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About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (April 19, 2019)
APRIL 19, 2019, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5 Opinion Let your passion lead you There seem to be two schools of thought on the role of schools in the lives of our children: some think that schools should do most of the raising of our kids; others think that education in school should be cou- pled with life education in the home. Contemporary edu- cation movements have put much currency in public education as a tool to get our children ready for life—training for a trade, for example. For decades, the American Dream entailed becom- ing whatever one wanted to be regardless of their beginnings. The poorest child in the worst ghet- to, via hard work in schools, could become a world-class doctor or an attorney on the ranks of Supreme Court justice. Some students today certainly harbor a desire to attend a four-year university and earn a doctorate in medicine or law. It seems we don’t want to produce doctors and law- yers as much as we want to produce workers for the trades. With that background, voters will be faced with two distinctly differ- ent candidates for Position 6 for the Salem-Keizer School Board elec- tion in May. Incumbent Chuck Lee has served for three terms (12 years); his opponent, Danielle Bethell, is a businesswoman with three children in Keizer’s public schools and expe- rience with Individual Education Plans—a written statement of the education program for a child who is eligible for special education. Lee has a strong resume including leadership of Blanchet High School and president of the public-private Career and Technical Education Center (CTEC). Bethell is passionate about what schools should be and what they should not be. As a mother she wants to be sure all children are get- ting the education they deserve. It is no surprise that Lee thinks that career and technical education is a key to a successful high school education. While Bethell supports CTEC, she believes that it is not the only game in town and it should be a part of high school education, not the be all and end all. Our students are not cut from the same cloth. Students here in the state’s second largest school district come from diverse backgrounds (economically, racially, national- ly, linguistcally, etc.). The time has come to stop trying to ram all of our kids into the same classrooms and curricu- lums. Our schools need to be centers of learning. Bethell is frustrated by the cuffs that bind teach- ers’ hands when it comes to dealing with disrup- tive students. That does nothing for the kids who are ready to learn. Class disruption is but one small part of the education system that needs to be addressed. Lee says that the school board has one employee and one employee only: the district’s superintendent. That means that what happens in the classroom is not in the board’s wheelhouse. What happens in the classroom is the responsibility of Superintendent Christy Perry, her cabinet of nine administrators and those that serve under them. The school board is where the buck stops. Though many want to lay responsibility for what hap- pens in Salem-Keizer classrooms at the feet of the state education department or the legislature, pol- icy is what the school board does. You may not know if you attend a school board meeting—it’s all about the budget, money and grants. Nary a word about curriculum. We would like to see the Sa- lem-Keizer School Board be more involved with the setting of cur- riculum at all levels of education in our schools. Regarding the election for Po- sition 6, if you think that career and vocational education is the fu- ture for our high schools, vote for Chuck Lee. If you believe that teachers need to have more say in how their students behave including conse- quences for class distrupters and a well-balanced curriculum is im- portant, vote for Danielle Bethell. Both candidates are equally pas- sionate about our schools. Let your passion be your guide in choosing. —LAZ The scourge of fentanyl Fentanyl was rarely ever prescribed as a “take-home” medi- cine for chronic pain or painful disorders and never used outside of a hospital. Not only is fentanyl available on nearly every street corner nation- wide, it’s also being widely distrib- uted throughout the country after being imported from China. In order to fi nally get a grip on the growing opiate epidemic, doctors need to stop over-prescribing opiates so as to not create new addicts and effective drug rehab needs to be made available to anyone who needs it. Addiction doesn’t care who you are, how you were raised, or where you’re from; it can affect anyone. Another person becoming an unfortunate statistic is one too many. Jason Good Clearwater, FL editorial letters To the Editor: Fentanyl is the strongest opiate on the streets right