Our knowledge base has grown incrementally, and the aging generations each see their grasp of value slipping ever the sooner. My father, and many others, failed to pass along their wisdom, as they felt it was no longer valid in a vastly changing world. The failure to declare the timeless values as preeminently necessary has left us in a moral quagmire, and the social fabric is rent without this esteemed responsibility to pass on the wisdom of the ages. War for two successive generations did much to destroy the relationship between fathers and sons, as well.

My little backwater of Christian-valued neighbors occasionally shows this relationship being nurtured again, and I am quick to remind the fathers that the future of the species depends on that effort of theirs. It is a warming of the heart to see the fathers and sons working together to try to relearn what is important and worthwhile to cultivate in each other. I work in the construction trades and am also, as you have stated, dismayed by the lack of respect that is afforded these career choices that are being made by fewer each year.

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-- Edmond Clay

I think that two of the fundamental problems with schooling in this country are these: First, children are taught that life is not hard, that self-esteem is not earned and that very little of any substance is expected of them. Second, though our grandparents somehow managed to marry at 14 and have families, as you note, we trap our kids in school until they're old enough to waste four more years being brainwashed in college.

School should be geared towards graduation at 15 or 16, with a commensurate degree of difficulty and discipline and a constant refrain that we demand a lot from kids because we know that they are capable of a lot. The school system in this country could be turned around inside of a generation if we simply had the courage to do it.

-- Greg Buls, Chino Valley, Ariz.

Your observations on high school education remind me of the under-appreciated segment of the young adult population that attend small technical colleges. I lecture on "Oedipus" and the drama of fifth-century Athens at our college (Technical College of the Lowcountry). My students are mostly in their 20s. They go to their jobs, raise their families, pay their own tuition and do their homework. There are no well-off, bored, late teenagers in these classes. Most have poor reading skills, a fact that saddens me, but they are highly motivated and come to learn, and do so at no small expense to themselves. From time to time I am stopped on the street by former students who remember the classes with fondness and who thank me for my effort. This is all the reward I need. It is what makes me eager to return each time.

-- Ethard Wendel Van Stee, Beaufort, S.C.

I applaud your defense of the working class. I, too, come from a working-class family, though one with a different background and from a different part of the country: Anglo-Irish house painters and German Protestant farmers from Defiance, Ohio, a small town in the northwest part of the state.

The women in my family remind me of the working-class women you describe in your column. All of them have worked incredibly hard their entire lives -- often engaging in regular physical labor -- and none of them are to be trifled with. My mother, Marlene -- an ex-farm girl who takes guff from nobody -- is certainly a tough act to follow. I love your defense of these tough cookies.

One of the things I continue to find troubling about our press is its ability to overlook those who do not have college educations and who do not live stereotypically middle class, professional lives -- basically, the people who make up two-thirds of this country. My father is a principal at a vocational high school, and I have seen firsthand how much vocational schools benefit kids who are not interested in college but are interested in learning trades. Kids from his school often compete at the state and national level in skills ranging from mechanics to cosmetology.

-- Julia Goodwin

While I totally agree with you that my school (Brown University) is overrun by a bunch of closed-minded, blindly liberal idiots, you got the facts wrong in your most recent column. The newspapers that were stolen were from last Friday. (David Horowitz's ad was published the prior Tuesday.) So they didn't steal the entire run of the edition that contained the ad; they stole another issue (what they call an "action," not a "theft").

-- Amanda Silver

Brown University sounds like it has become the Bob Jones University of the left.

-- Lauren Runnion-Bareford

Re: Brown University back in '92: I was there (both at your lecture and the after-mingling-thang). You were amazing. If those people could have set you on fire, they would have.

-- Carlos Bravo, New York

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