Water use in Colorado
Re: “Use water like it’s still 2002,” May 28 editorial.
I’d like to offer a big thumbs-up for your editorial.
We really can’t claim that any of the state is free from the long drought of recent years. We need to keep saving water. We also need to know that most water that people use flows from national forests in the mountain headwaters. People can use this knowledge in two ways.
First, be careful with fire in the forest. Our summer fire season is upon us. A hot, dry spell can bake the lush green growth and set up a wildfire cycle. Let’s prevent severe fires. They leave bare slopes that shed water like asphalt and choke rivers and reservoirs with silt and debris.
Second, think of a healthy forest as nature’s sponge. It soaks up the snow and rain, stores it in the soil, and releases it later to streams. We need people to understand and support our work to renew healthy forests that better withstand future beetle outbreaks and wildfires.
We need to reduce our use, and we need to save our source. What comes out of our faucets is affected by what happens in our forests.
Rick D. Cables, Rocky Mountain Regional Forester, U.S. Forest Service, Golden
Creation Museum
Re: “Adam, Eve and T-Rex; Museum’s biblical take on history opens to public Monday,” May 27 news story.
Thank you for reporting on the Creation Museum. Many people believe an infinite God created time and space about 6,000 years ago and revealed our origins in human language. Others believe in eternal matter/energy that produced life through random processes. Others believe something in between. Whatever you believe, you should hear the arguments of creationist organizations such as Answers in Genesis.
People think that if you don’t believe in millions of years, you are unscientific, deceptive, and/or delusional. This is understandable because cartoons, movies, schools, natural history museums and zoos all express millions of years as undisputed fact.
In reality, creationists embrace science. Many top engineers and scientists believe in a young Earth, including MRI pioneer Dr. Raymond Damadian. The scientific method itself stems from belief in an orderly God who established natural laws we could discover through repeatable tests. Therefore, most of our current scientific disciplines were founded by creationists.
Evolutionary thinking has actually held back scientific discovery. Organs with unknown functionality were considered “vestigial” and went decades without being properly researched. Then there was “junk” DNA, which we now know has key functions. Please keep an open mind and find out more than a caricature of what creationists believe.
Donald Gilbreath, Castle Rock
Fort Carson expansion
First, let me express my support for all American troops, for a strong military in general and for the right of our government to defend legitimate American interests wherever needed.
I do, in fact, agree with much of the top brass at the Pentagon, that armored units should train close to the ports from which their capabilities will be shipped on short notice.
Look on a map of southeastern Colorado and you will not find a port. But you will see the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site, which is more an economic benefit project for the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce than a sensible place to expand a military training site.
The additional (20,000) troops at Fort Carson and their families are a $1 billion per year boost to the economies of Colorado Springs and Pueblo. The relatively few families who stand in the way out in eastern Las Animas County have been portrayed as unpatriotic; this is a tragedy and a sham.
A patriot would want our troops in the best position for deployment. Only a retired military member of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce would want to force five-generation ranchers off their land with eminent domain and destroy the agricultural economies of Las Animas and Otero counties for the sake of personal and community gain.
Don’t be fooled. Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site expansion isn’t about patriotism, or military readiness; it’s about greed and power.
Mark Hess, Trinidad
Education and discipline
Re: “School spending myth,” May 27 Perspective article.
Finally, someone knowledgeable had the guts to say what the educational establishment already knows, politicians and judges are loathe to admit, teachers would rather not reveal, and the public doesn’t want to hear.
Robert Hardaway, a law professor and educational author, flat-out states that the problem with our public schools is not lack of money. Rather, the problem is that our public schools refuse to grant authority to teachers to discipline students or to protect innocent ones from disruptive ones. Although I agree with Mr. Hardaway, I would amend his statement to say that it is the public that refuses to grant the public schools permission to grant the the teachers that authority.
He states further that private schools do a better job of educating our children, basically because they are allowed to grant that authority. I don’t understand why that should be, and Mr. Hardaway doesn’t say – but they do it, and with less money.
As a retired public school teacher and substitute, I know that educators don’t want to allow our public schools to foster poor learning and represent a danger to their students, but when higher-ups such as principals, school board members or judges stand behind parents and pressure groups who support trouble-makers, then all but the rarest disciplinarians have to accept poor behavior and lower standards.
