Letters: Column oversimplifies education differences between states

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Column oversimplifies education differences

Re: “Capitol wrongly worries over education budget, not results” (Page A8, Jan. 18).

On Sunday, Dan Walters opined about how Mississippi is beating California in the reading wars. As always, his answer to the problem is more phonics instruction. My guess is that in 12 years, Walters will be writing about the proliferation of remedial reading classes in high schools and community colleges.

You can teach an adult to read Spanish in six weeks because the language has 27 letters and 29 sounds. English has 26 letters and 51 sounds. Given this, phonics is part of the process but not the whole process. When too much emphasis is placed on phonics, comprehension decreases.

Another issue Walters addresses is that Mississippi gets better results while spending less than California. Of course, he doesn’t mention that elementary teachers in Mississippi make about $43,000 on average, compared to about $75,000 in California. Also, there are only 12,100 English learners in Mississippi schools, compared to approximately 1.1 million in California.

Robert Miller
Los Gatos

Mayors don’t reflect Jews against Gaza war

Re: “Opinion: After antisemitic posts, Bay Area mayor must remedy harm or resign” (Jan. 12).

The three East Bay mayors who wrote condemning Richmond Mayor Eduardo Martinez for “antisemitism” and “stoking fear in the Jewish community” have it exactly backwards. Martinez and the Richmond City Council give hope to Jews who despair as Israel commits mass murder in our name, paid for by our tax dollars.

The authors repeat the talking points of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), a pro-Israel group that falsely claims to speak for all Jews. They cite Richmond’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza and support for Palestine as “rubbing salt in the deep wounds the Jewish community has suffered over the last two years.”

They are wrong. I can promise the mayors that the rapidly growing community of Jews who support Palestine stands with Mayor Martinez. He doesn’t need “antisemitism training,” as JCRC demands. He need not resign. He needs more officials who will take a stand for justice.

David Spero
San Francisco

ICE accountability must start with Noem

Now President Trump wants to turn on Gov. Walz of Minnesota and the mayor of Minneapolis for inciting residents to fight ICE, which is ridiculous. I don’t think the locals needed anyone to tell them that if a mother, namely Renee Good, and another Venezuelan citizen get shot, people won’t be happy.

“]Kristi Noem, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, cites the safety of ICE as being paramount.  However, are our citizens safe? violence, but Trump is showing his authority, and “]Congress should do something instead of sitting on its hands.

Noem should be impeached or fired because what goes on with ICE starts at the top, and their training seems, at best, inadequate.

Celeste McGettigan
San Jose

Trump’s Nobel glory is entirely unearned

Re: “Machado presents her Nobel Prize to Trump during meeting in D.C.” (Page A4, Jan. 16).

Maria Corina Machado has gifted her Nobel Peace Prize to President Donald Trump. In that spirit, I intend to frame my Ph.D. in mathematics and send it to our president. I do so in spite of his promise to lower the cost of prescriptions by “500%,” an arithmetical impossibility that accounts for the laughter you hear coming from every high school student in China. But it’s a small price to pay to have Dr. Trump, mathematician, in the White House.

Can I enlist others to this cause? Maybe Steph Curry and Tom Hanks could dust off an old MVP trophy or Oscar statuette and send them to the president. Then Mr. Trump can be a basketball superstar and Hollywood icon, as well as a mathematician and Nobel laureate. Really, there’s no end to the glory that he might acquire, even if it is entirely undeserved.

William Dunham
Santa Clara

Asking right questions can save kids’ lives

Every day across America, eight children are unintentionally injured or killed due to an unlocked or unsupervised gun. These tragedies increase during the summer, when children spend more time at home or in others’ homes. With June marking the start of summer, now is the time to act to protect our kids.

June 21 is “Asking Saves Kids (ASK) Day,” which urges parents and caregivers to ask a simple but critical question: “Is there an unlocked gun in your home?” By normalizing this conversation, we prioritize children’s safety.

All of us play a role in preventing “family fire.” Research suggests that if safe storage practices were adopted in just 20% more households with children, youth firearm suicides and unintentional deaths could drop by up to 32%.

Here in San Jose, ASKing can be a life-saving first step. Together, we can help build a safer, more responsible community.

Jennifer Liu
San Jose

Women of Iran again stand against tyranny

In Iran, both women and men live under the tyranny of a repressive system. Yet one undeniable difference remains: women, because of the deeply reactionary worldview of those in power, face double repression.

They are deprived of equal civil rights: from restrictions on freely choosing fields of study to inequality in inheritance laws, from the lack of equal rights in divorce and child custody to their systematic exclusion from fundamental life-shaping decisions. Within this structure, women are treated as second-class citizens — not because of any incapacity, but because aware and independent women pose a challenge to the very foundations of such a system.

The Iranian woman is resilient, not because she has never been oppressed, but because she has never surrendered to oppression. And today, at the height of pressure and repression, it is this very Iranian woman who steps forward and takes leadership of the centers of uprising.

Maryam Yazdi
Cupertino