Teachers need to get back into the classrooms
I have great respect for our teachers, but with a few exceptions they need to get back in the classrooms. Those teachers with compromised systems perhaps need to stay out of the classroom but most need to go back, now. The CDC has discovered that young students are little affected by the virus and they do not widely spread the disease as once thought. Perhaps teachers over age 50 need a priority for the new vaccines.
Our children are not doing well with distance learning and their mental health is being damaged. The long term effects of the lack of socialization are likely damaging. Many parents have lost their jobs because they had to stay at home with their children. Child suicides and abuse situations are increasing.
I would like to point out that regular full-time teachers haven’t missed a paycheck unlike those people who still have to work in the private sector or lose their income.
ERNEST WADE, LOGANVILLE
Many believe bogus ballots won Biden the election
Of course, some voters would not want to supply a photo ID with their ballots - it would require a bit of effort. We suspect that’s what happened in the last election - that many unqualified voters submitted ballots that were counted. And the recounting of bogus ballots didn’t prove anything other than there were bogus ballots counted in the first round.
There are widespread opinions that bogus ballots elected Biden and the two senators from Georgia.
We’d like to see an AJC story on the efforts made to collect those bogus ballots and a story on who organized the efforts. Something was rotten in Denmark.
JACK FRANKLIN, CONYERS
What’s old is new again with absentee voting
I don’t understand why our legislators want 70 year old me to pay a poll tax to vote by absentee ballot. I’ve been legally registered to vote for decades and vote via absentee ballot. SB 29 requires me to locate a place to pay to have a copy made of my and my disabled husband’s drivers license to exercise a freedom we’ve enjoyed since being old enough to vote. When my husband was in the Army, he didn’t have to jump through hoops to vote. Why does he now?
Back in my parents day, Georgia charged a $1 poll tax to vote which mostly kept Black people from voting and poor farm families also got excluded. It will cost about a $1 or more to have photo IDs copied. What was old is new again.
To win future elections under the disguise of security, are Republicans now resorting to a modern day poll tax to keep old people, disabled people and poor people from voting?
PEGGY PERKINS, WINDER
Is mental illness gripping the minds of Americans?
Famed American author (“The Road Less Traveled”), psychologist and philosopher M. Scott Peck, wrote a wonderful book titled “People of the Lie - The Hope for Healing Human Evil.” Dr. Peck explored an interesting pattern he found among mentally ill patients whom he considered incurable through known medical and psychological therapies. The behavior pattern common among the patients described in the book was: they were all pathological liars. These patients habitually lied to others, and while in psychotherapy with Dr. Peck, they lied to themselves about important aspects of their lives.
As I have been made aware of some of my own friends and neighbors supporting obvious falsehoods, like the “stolen election” and other conspiracy theories, it occurred to me that Dr. Peck’s connection of pathological lying with mental illness may explain the strange phenomenon of Marjorie Taylor Greene being elected to Congress, despite her espousal of crazy beliefs such as Q Anon and laser beams from outer space. We may be witnessing a case of mental illness gripping the minds of many Americans.
ABRAHAM A. SHARONY, ATLANTA
