EDUCATION MATTERS

College women

Pressures on girls begin in high school

Maureen Downey’s column (“College women are running on empty,” @issue, March 23) was right on target. Sadly, it might have more appropriately been entitled “High school women running on empty,” as more young women at the high school level are increasingly pressured toward idealistic, unachieveable standards.

The pressure is not merely self-driven, but also comes from parents, peers, teachers, athletic coaches, various instructors, the media and increasingly rigorous college admissions requirements. Unfortunately, many outsiders now have a vested (and many times financial) interest in student successes, and health issues are becoming secondary to achievement.

The stress imposed comes at a time when young women are not physically or mentally mature enough to deal with it. I suspect that the many student mental-health issues that colleges face today actually began before students arrived on campus. It’s time for parents, teachers, coaches and school administrators to wake up to this problem and begin to reduce the achievement-related stress placed on young women at the high school level.

DEBRA GUINTER

Calhoun

Let young women live own lives

In regard to the pressures on young women today, we parents ought to quit living vicariously through our children and let them live their own lives without the constant pressure of being made to feel that they’ll never measure up to all that we expect of them.

We ought to let our daughters experience their own failures and successes. This is how we all learn to pick ourselves up when things don’t always go our way. Most importantly, we should tell our young girls what our mothers and dads told us: “Treat others the way you would like to be treated.” When you’re 40, no one will remember how many MVP titles you won in high school or what you scored on your SATs. They will remember, however, how many people you stepped on along the way.

To all you young women out there (and moms listen up), step back and take a breath. Live the best life you can live while taking ownership of and responsibility for your own decisions but most importantly, be happy and smile —- it’s contagious.

LYNDA SCHELL

Marietta

Legislators deserve their own furloughs

In spite of expressions of disgust over the AIG bonuses, some of Georgia’s Republican legislators have proposed another transfer of wealth from the middle class. Seizing upon the economic crisis as an opportunity to step up their attacks upon public education, they have recommended furloughing teachers next year.

However, if House Bill 100 becomes law, as much as $50 million will go right back out of state coffers in the form of tax credits to corporations and wealthy Georgians who support “student scholarship organizations” —- groups providing tuition grants to private schools. Can we say “voucher?”

The irony here is that while a parent of a private school student is benefiting from the state’s largesse, a public school teacher will be at home with no pay. My hope is that while furloughed at home, Georgia’s teachers plan a lesson in democracy for the General Assembly —- to be delivered in the fall semester of 2010.

BRIAN WESTLAKE

Decatur

Why doesn’t he give up his income?

I was amused and saddened to hear about state Rep. Edward Lindsey’s proposal to lay off Georgia teachers six days a year without pay to conserve education funding. Obviously, Lindsey, an attorney, would not consider laying off himself from court, legal hearings, judicial matters, membership in the Georgia House or any of the other money-making activities in which he takes part.

Be the first to raise your hand, Mr. Lindsey, to reduce self-pay and perhaps others might take you seriously. Isn’t that what leadership is about? Perhaps it would be worth your while to explore more creative means to solve our looming financial problems.

As you recall, it was your Me-publican peer leader, Mr. Bush, who, with his misguided staff, drove the economy into the ground through supporting corporate greed and self-centered business practices through deregulation, while ignoring written regulations on Wall Street and in banking and mortgage business in general.

If it is not evident to you as a Republican Party member by this time, after all the insidious and obnoxious greed-water has flowed under the bridge, then I think perhaps a career serving the public is just not for you. Maybe you should consider teaching? Of course, you’d have to learn to live on less.

R.D. STAFFORD

Atlanta

The raw materials influence product

I’ve listened for years as teachers, including my wife and daughter, have talked about their experiences and have come to realize several things. Although the Declaration of Independence may state all men are created equal, students and their situations, aren’t. That fact alone makes merit pay for teachers untenable.

Imagine for a moment, you work on an assembly line and, along with your co-workers, are paid based on output. The parts bins delivered to you contain wrong or damaged parts but your neighbor always gets the correct parts in great condition supplied to him. How fair do you think your pay is?

Georgia’s school year is 180 days. Add weekends, Christmas and spring breaks and it spreads over, perhaps, 273 days. Now multiply that by 16 awake hours per day and you have 4,368 hours. Even elementary schoolteachers, who have the same students all day, only get four to five hours instruction time with them per day. Middle and high school teachers, depending on the school’s schedule, may have one or two hours with the students.

Classroom teachers cannot be held accountable for everything in that student’s life and produce equal results from unequal “raw materials.”

DAVID JACKSON

Duluth

Get school boards out of real estate

Just a little over two years ago, Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle —- running for office at the time —- spoke at a Republican party meeting in Covington. If elected, he said, “I will take the boards of education out of the real estate business.” He has failed to do so.

Here are the cold, hard facts: Local boards waste millions of taxpayers’ dollars buying land to build new schools. The local boards will pick a piece of land to build a school on and then have it appraised and give the property owner the appraised value.

Do you know how the U.S. Postal Service buys land to build a new branch? They decide on a given area, just like the school system does, and then they place an ad in the local newspaper telling just how much land they want and where generally they want it. They do this to get the property owners to bid against each other in the area and it works everytime.

So, Gov. Perdue and Lt. Gov. Cagle, take the school systems out of the real estate business and save us taxpayers millions of dollars each year. You could even hire more teachers for the classroom with those wasted dollars.

HORACE D. GRESHAM

Covington