The Editor,
Re: "B.C. should pull a Reagan on BCTF," the Now, March 13.
I understand the necessity of publishing letters that speak to both sides of an issue, but the letter you published is appalling - appalling in the sense that someone in a position meant to facilitate an appropriate, intelligent and enlightening debate would publish such crap.
If your purpose in publishing such mudslinging was to draw readership to your paper, then it worked for this one person. But, as they say, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me." In other words, I won't be back to read anything published in your newspaper.
I am disheartened by the fact that an editor of a newspaper would publish anything that exemplifies ad hominem attack and other logical fallacies as this letter does. The author of the letter oversimplifies and overgeneralizes his attack on teachers who "do not operate in the real world," who practice their "ineffective teaching methods" and who "show their naiveté to the whole world."
Obviously the ridiculous "solution" to the problem proposed at the end of the letter is equally ludicrous to the first half of the letter. In fact, the state of current public education in the U.S. is widely documented as being in a state of turmoil as Reagan's decimation of public services has widely been proven to have failed.
But, regardless, the point is that the letters you choose to publish are reflective of you as an editor and your newspaper. If mudslinging, over-simplification, overgeneralization and logical fallacies in general are what you and your paper champion, then I scoff at your paper's existence. I would hope that in the future you consider publishing a wide array of opinions that reflect an ounce of intelligence in the matter of content - not just pathos-driven, meanspirited, uninformed attacks on professionals who, for the most part, teach to the best of their abilities for all the right reasons.
And I can back this up with over a decade of experience working with these proud professionals.
Christian Obeck, Surrey