Rethinking education

The recent Herald article “Getting Kids Back in the Classroom” highlights a mystery: why youth left school during the pandemic and haven’t returned in pre-pandemic numbers. One overlooked factor is the escalating youth mental health crisis. Schools, far from being a remedy, often exacerbate this decline.

The pandemic was a blip in a broader trend of worsening mental well-being, driven partly by an education system that prioritizes metrics over students.

Dr. Peter Gray has noted how state and federal testing mandates have intensified, turning classrooms into pressure cookers. Today’s schoolchildren are caught in a global rivalry over test scores, with policies shaped by comparisons to nations like South Korea and Japan. This focus on rankings fuels stress while offering little clear benefit to students’ well-being or learning. Rather than fostering growth, schools have become battlegrounds for national metrics, leaving students disengaged and anxious.

The exodus from classrooms isn’t just a pandemic hangover — it’s a rejection of a system failing our youth. Addressing this means rethinking education, not just coaxing kids back into a broken mold. Mental health, not test scores, should guide the way forward.

— Thomas Lee, Monterey

Where blame lies

You don’t fire the waiter because you don’t like what’s on the menu.

Here at Uncle Sam’s Cafe we’re being served the same old Republican Red Meat and Democratic Mashed Potatoes under ever more complicated, inequitable and expensive sauces. But the problem isn’t the wait staff. It’s in the kitchen and with the maitreT’.

For example: there’s lots of EPA red tape when building a power plant, but firing the guy holding the air quality meter isn’t the answer. Congress needs to create straightforward laws, based on consensus, that protect everyone. Then they must demand that the Executive carry them out. The hardest work is by Congress, then the Executive, so delivery of laws by federal employees can be smooth.

Congressional Cooks must get together and make equitable, lasting decisions. And the maitreT’ needs to stop undermining the process. If a maitre d’ flails, randomly yelling ”you’re fired!” at everyone in sight, the food doesn’t suddenly taste better. Because that’s not where the problem is.

Cooks, maitreT’ and wait staff together can deliver nutritious fare for everyone at Uncle Sam’s Cafe. If that’s not happening someone should get fired, but it’s not the waiters or busboys.

— Helen Shamble, East Garrison

Transgender wellness

I see that Assemblywoman Dawn Addis (District 30, D-Morro Bay) has introduced a bill that would strengthen “the Transgender Wellness and Equity Fund.” Interesting idea, but there is no such thing as a true transgender. Why throw away time and money over a non-existent problem? Sure, like a Frankenstein creature, anyone can rip out or sew things to their bodies, but that’s just superficial. To be a true transgender one must replace all or most of male chromosomes (XY) with female chromosomes (XX) or vice versa, in all 36 to 37 trillion human cells. Of course, such an operation would kill the human. Sure, such an unnatural body could be made in a laboratory, but the procedure would not provide “wellness,” It would instead kill the patient.

It is hard to understand why this anti-science transgender movement has caused such a stir. It is more like a cheap science fiction film made to frighten children and give a shocking thrill to gullible audiences.

— Lawrence Samuels, Carmel

14th Amendment

Recent letters to the Herald concerning the 14th Amendment have had a common but critical misunderstanding of the Amendment. Reading contemporaneous writings of the drafters of the 14th Amendment and the Supreme Court decisions upholding it for over 150 years, it is abundantly clear that the clause “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was inserted solely to make unambiguous that children of people such as diplomats who enjoyed diplomatic immunity were not given the right of citizenship. As to the fallacious assertion that undocumented persons are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, I suspect that the thousands of undocumented people who have been convicted of crimes in our courts would love for this to be true. Being in the United States without documentation is almost always a civil offense, not a criminal one. An undocumented person is not a criminal until they break a criminal law, which the vast majority never do. Lastly, anyone professing a Christian faith should always push back against the term illegal alien. Christ certainly would never have considered any person illegal.

— Gary Kreeger, Del Rey Oaks