Schools can stop competition for grades
Regarding “Title for top of class dropped” (Metro, May 21), it is 50 years since I graduated from a small school in Ohio. The school already had discontinued having a valedictorian. Instead, almost 30 percent of my class were named “honor graduates” who had earned a grade point average of B-plus or better.
I was a high school teacher for more than 30 years in Georgia, and I never did understand why the schools in the South held on to only honoring two students (valedictorian and salutatorian) in the graduating class — no matter how big the class was.
This needs to stop being a competition for grades, and start being for the joy of learning. Brenda Shelby, Atlanta
We shouldn’t have to hold our nose to vote
When did voters agree to tolerate the sordid state of our political process?
I don’t remember when it was this difficult to glean the truth about a candidate (or an issue) to make an informed decision. It is frustrating to wade through the misinformation and lies spewing from the political machine.
Politicians run for office using other people’s money, charge off the debt when they lose, and partake of the largess of lobbyists. If the stakes weren’t so high, it would be amusing to hear politicians moralizing about issues on one hand, while they abuse the truth with the other. How many times have we heard the phrase, “I had to hold my nose to vote for ...”?
If we continue to elect the worst offenders of this mode of political discourse, we will get the government we deserve.
Mark P. Hunter, Atlanta
Cold War relic in a post-Cold War era
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the dismantling of the Warsaw Pact, NATO has become an instrument of mischief. Its recent incursion in Libya and continued meddling in Afghanistan are classic examples of that mischief. With the Warsaw Pact out of the equation, the salient question is, what is the purpose of NATO — a Cold War relic — in a post-Cold War era?
Collen Tomlinson, Atlanta
To fix traffic mess, we have to control growth
If people want to pass the T-SPLOST to promote commercial growth, they should give up any expectation that it will also reduce traffic. Building infrastructure without simultaneously limiting growth is how we got where we are. Any new capacity added via a general tax will immediately be gobbled up by the new enterprises it enables. That’s just good business sense. The problem we have isn’t with capacity — it’s with the overuse of capacity by businesses who pay nothing for the privilege. Short of controlling our growth, we will never get out of our traffic mess.
Bob Wolfson, Marietta