R. Kiefer, Arvada
…
Robert Hardaway points out the “myth” that increased spending will improve the “quality of Colorado’s public schools.” While it appears true that spending does not always translate into higher test scores, Mr. Hardaway’s answer is overly simplistic. Although it may be true that in some public schools the teachers struggle to discipline students or to “protect innocent students from disruptive ones,” it is not the primary issue facing public school reform.
Public schools and their teachers and administrators are now held accountable each year through publicized CSAP scores and a school rating system, but parents and their public school students in K-8 are not. In short, regardless of their grades, many students in these grades are allowed to pass to the next grade level despite low test scores or failing grades.
This might be a contributing factor in our relatively low graduation rates statewide, and some students who do graduate do not have the requisite reading and math skills to function in college or the job-world. Another seldom-mentioned factor in the educational performance of a child is the value that their parents place upon educational achievement.
Eric J. Schmidt, Lakewood
Robert Hardaway needs to spend some time in real schools and get out of his virtual, statistical models.
The difference between private and public schools is homogeneity. Private schools are exclusive in every sense. They are not required to educate everyone, regardless of race, creed, disability, preparation, family and community resources, or native language and culture.
What Hardaway means by “safety” and “authority” is segregation. “A safe learning environment” is simply one in which heterogeneity is forbidden, where those with differences, especially difficult ones, must congregate with their own kind at an alternative location.
As a poet and community college teacher-administrator, I often perform and speak in area high schools and middle schools. The differences between, say, Regis High School near Parker and Hinkley High School in north Aurora have everything to do with exclusivity – and who gets the resources as a result, and who does not. If the problem of American public education is simple, it is that simple.
Hardaway’s statement that “A public school student now has a 5 percent chance of being harmed by a deadly weapon” is good propaganda, but inequality of opportunity is a real problem. Hardaway’s advantages are showing. His politics of fear and privilege frighten me.
Wayne A. Gilbert, Aurora
…
Robert Hardaway accurately pointed out the elephant in the room in American public education: the lack of teachers’ authority to discipline students or “to protect innocent students from disruptive ones.” I am a public school teacher and, although I work in a high- achieving school with mostly well-behaved students and a very supportive community, I still see the tremendous drain that discipline-related issues exact throughout the entire school system. Some students come to school with a “see if you can teach me” attitude, apathy about excelling, and have parents who are quick to blame the school when their children fail.
Just a small minority of disruptive students can rob the teacher and their classmates of a tremendous amount of time. If we could somehow protect the students who really appreciate the opportunity of free public education and are willing to work from the ones who just want to goof off, then we’d be making progress. Until we can take a proactive, firm stand on student discipline, we’ll continue to slip in academic standing worldwide and lose students from public education to the charter and private schools.
Deb Cochran, Berthoud
…
Robert Hardaway has chosen to overlook a rather obvious fact. The public school system has a mandate to educate all the children, and can’t just pick and choose who they will admit, like the private school system can. Huge percentages of the public school budgets go to programs to mainstream disabled students, educate non-native-English-speaking children, and address a multitude of other social ills. My wife is a school nurse in the Aurora public school system and spends 95 percent of her time on 5 percent of the students who have special needs. One can debate whether the public schools should serve as the dumping ground for solving most of our social ills, but the reality is that the law requires that they provide these services. As a lawyer, Robert Hardaway is obviously aware of this and one wonders why he conveniently neglected to mention it.
Duane Gall, Denver
TO THE POINT
I have finally found the proper way to use the TV Week in the Sunday paper:
1. The bottom of the birdcage.
2. The bottom of the garbage can.
Virginia Darlinger, Wheat Ridge
As the list of dead and wounded grows longer, all I can do is weep. The Iraq war is a senseless waste of life. My heart aches for the families and friends of those whose lives have been cut short by this travesty.
Michael Kanarish, Parker
After reading about Rachel Carson’s legacy 100 years after her birth, my son asked me what happens after “Silent Spring.” Thanks to global warming, my answer is “hot spring”!
Karen Hancock, Denver
To have your comments printed in To the Point, please send letters of no more than 40 words to the address below. Writers are limited to one letter per month.
To send a letter to the editor
E-mail: openforum@denverpost.com (only straight text, not attachments)
Mail: The Open Forum, The Denver Post, 101 W. Colfax Ave., Suite 600, Denver, 80202; Fax: 303-954-1502
Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 200 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address and day and evening phone numbers. Letters may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.
To reach us by phone: 303-954-1331
Online extras: For more letters to the editor, go to
