Letters to the Editor

Some schools still wait for help

Stephen Schatz, assistant superintendent of public schools, referenced a promise to make a difference in all of our schools for all of our kids ("State regains access to $75M grant," Star-Advertiser, July 30 Opens in a new tab).

Does this mean an end to decades of using disadvantaged schools as a resource for experienced teachers by schools in other areas?

Are they willing to end the concentration of probationary (inexperienced) teachers in disadvantaged areas?

If there isn’t a solution, won’t experienced teachers remaining in these schools be at a disadvantage in trying to meet performance standards with students taught by inexperienced teachers in previous years?

And will this also mean providing parents with information concerning what teachers expect a child to know or be familiar with, concerning the 3Rs, when starting school?

Our kids are entitled to the same quality of education and opportunity to succeed in learning as students in other areas.

They’ve been denied for too long. Fixing is needed.

Bill Punini Prescott
Nanakuli

Never forget nuclear horror

People had dull, burnt skin that was melted and hung down like elephant skin, and were asking for water, help, and wandering around the town full of dead bodies.

Every year, from Hiroshi-ma on Aug. 6 and from Nagasaki on Aug. 9, we hear the voices of the survivors who tell about the misery of the atomic bomb. The story is repeated again and again to tell to the next generation.

I believe that it is the Japanese duty, as the only country that has been a victim of nuclear bombing.

We want to avert our eyes and cover our ears, but we must not. If we alleviate this pain, someone may use a nuclear weapon again.

I want you to tell more about nuclear weapons. I believe that this is the responsibility of mass media.

Yuko Onizawa
Waikiki

Brill overstates evolution theory

Richard Brill’s column on the emergence of humans is amazingly authoritative; he apparently sees no problem in the scientific license he abuses to tell us how we evolved ("Climate change paved way for emergence of humans," Star-Advertiser, Facts of the Matter, Aug. 2 Opens in a new tab).

He says that "we are primates, members of the ape family."

But we are human. While we have similar DNA with apes, it is not identical; hence, the difference.

Brill’s explanation of how we evolved reads as an eyewitness report, but in reality it more easily mimics a Star Wars fantasy.

It’s not problematic that people believe in evolution and not in special creation. The problem is that macro evolution is a theory, and many in the field who subscribe to that theory write about it as though it is fact.

Clark Morgan
Kailua

Kakaako policies pander to rich

While the city and state join forces with Kamehameha Schools to develop Kakaako into a residential "Waikiki West" that caters to some lower-income residents, they pander to those who want to look down from $2 million perches 20 or more floors above the rest.

Angus Deaton and James Galbraith, researchers who received the 2014 Leontief Prize for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought, study poverty, inequality and well-being.

Galbraith has shown that inequality isn’t an outcome driven by factors outside our control, but instead results from the policy choices we make.

Government intends to develop our natural environment so that it yields greater tax revenue.Kamehameha seeks to increase the cash flow that funds private education for an indigenous ethnic minority.

Before the rest of us cannot afford to live here, we might focus on the unintended negative consequences that ensure that many residents may have to leave Hawaii earlier than anticipated to survive elsewhere.

Robert Tellander
Waikiki