<b>Being in school</b>
EDITOR: I enjoyed reading the Washington Post editorial "No more empty desks at school" (What others say, Sept. 19). Absenteeism is an issue many parents don't understand. I am a second-grade teacher, and I have had parents ask me to send home the work their child is missing while absent. It isn't that simple. The teaching that goes along with the work happens at school.
There is something occurring in schools that is as problematic as absenteeism. That is students being tardy and leaving early. So many minutes of instruction are lost every day because of this. Students begin working at the first bell and continue working until the last bell — even on Friday afternoon.
I tell parents that the two most important things they can do for their child's education are to read to them at night and have them in school on time, all day, every day.
EDITOR: Scientific evidence proving climate change has grown from a wave into a tsunami, but people go on buying and driving huge SUVs and other gas-guzzlers as if they live in isolation from the rest of the planet.
This and other lemming-like environmental behaviors should be condemned as the shameful, immoral attacks on civilization that they are, but ignorance and hubris are the way of the world, a world whose current climate is slipping into a fearsome future.
Simply looking at one year's or a few years' temperatures, local conditions or other limited factors doesn't tell the story. Understanding only comes from seeing the evidence as a whole. That is what climate scientists have done and why they are hitting the alarm bells. But from the number of SUV drivers it seems still too few are listening. Selfishness and monied interests prevail.