now and it’s estimated to be 100 times more potent than mor- phine and 50 times stronger than heroin. Not only is fentanyl sold on the streets “as is,” but it’s also mixed into other drugs by dealers who have no regard for human life; all they care about is taking the addict’s money. Fentanyl has recently been found not only in heroin supplies, but it’s also been found in other illicit drugs like cocaine and marijuana. Unsuspecting addicts consume the drug in the amounts they’re used to, completely oblivious to the fact that they are about to ingest a lethal dose of fentanyl. Fentanyl affects the opiate receptors of the brain and crosses through the blood-brain bar- rier and creates an intense euphoria and addiction in the user much like heroin. Fentanyl was originally only supposed to be indicated for cancer patients and for “end-of-life” pain. Share your opinion Submit a letter to the editor, or a guest column by noon Tuesday. Email to: publisher@keizertimes.com The cathedral and the path to renewal By E.J. DIONNE JR. The burning of Notre Dame Ca- thedral, a monument to human cre- ativity and divine inspiration, invites fi rst a mournful silence and then a search for meaning. This often in- volves efforts to understand the inex- plicable by reference to metaphor. That this ancient place of worship burned during Holy Week invites, perhaps paradox- ically, hope. A time when Christians remember suf- fering and death and then celebrate resurrection speaks to the yearning for deliver- ance and renewal. Because Notre Dame was not com- pletely destroyed by this tragedy—or by centuries of neglect, or by political threats—it can be reborn. And the possibility of revival in- structs us about tradition and its en- durance. We are learning from experts in restoration and repair that a recon- structed building is never the same as it was before. We are also learning that when structures are hundreds of years old, they are not the product of a single time or a single culture. They are the creations of many tastes, many insights and many minds. Traditions are built that way, too. They survive because those who honor them work mightily to pro- tect them—but also because living traditions never fear adapting when change demands it. In a stirring piece of journalism, The Financial Times’ Edwin Heathcote reminds us that great structures come to be hallowed for more than their magnifi cence. We appreciate them as well because they have embedded themselves in the lives of individuals and communities. He notes that ar- chitecture is often “revered as an art object or an artefactm(sic) rather than a working component of everyday life.” And he asks of Notre Dame: “But how much of that fabric is actually medieval? Cathedrals took centuries to build and they are always works in progress, accretions of layers from across the ages. The urgent ques- tions then are: where do you start and what, ex- actly, do you rebuild?” Which invites the other, more disturbing metaphor that has been invoked often in recent days: Notre Dame burned at a time when the Roman Catholic Church, to which it owes its life, is also burning in a dif- ferent way. Perhaps this is too easy a leap to make, but who can question that there is a deep crisis in the church, brought about by the failure of its leadership to protect its most vulnerable mem- bers? Who can miss the debilitating divisions in the church, refl ected most recently by Pope Emeritus Benedict’s letter that was widely interpreted (I think accurately) as a challenge to Pope Francis’ worldview and his han- dling of the crisis? Notre Dame’s near destruction brought home why this crisis has, of late, left me close to silent. As a strug- gling, run-of-the-mill believer who is neither particularly holy nor doctrin- ally pure, I have—like many Catho- lics, I suspect—found it impossible to break with an institution that has been profoundly, at times wickedly, fl awed yet still kindles acts of mercy, other voices Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com Lyndon A. Zaitz, Editor & Publisher SUBSCRIPTIONS One year: $35 in Marion County, $43 outside Marion County, $55 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY Publication No: USPS 679-430 POSTMASTER Send address changes to: Keizertimes Circulation 142 Chemawa Road N. Keizer, OR 97303 Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon (Washington Post Writers Group) The anxiety of living in the U.S. today The lengthy life for this writer is attributable, in part, to birth in the United States. In fact, there have been only two periods during my life when serious wonder arose by “the end” ap- pearing imminent. The two periods were characterized by protracted mi- graine-like headaches, resulting from intense feelings of helplessness due to fear-engulfi ng stress and bone-chilling dread. The fi rst period occurred during my youth and was known as the Cu- ban