Students must deal with disappointment
A high school in Texas prohibits National Honor Society scholars from wearing NHS stoles at graduation. Public acknowledgment of academic excellence might make some other students feel bad. A Michigan school has banned honors and military cords from graduation gowns. A Massachusetts school has canceled Honors Night in deference to the potentially hurt feelings of students who aren’t honored. A North Carolina school board has eliminated designating valedictorians to spare the sensibilities of the non-valedictorians. All of this makes sense, at least in the minds of the academics whose grasp of reality is the stuff of fantasy, make-believe and hallucination. There may be teaching going on in these institutions, but there isn’t a lot of learning. Part of maturing and growing into adulthood is learning how to deal with disappointment. It makes us stronger. The hysterics and shrieking that will accompany these students’ first real world failure will be monumental.
DENNIS MCGOWAN, SNELLVILLE
Obama misses the point on “labels”
President Obama continues to miss the point in his strange reluctance to use the term “radical Islamic terrorist.”
His argument that radical Islamic terrorist is just a “label” totally misses the point. What matters is that by not using the term, it shows that he is sympathetic to the enemy who have vowed to destroy us. It is exactly that sympathy, and the underlying reasons for it, that make me question the President’s resolve and actions.
If Churchill was sympathetic to the Germans or Roosevelt to the Japanese, you wouldn’t know it by their words or actions.
DOUG LOCKER, DECATUR
