seen leaving soon after with bags full of free drugs.

If this is indicative of what's happening in thousands of other doctor's offices throughout the rest of the country, and I have no doubt that this is the case, the state of Maryland and the Congress need not look far to fund the enormous cost of a prescription drug program for seniors: Get the money from the rich drug manufacturers who seem to have plenty of money to burn and free samples to spare.

Lance Berkowitz

Pikesville

The writer is the owner of the Professional Pharmacy of Essex.

Drunken drivers cause no 'accidents'

The word "accident" appears several times in The Sun's article "After car accident, trooper searches for new life path" (July 29).

But Nathaniel C. Traveny, who had a blood alcohol level of 0.15 a few hours after the crash, did not just "accidentally" plow into the back of State Trooper John Patrick Barry's police car. This crash was no accident. Mr. Traveny knowingly attempted to drive his car in a drunken state.

Had he truly been concerned about his 2-month-old daughter and his elderly parents, he never would have put his car key in the ignition and started the engine.

The State Police place their lives on the line every day trying to keep drunken drivers off our highways so you and I can come home to our families safe and sound. And, while I am very thankful Trooper Barry was not one of the 225 people killed by drunken drivers on Maryland's highways in 2000, I am very angry that because Mr. Traveny "accidentally" hit Trooper Barry's parked cruiser, the trooper's life was forever changed and he was robbed of his goals.

This was no "accident." This was a motor vehicle crash caused by a drunken driver. And any one of us could have been Trooper Barry.

Gael Whetstone

Baltimore

Police have lost the public's faith

I read the recent angry letter in response to the citizen's comment about the shooting of Officer Christopher Houser that the police have to "give respect to get it" ("Police earn respect with their blood," letters, July 31).

It is unfortunate that this citizen's comment accurately reflects the relationship with the public that has been created by the city's present police commissioner.

When I was a prosecutor in Baltimore, police officers were left with discretion to deal with nuisance offenses in ways other than arrests -- and people were not automatically "jacked up."

But now the police's cowboy mentality has eroded whatever good feelings existed between the police and many law-abiding citizens.

As a criminal defense attorney, I have spoken to young men who have been accosted and ordered to lie on the ground because they were walking in their neighborhood. No drugs were found and no arrests made, but it happens to them over and over again.

And a police officer who lives in the city has told me he has been stopped by the same police officer three times while walking his dog.

I have spoken to many of the old-timers in the city police department who recognize that there is now an us-against-them mentality in the neighborhoods they patrol. They regret that they can do nothing to alleviate the situation. And they realize that if they have a problem, no one is going to step out of the crowd to help them.

Is it any wonder that even when a small child is shot no one wants to talk to the police?

As long as the police treat people without respect, even putting their lives on the line will not satisfy the public.

Gary S. Bernstein

Towson

The writer is a former assistant state's attorney in Baltimore who now works as a defense attorney.

Asking for money isn't a crime

I'm curious about the training that will be provided to members of the business community who will testify in court ("Court watch group gets training," Aug. 1).

I hope these business people are trained about the truth.

In the article, for instance, panhandling is described as a crime. But panhandling is not a crime, despite the best efforts of the business community to make it so. "Aggressive solicitation," on the other hand, is a crime -- but there's a difference between the two.

The article cited a story about some people who were shoved by people asking for money. Shoving someone in that circumstance may be aggressive solicitation or even assault. But asking for money, whether we like to see it or not, is perfectly legal, not to mention constitutionally protected.

As the business community strives to discourage certain behaviors, I hope someone is keeping an eye on the civil rights of those who are not actually committing crimes.

Ann Ciekot

Baltimore

Exaggerating danger from global warming

I am a former Sierra Club activist writing to take issue with a recent letter from a Sierra Club representative ("Warming trend turns heat more deadly," July 26). The letter is a wonderful example of the deceptive scare tactics the Sierra Club routinely uses to terrify the gullible.

Contrary to the writer's undocumented assertions, "scientists" do not predict that global warming will result in acute heat waves at our latitude. Even the most extreme proponents of the global warming hypothesis predict that the effects of global warming will be most pronounced in the Arctic and Antarctic latitudes, with little temperature rise at our latitude.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's own Web site states that global mean temperatures have risen 0.5 to 1.0 degree since the 19th century. That's hardly the killer heat wave the writer depicts.

And the Sierra Club's advocacy of wind power and solar power is a poorly thought-out fantasy. These forms of energy are just not practical or economically viable. And both solar power and wind power require the use of vast areas of land. Does the Sierra Club really want to replace the forests and fields of Maryland with windmills and solar panels? Would that give us a better environment?

If the writer and the Sierra Club are serious about reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide, they might consider supporting nuclear power, a viable energy source that produces no carbon dioxide.

But, as I found out when I was a member of the Southern Maryland Sierra Club in the early 1990s, no real energy source can compete with the Sierra Club's fantasies.

George Broughton Spence III

Ellicott City

California is right to limit emissions

I was delighted to read that California, by far our most progressive state, has enacted legislation to reduce the greenhouse gases from all passenger vehicles sold in that state ("California cleanup," editorial, July 7).

That includes the beloved SUV (Superfluous Unthinkable Vanity), the vehicle of choice in this country.

Gov. Gray Davis can be proud his state will be the standard-bearer for clean air and a better environment for us all.

Since our national government refuses to participate in controlling global warming and continues to protect the car and fossil-fuel industries, other states must follow California's lead and set comparable standards.

The auto industry will try to defeat this long-overdue action by claiming it will limit consumer choice, raise prices and force buyers to purchase smaller vehicles. I hope those baseless claims are rejected and the car industry is forced to build more environmentally friendly vehicles.

Global warming must be defeated -- and California has fired the first shot.

Ronald M. Stearns

Bel Air