Missile Crisis. It was when, for 13 agonizing days of uncertainty, the world anxiously awaited on whether the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. (Russia) would enter a nuclear war initiat- ed by the U.S. discovery of short-range Soviet ballistic missiles being deployed in Fidel Castro’s Cuba, a Rus- sian ally. By the end of World War II, the world knew from the 1945 atomic bomb detonations over Hiroshima and Nagasaki that nuclear weapons had hu- man life-ending power. Furthermore, we knew that America had the more powerful hydrogen bomb and aware that the Soviet Union also had the hy- drogen bomb in their arsenal. One of those Americans who knew the facts and contracted a monumentally-big headache thereby was yours truly. The second period is currently un- derway. It has arrived by way of Wash- ington, D.C., where our current presi- dent, Donald J. Trump, ignores rule by law, undermining and emasculating the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights and apparently is seeking autocrat- ic status. Examples abound: Attorney General William Barr appears to work for Donald Trump and not the Amer- ican people. Evidence of his patronage role can be witnessed in his unwilling- ness to fully release the 26-months-in- the-making Mueller Report and his recent announcement charging (with- out evidence) his Department of Jus- tice employees, FBI agents, used FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), electronic surveillance approved by federal judges, to “spy” on the Trump campaign. If Barr’s charge were true, it would mean our FBI operates like government investigators do in China, Russia and North Korea. Not. President Trump re- fuses to reveal his tax re- turns. Meanwhile, tax re- turns have been lawfully requested since the scan- dal-ridden presidency of Warren Harding in the 1920s. The law, which says the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee can request and review any American’s tax return, has always been honored. Now, Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury, Steven Mnuchin, without power by statute to intervene into the U.S. Tax Analy- sis offi ce, is p reve n t i n g Trump’s re- turns from oversight by Con- gress. Looks like public employee Mnuchin also works only for Donald Trump. Just one more exam- ple among so many that gene h. mcintyre Keizertimes moments of transcendence and works of beauty. From my fi rst visit to Notre Dame just before Christmas in 1973 and continuing through many others, I always found the cathedral at once wondrous and welcoming. It was a blend of the sacred and the profane as bustling tourists made their way by pews where the devout and the doubting offered their prayers to a God they hoped was listening. When I was there, I was always aware of French Catholicism’s moral- ly bifurcated history. It was a force for both shameful collaboration with the Nazis and the Vichy regime during World War II, and also heroic resis- tance. So we should not be shocked by this very human institution’s more recent failures. There have been lies told to cover up corruption, but truths preached in the name of love and justice. At times, I think that those who are leaving the church -- the outraged parents, the women and LGBTQ people who feel excluded from its concern -- may simply have more courage than I do. Yet I still want to place my bet with those who insist the church can be delivered, who re- member, as with Notre Dame, that it is a work in progress about which we always have to ask, “What, exactly, do you rebuild?” No matter how skeptical I get, I fi nd myself joyful at Easter Mass, year after year, when we fi rst hear the words, “He is risen, Alleluia!” It will take time and care, but I know Notre Dame will have its Alleluia moment. I pray there will also be one for the church that inspired its creation. cause alarm. The Congress-approved Secretary of Homeland Security (DHS) and most of the division heads under the DHS, including, among oth- ers, the Director of the Secret Service, have been discharged or fi red from their duties and replaced by acting heads who simply work for Donald Trump, not the American people. Sub- sequently, all matters that establish and preserve our security are now decided by one American who has placed the safety and health of 323 million Amer- icans under his single-minded, often arbitrary, whimsical control. Avoiding naivete, I’m aware that no one besides my wife and daughters care whether I contract a migraine or any other malady. Nevertheless, If anyone besides myself values a free country, our human rights, a government design with separation of powers and checks and balances by three separate entities, it is high time every American get ac- quainted with the threat and do what he can do to defend and thereby save the United States. ( Gene H. McIntyre shares his opin- ion regularly in the Keizertimes.)
