American poison
BY CAMILLE PAGLIA
(04/28/99)

Paglia's tart assessment of the deplorable state of public education at the high school level was dead on. No surprise, then, that home-schoolers are blowing conventionally schooled students out of the water with their high test scores and sophisticated socialization skills. I agree that lowering the compulsory age of attendance is a good place to start some type of reform at the secondary level, but I think very few American parents would have the guts to allow their kids to voluntarily leave school at age 14. Why? It would disrupt the parents' bland, comfortable lives and incur more responsibility upon them.

-- Isabel Lyman
Amherst, Mass.

If Camille Paglia believes religion can serve as a tempering influence to our natural ferocity, then she's as ignorant about the realities in parochial schools as the media pundits who wail about computer games while ignoring the violence and hatred children learn in powdered communities like Littleton.

After eight years of St. Richard's and four years of St. Edward's, I can report that jock worship is alive and well in religious schools. After hearing about the realities of Columbine (as opposed to the happy rhetoric of the faculty) I was struck the by the similarities to my experience in Catholic schools. The notion that participation in sports magically bestows character and integrity was virtually a religious dogma unto itself.

Instead of having students mutter bland, insincere prayers before class, perhaps schools can turn away from this false and vulgar value system, which goes so far as to require attendance at bizarre pep rallies where one is expected to cheer for the thugs who make school dangerous for you.

-- Bernard Gundy
San Francisco

In her column on the Columbine massacre, Camille Paglia makes the classic reactionary error of assuming that things must always have been better in some mythical past era. Thus she can ignore the horrific reality of child labor conditions in the last century and advocate allowing children to be pulled out of school at age 14 to be thrust into the labor force. My wife is a high school teacher in a poor district in California where a lot of her students are the children of migrant workers. These parents are only keeping their kids in school because it is legally required, and would be quite happy to put them to work instead, supplementing the family income. Would Camille be where she is today if her parents had yanked her out of school at age 14 to pick beets? Somehow, I doubt it.

Another point: If the Columbine massacre can ultimately be blamed on the Industrial Era's replacement of the extended family with the nuclear family, how come we are not seeing similar incidents in schools in Europe and Japan, where a similar shift occurred? The answer is twofold: easy access to guns (sorry, Camille, but guns are part of the problem) and America's worship of individualism. Don't get me wrong, I believe that our love of individualism is one of the things that has made the United States strong and unique in the world, but it also has a dark side. At its worst it encourages a solipsistic attitude in which the wants and needs of the individual take precedence over those of society as a whole. Thus we have teenagers who are so wrapped up in themselves that their fellow humans become just targets in a video game.

-- Matt Frey

Am I the only one that finds it laughable that lesbian Camille Paglia considers herself to be an authority on male homosexuality? Once again Paglia drags out her rather dated (and somewhat offensive) theory that gay men are the result of some kind of early childhood developmental failure, and implies that there are certain sexual personae that are less valid than others.

Humans and animals are gay, straight, and bisexual for many different reasons, none of which really matter. If we lived in a culture where people weren't constantly trying to figure out why people are gay (and what went wrong in their developmental path), maybe there would be fewer Matthew Shepards and godhatesfags.coms.

-- Bryan Keller
Manhattan

Littleton every day
BY JAKE TAPPER
(04/27/99)

I cried when I read Jake Tapper's article about Washington's ignorance of the life and death of sweet Marcus Owens.

Our elected officials place far too much importance on campaign checks from the NRA and far too little importance on saving our school children. Tapper is right: It's not television or out-of-touch parents or naughty song lyrics that kill children, it's guns, plain and simple. Until we rid ourselves of violent weapons, we will continue to lose children like Marcus and the children in Littleton. How many more have to die before our elected officials realize the Second Amendment has nothing to do with what's happening in our schools?

-- Karin Walser
Washington

One important distinction between the Littleton episode and the tragic death of Marcus Owens that Tapper misses is that in Littleton, the shootings took place in school. There are not a dozen kid shootings a day in school across the United States; the episodes he cites for May 1998 were all threats, not deaths, and that is a meaningful distinction. It is the context of the recent killings that sustains a large part of America's horror.

We expect that a government-run school will provide some level of protection: not from everything, perhaps, but from mass slaughter, at least. There is nothing unreasonable about that expectation and its explosive overthrow has caught everyone off guard.

In the wake of Littleton, it is hard not to support Tapper's call for reducing access to guns, though I think it unrealistic to expect that a country that cannot keep guns and drugs out of the hands of imprisoned felons can keep weapons away from kids. But we all must recognize that there is no "one variable" solution to the problems of an self-centered, violent and increasingly empty culture and the adolescents and adults it helps create. And the government is not the only player in solving those problems.

-- Michael Derman
Lewisburg, Pa.

I don't understand why guns are treated differently then cars. Every weapon should be registered. The registration should require the owner to carry insurance and pass a written test regarding the proper care, maintenance and safety requirements necessary. When ownership is transferred, the law should require that a transfer of ownership form be registered and proof of insurance be provided. If you leave the key to your car in the ignition with the door unlocked and anyone drives the car and injures someone, you are responsible. If you leave a gun, without a lock, accessible to anyone, you should be responsible for any harm that may occur.

-- Susan Matz
New York

Microsoft's flawed Linux vs. NT shootout
BY ANDREW LEONARD
(04/27/99)

I am a Novell shareholder, and Mindcraft pulled this same stunt with Novell Netware a few months back, including attempting to hide the sponsor of the study. They claimed that NT Server outperformed Novell, but after some digging on the part of some very technical Novell stockholders several things emerged.

1) Microsoft paid for the study lock stock and barrel.
2) Mindcraft attempted to conceal this.
3) Mindcraft attempted to portray the study as an objective one.
4) Mindcraft deliberately set the Novell parameters to the most inefficient settings possible for their test.
5) Mindcraft deliberately set the NT Server parameters to the most optimized settings for their test.
6) Mindcraft deliberately constructed tests to achieve the a priori result that they had in mind in the first place -- namely, that NT Server outperforms Novell.
7) When fair and impartial tests were actually constructed, Novell handily outperformed NT Server.

After being repeatedly flamed and castigated about this, Mindcraft finally apologized. Now after the hoopla of the fiasco has died down, they are at it again.

Mindcraft has acted as nothing more than a paid mouthpiece for Microsoft. Their credibility in this should be accurately portrayed for what it is -- zero or even negative (i.e., users should consider the opposite of whatever Mindcraft claims).

-- Noah F. Stern

Mad humanist
BY FRANK HOUSTON
(04/27/99)

Critics be damned. If science fiction is the urinal of the literati, then Kurt Vonnegut is the Marcel Duchamp of science fiction.

-- Stephen Waters
Pflugerville, Texas