Readers share views on teaching, protecting newborns and bullies
Joys of teaching
I grew up in a working-class family. Before my generation, there were few in the family whose education even went so far as high school. As a sophomore, I, too, dropped out of school. At age 17, I joined the Marine Corps.
As a 21-year-old husband and father, GED certificate in hand, I enrolled at Donnelly College. There, I was profoundly affected by the dedication of the nuns, priests and lay people who taught me.
Fast forward 25 years. I had my master’s from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Soon I was to begin teaching high school.
During those difficult years, when I wearied of the grind of working all day and then spending evenings in a classroom or studying and was tempted to give up, I remembered those dedicated teachers. That was the catalyst that kept me going.
Retired now for more than a decade, I still remember the satisfaction that came from helping young people learn.
Now I am angry and embarrassed by those so-called teachers in Georgia, who by their self-serving cheating have robbed students of the opportunity to grow and succeed. How dare they have the temerity to call themselves teachers.
Jim Banister
Kansas City, Kan.
Reform in Kansas
With the governor’s signing of the “welfare reform” legislation, it’s official. Kansans now live in a kakistocracy (4-17, A1, “Kansas tightens welfare laws; Missouri may be next”).
How about tackling LLC welfare reform now?
Patrick McGarry
Overland Park
Protecting newborns
In 2014, there were 24,909 reports of child abuse and neglect in the Kansas City area. There were at least two cases of infants abandoned and left to die when they could have been left at a Safe Haven location.
That is why the Safe Haven for Newborns Coalition of Greater Kansas City is energized about April being National Child Abuse Prevention Month. Safe Haven is posting signs inside 65 Kansas City Area Transportation Authority buses to spread the message, “No one ever has to abandon a newborn.”
All 50 states have some form of the Safe Haven law, which allows desperate parents to safely leave their newborns in the arms of someone on duty at an officially designated Safe Haven location. Missouri and Kansas Safe Haven laws require that the child must be 45 days old or less and show no signs of abuse.
Safe Haven locations in Missouri are hospitals, fire, police and ambulance stations, maternity homes, and pregnancy resource centers. In Kansas they are hospitals, fire and police stations and city and county health departments.
Mother & Child Health Coalition is proud to share resources and information about this important child-abuse prevention strategy. Please visit www.mchc.net for more information.
Susan McLoughlin
Executive Director
Mother & Child
Health Coalition
Kansas City
Taking down bullies
There are always bullies. Lately, it seems they are everywhere. There are government bullies who protect the strong at the expense of the weak.
There are media bullies who shout down anyone who disagrees.
There are religious bullies who think only they are right and the rest of us are going to you-know-where.
There are organizational and moneyed individuals who use money to gain control of people, and eventually the laws, to suit their own needs.
History is rife with bullies, none of whom ever led to a better nation, a better citizenry or a better world. What has made for a better world are individuals who stand up to bullies.
Those are the people from whom I want to hear. We need to speak up to quiet the bullies. We need to laugh at or ignore them to diminish their perceived power. If we don’t stand up to the bullying, we must live with it. But, with resolve, it can be stopped.
If we say we won’t listen to, vote for or give money to anyone or anything that uses money, lies, deception or intimidation for self-promotion or self-aggrandizement, we can lessen the power of the bully.
Pat Cooper
Lee’s Summit
Exporting to China
I have read of many who are upset with China’s lack of progress in cleaning up its environment. However, if people in the United States own anything made in China they are part of the problem.
U.S. companies have sent many of our manufacturing plants and jobs to China, partly because of that country’s lax or non-existent environmental laws. If companies don’t make their products in the United States, they don’t have to abide by our environmental laws (or safety standards or labor laws, but that’s another story).
The United States has essentially exported our pollution to China.
Bill Taft
Prairie Village
Bishop Finn quits
We used to joke about Catholic guilt — how we feel guilty about everything. Apparently Bishop Robert Finn didn’t feel that.
He kept his head above everyone else’s and held his position until the pope apparently put a stop to it. The actions on the part of pedophiles in the Catholic Church were one of the main reasons for driving me out of the church.
How anyone can take advantage of the most innocent, trusting beings is beyond my comprehension, and the cover-up is unforgivable. There are many other reasons for my decision, but I felt an enormous burden lifted from my shoulders when I finally said, “enough.”
It took getting over guilt and getting the guts to just do it — just like our pope is doing. Hallelujah!
Geri Jaeger
Kansas City
Missouri Republicans
The Missouri legislature has completed about half of this year’s session. Reports show the Republican-controlled body is pleased with its progress.
However, the first word that comes to my mind is delusional.
Republicans’ tired rhetoric and agenda of attacking welfare recipients, invading women’s privacy, repealing the Affordable Care Act, abolishing workers’ protections, vilifying teachers and pushing their moral hierarchy have only hurt Missourians and shown the state in a negative way.
The Republican inactivity on infrastructure has forced the Transportation Department to abandon several projects, putting motorists in danger.
Purposely avoiding Medicaid expansion has cost the state millions in federal funding through the Affordable Care Act.
But most important, they have put thousands of Missourians’ health at risk.
Republicans also continue to give obscene tax subsidies to large corporations as a priority over funding the public school system.
Yet, as a state we continually elect and re-elect Republicans pushing their self-serving agenda by remaining in control of the legislature.
The motto of Missouri is “The welfare of the people shall be the supreme law,” and it’s time to elect people who will abide by that.
Richard G. Green
Ozark, Mo.
Reckless officers
I have a concern stemming from an incident on southbound Interstate 35 on a recent Sunday morning.
I had just gotten up to the 65 mph speed limit south of Liberty when I was startled by an unmarked car with lights and screaming siren appearing on the shoulder of the road beside me traveling at least 70 mph.
I continued onto Interstate 435 south past Interstate 70, and two more vehicles screamed past.
My questions: Are there so few law-enforcement vehicles and personnel in south Kansas City that someone from north of Liberty has to endanger law-abiding citizens in an insane urgency to go somewhere that far away?
And is it law enforcement’s policy to drive well over the speed limit on the shoulder of the road, when only a short time would be required for traffic to clear to let the vehicle pass safely? Because all the vehicles were unmarked, I don’t even know what agency should answer.
But I am still incensed at how near I came to becoming a rolling ball of wreckage because some officer was convinced he had to get past regardless of how unsafely he drove.
Glenn Gordon
Liberty
Nuclear irony
How ironic that Sens. Claire McCaskill and Roy Blunt voted against diplomacy with Iran when they both supported a nuclear weapons plant in Kansas City to the threat of all creation.
Elizabeth Smith
Kansas City
This story was originally published April 21, 2015 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Readers share views on teaching, protecting newborns and bullies."