Comments on: A civil conversation

By: Doug Willix

Doug Willix — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:05:44 +0000

Ken…shouldn’t your first sentence read “…whom I wrote a book about?”

By: Tom Califano

Tom Califano — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:39:17 +0000

Mr. Foskett,
I read the AJC (Thursday, Sept 17) article from guest columnist Ed Hooper regarding the Medal of Honor. It opened with the byline regarding the upcoming presentation of the Medal to the parents of Staff Sgt. Jared Monti. After reading the article I took notice of the artwork that was included with the opinion article. It was an image of a black soldier with the American flag in the background.
What was the thought process used in deciding the picture for the article? Why would you not use a picture of the actual Medal of Honor?
Why would you not use a picture of Staff Sgt. Monti?
Why was a picture of a non descript soldier used instead?
Tom Califano

By: vote4change

vote4change — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 18:22:25 +0000

My favorite latest (safe) headlines, CAU student shot! and exactly why is this a shocker when we have instructors at this school spreading hate, seperation, narrowmindedness, and racism with memos to politicians?

By: Al

Al — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 14:42:06 +0000

Ken, I congratulate you and AJC for increasing coverage on educational issues. Our schools are in real trouble now and there are several reasons for this. As a DeKalb Teacher for over 20 years I have observed many changes in our society that seriously affect education. Our superintendent, Crawford Lewis, observed at our meeting last Thursday that the educational system we have today was put in place over 200 years ago, and has really changed little since. Fixing education today will require much more than the discipline of children. Lack of discipline is a problem and teachers do need more authority to manage behavior problems. However, a more fundamental truth here is that the behavior problems we encounter in school are just a symptom of more serious problems. In fact, harsh discipline very often makes the problem much worse. Key issues include the following: 1)The structure of education is wrong: Classes sizes and length of class periods are often not appropriate for effective learning; and teachers cannot engage students in learning subject matter effectively when content volume is overwhelming. Teachers have NO latitude to respond to student curiosity or time to permit students to develop content proficiency. 2)At enormous cost and damage to the educational process, our tests (which are used to determine school success or failure) are measuring the wrong things. Educating our children should not be a process of forcefeeding them large quantities of facts so that they can regurgitate them on the next exam, and then, with sufficient review, deposit the right answers again for the standard exams now required. When a student graduates from High School, I believe (and I think most folks believe) that he/she should be prepared to enter our society and have the knowledge and skills necessary to become a good citizen. The CRCT’s, Graduation Tests, and other standardized exams don’t address that. What we actually measure with these tests is a students ability to retain a set of facts (or practiced math skills)long enough to put a check mark in the correct box on a piece of paper. Students today who graduate from HS (many with A or B averages)often cannot write coherently and have difficulty understanding and communicating with adults. Many of our best and brightest have an unreasonable fear of failure. Most have very limited ability to take initiative, and need to be told, not just what needs to be done in general terms, but a detailed step-by-step set of instructions to accomplish a task. Most kids today, if pressed, will tell you that they are bored with education and that it is not relevant for them. I think that we have, in part, arrived at this sorry state of affairs in education by being led astray in measuring the wrong variables and overresponding to the results.
Please remember that there is no more critical need in our society that to properly educate our children so that they can continue to make our civilization work. Yet our society does not want to address this issue in any comprehensive way.
I would like to challenge AJC to dig deeper into the issue of education than just to air the frustrations of various stakeholders and rehash the same old tired proposals that offer a “quick fix”. This is not a band-aid problem.
One very disturbing proposal that is gaining bureaucratic support in the Federal Government is the idea of incentive pay for teachers. This concept sounds like a really good way to reward effective teachers. In an ideal world it might work pretty well. However, most public schools are not close to that ideal. The working environment has become very difficult for a classroom teacher to function effectively on his/her own. Sharing of everything, including classrooms, copy machines, lab equipment and storage areas, is usually a necessity. Each teacher and each class of students have their own special requirements and needs. To teach effectively in this environment, teachers depend heavily on each other. Very often, the adminstrator is unaware or dimly aware of these circumstances. Effective teachers are those who learn to cooperate with each other and their colleagues to an unusual degree. A pay incentive program that would fairly reward individual classroom teachers will be extremely difficult to develop. If it is unfair or even perceived as unfair, it will undermine the efforts of those other teachers who did’t receive the pay and destroy their incentive to help each other. Competition between teachers for supplies, use of equipment, or seeking favor with administrators to get the additional pay, is more likely to destroy a public school than to improve it. The only thing I can think of that should receive consideration for incentive pay is academic extra-curricular organizations, competetions, etc. Athletic coaches are given extra pay but, at least in most public schools, academic coaches (for things like Science Olympiad, Academic Bowl, Science Fair, Debate, or language clubs) are not. Yet these teachers get no pay incentive. There would be a great improvement in teacher participation in after school academics with a little incentive pay. Also, AJC could help by providing a greatly expanded media coverage of these academic events. Recognition of student efforts would sharpen competetion and motivate more students to participate.
In any event, I am very glad to see the emphasis that AJC is putting on educational issues and look forward to more serious, constructive debate in your public forum.

By: Batboy

Batboy — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 00:01:51 +0000

Notice too that even on the blog listing that the conservatives need a label. Cynthia Tucker and Jay Bookman must be ashamed of the liberal label.

By: Levi S.

Levi S. — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 03:18:35 +0000

Did I miss something? Is Cynthia leaving as well? If so, I will miss her, though I did not always agree with my Auburn Tigress.

By: Bat boy

Bat boy — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:16:55 +0000

Why do the conservative cartoonists deserve the label “conservative” when you won’t label Luckvoch? At least liberal?
It goes to your mindset that offends many of us as readers. Represesnting a conservative perspective is somehow out of the mainstream. Of course we know that it’s the AJC that’s out of step with its market.
Pissing it’s readers off…one day at a time.

By: Troglodyke

Troglodyke — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:50:41 +0000

//However, the majority of people that actually PAY to read the AJC are over-whelmingly Conservative. //

Really? How do you know this?

By: Pompano

Pompano — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 23:31:20 +0000

I think it’s hilarious when Ken claims “to know Atlantans”. Every Opinion page writer on his staff is a flaming liberal except for Kyle – the only reason they kept Wooten on board for so long is because he’s senile. However, the majority of people that actually PAY to read the AJC are over-whelmingly Conservative. So much for tailoring the content for the people that actually support your organization.

Sorry but you guys don’t have a clue as to who actually pays your bills. The only thing the AJC seems to do well these days is to put a racial slant on every news article.

By: Troglodyke

Troglodyke — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 18:40:02 +0000

As for the paper, I am a 7-day subscriber and loyal reader for my entire life. I am 43 and an Atlanta native, and though the paper does slant liberal, this doesn’t bother me too much, generally. I consider myself a slightly left-leaning Libertarian.

I enjoy the AJC, and sincerely hope it can remain solvent. It does sometimes seem tame as newspapers go, but that’s not always bad. There are very few spelling and grammatical errors in it, which I appreciate, and content on a number of issues I am concerned about.

Even though Cynthia Tucker was a bit too left-leaning for me occasionally, I will miss her. I rarely agreed with Wooten, but I’ll miss him, too. (I thought his homage to Tucker was beautifully written and heartfelt.) The new “conservative” columnist is not a bad writer, and is not as strident as many on the right, so I look forward to agreeing with him some, too. I enjoy Luckovich, but it’s true: he needs to take Obama to task for SOMETHING soon, or I’ll have to grudgingly agree with those on the right who slam him for being too liberal.

In general, keep up the good work. The layout change is growing on me, and I understand the hard times newspapers are facing.