Lasting benefits of music programs
Greed is the motivation
Regarding “Mr. Wilson’s second act” (April 23): Jill Tucker’s front-page story on musician and middle school band director Tim Wilson is why newspapers still exist. That was a great piece of human-interest journalism. A small, specific story about an extraordinary man who has the perseverance and will to provide a platform to display the extraordinary in the rest of us.
The efforts of Wilson and the kids in his middle school band to meet their respective challenges speak to universal truths about us all: that every human has the capacity to overcome. When I hear “common core,” reading, writing and arithmetic, in the face of budget cuts to music and art, I never know whether to laugh or cry.
Music is all of that, albeit in a foreign language that everyone understands, and so much more. What we need to contemplate is how to facilitate several million Wilsons. Mandatory chorus, band, visual art, drama and poetry classes from kindergarten on for every student is one way to start. School attendance, computer programming, reading comprehension and the like will follow like fish to a stream.
Dana Scruggs, Santa Cruz
Distinction needed
Regarding “Air pollution agency focuses on warming” (April 20): In the typical heavy-handedness that gives bureaucracy a bad name, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District makes no distinction between open fireplaces and efficient, catalytic wood stoves when proposing no wood burning at all on Spare the Air days, and further eliminating the exemption when wood is one’s only heat source. Further, there’s no distinction made between high- or low-pollution areas.
Good-faith efforts by responsible citizens to upgrade to low-emission, clean-burning wood stoves are scorned as thousands are coerced into investing in gas or electricity despite the existence of clean wood-burning technology. I sense special-interest collusion. I wonder by what process this agency enjoys the totalitarian power of sweeping edict, with no apparent appeal process, in what is supposed to be a democracy.
Thomas Wood, Nicasio
Voucher conditions
Regarding “Shocker: Californians back tax-funded school vouchers” (April 23): I will support vouchers on two conditions.
First, the school taking the voucher whether it’s religious or not is legally required to accept the voucher as 100 percent of tuition. If a parent uses a voucher, the school is legally blocked from accepting any other money from the parent. I will not have my tax dollars paying 25 percent of the tuition at a private school while wealthy parents pay the other 75 percent. If a parent does not use a voucher, the school can charge whatever it wants. If a voucher is used, the school’s max compensation is the voucher amount.
Second, any school taking tax dollars in a voucher must be subject to the same regulations and requirements as public schools.
On this basis, I think the voucher system can work fine and prove that lazy union teachers or lack of funding coupled with the requirement to take all kids is the reason public education lags.
Greg McVerry, Albany
Regarding “Dollar signs dictate doctrine in Trump’s foreign policies” (Insight, April 23): Robert Reich, for whom I have immense respect, wrote of President Trump’s rationales for foreign policy doctrine, suggesting that all Trump doctrine hinged on either what makes money for Trump personally or on stopping bad people from doing bad things.
I would counter that Trump’s foreign policy is entirely dictated by greed and that all actions that seem to punish bad people for doing bad things either justify massive defense spending (first, there was the Mother of All Bombs deployed, and now we’ll be making 1,000 more) or are brazen distractions to occupy the media while Trump works covertly elsewhere to enrich himself and those who aid in his selfenrichment.
I appreciate the acid-wit tone of Reich’s article, but just this once, I fear he gives Trump too much credit for actually wanting to punish bad guys. I wish it were otherwise, but I expect the next military assault anywhere in the world to coincide with the next uncomfortable revelation of Trump’s selfserving actions that ignore constitutional limits to power.
Danny Carnahan, Albany
Real threat to research
Thank you for “Trump gains, science loses” (April 23): You have accurately voiced the concerns of the tens of thousands of people who marched! President Trump and the Republicans are a real threat to independent scientific, ecological and medical research that the U.S. needs to stay a world leader.
Judith Bernstein, San Jose