The Jackson Sun from Jackson, Tennessee • 7

PINION Monday, July 16, 2001 Page 7A Editorial Board Edward E. Graves Publisher and President NORMAN Lockman Peter Watson Editorial Page Assistant Gwenda Anthony Living Editor Craig Davis Editorial Cartoonist Richard A. Schneider Executive Editor Tom Bohs Editorial Page Editor Jacque Hillman Communities Editor Catherine G. Garrett Market Development Director lt IKE TO LOSe? mm no Otoe yuistop? QUlTlMWMGrifi LOOKUP $1LL AND "WE sin. WHY YOU VO A STUPID UEY.YOJVJCRCOW to SONPIlNGr Give us your opinion TO HIURIUES.

0 0: VIM to YOU By Mail Write The Jackson Sun, Editorial Department, Box 1059, Jackson, TN 38302. Include daytime phone number. By Fax The number is (731) 425-9639 By Internet On the Web: jacksonsun.com, e-mail: opinionsjacksonsun.com. Include daytime phone number. To Call Call (731) 425-9655 or (800) 372-3922 Ext.

655 At SOME STOP. 'I the cwmwoosAn mes Youth Challenge is getting results for kids Letters to the Editor of the 106 boys who have graduated, 70 percent between the ages of 10-15 are still out of the juvenile court system six months after graduation. Youth Challenge works for a number of reasons. It works because it intervenes in the boys' lives at an age when they can still be influenced, before they have a chance to make a wrong choice that could land them in bigger trouble with the law. It works because it strikes the right balance between discipline, rehabilitation, training and education.

Rehabilitation should be the main goal of any juvenile program such as this one. Most of all, Youth Challenge works because it teaches its young charges concepts they can use in the real world, things such as honor, leadership, self confidence and self-esteem. Those tools for living are vitally important if young people are going to make good decisions and be responsible and successful in life. Youth Challenge also includes six months of follow-up counseling and monitoring, but there is only so much any program can do for young people. In order for continued success in their young lives, it will take the ongoing contributions of parents, teachers, churches and other community organizations.

Only by staying in touch with troubled young people can we help them reach their full potential and capitalize on the solid start they received in Youth Challenge. Congratulations to Madison County Juvenile Court Judge Christy Little and the staff members of Youth Challenge, Madison County and West Tennessee's military-style training program for troubled youth. After a year of operation, the program is running smoothly, and has already helped more than 100 boys. We hope to see Youth Challenge expanded in the future, so even more boys, and perhaps someday girls, can benefit from the program. Youth Challenge was the brainchild of Little, who made the eight-week camp a central theme in her 1998 election campaign for Madison County Juvenile Court Judge.

Despite naysayers, who said such a program couldn't be created here, Little managed to secure nearly $1 million in federal money and permission from the state to build the camp which opened last July. Youth Challenge is intended to help boys ages 10-16 who are charged with misdemeanor offenses like truancy or shoplifting, or abuse of drugs and alcohol. Participants spend eight weeks living in military-style barracks. In addition to being subjected to military-type discipline, they are given a daily responsibility work schedule. They are also given the opportunity to receive counseling.

So far, Youth Challenge has been a resounding success. According to statistics provided by the program, have lowered ratios with a minimum increase (to costs) or none at all. I would argue that this is the argument that doesn't work. The Jackson Sun can argue that the lower ratios will enable the day care centers to provide better care, and therefore that outweighs the higher costs. However, please do not insult the reader's intelligence by stating that costs will not increase when common sense tells everyone otherwise.

Glenn Stewart Jackson SBC should face reality and update its thinking Well, the annual Southern BigotBaptist Convention has come and gone with the usual rhetoric and so did the continued shrinking of congregations of the SBC. They offered to call off the "boycott" of Disney if it agrees to stop observing equal rights and starts discriminating against gays and lesbians again by reversing domestic partner benefits. They also want Disney to consult an advisory board consisting of religious zealots on all content of entertainment projects. It was noted this year a black minister spoke to the convention for the first time in its history. The first black minister speaking to the convention is something touted as a sign of tolerance.

The leadership of the SBC should pull its head out of the sand and realize that it is 2001. It has been 32 years since the Stonewall Uprising gave birth to the modern gay rights movement. The site of the Stonewall Uprising has been added to the National Register of Historic Places and a recent Harris poll shows that by a ratio of more than 2 to 1 most adults favor a federal law to prohibit job discrimination against gays and lesbians. President Dubya reneged on his no gay policy within three months of his inauguration. The Netherlands legalized same sex marriages and the civil unions law in Vermont has withstood court challenges and other states are looking to enact similar laws.

Michael J. Bostian Springville Lack of funds will hurt our Humane Society The decision by the Madison County Commission not to increase funding for the Rabies Control program will place an ever greater demand on the already overburdened Jackson-Madison County Humane Society, which receives no government funding. Because of this refusal, many residents will look to the Humane Society for help in dealing with stray, and even rabid animals. I cannot express my disappointment in this decision and all the ramifications that will result from this lack of foresight. Betty Y.

Harris Jackson New law will increase child day care costs I am writing in response to the July 10 editorial about the day care teacher-to-child ratios reduction passed by the Tennessee General Assembly. In that editorial, The Jackson Sun said opponents argued that the cost of child care would increase. Then, The Jackson Sun said the argument doesn't work. This is a matter of simple mathematics. Under current law, the child-to-teacher ratio must be 5-1.

If a child care center has 20 infants, they must have four teachers to comply with state law. Under the new law, the new child-to-teacher ratio must be 4-1. To comply with the new law, the day care center has only two options. They can hire one teacher to bring their total to five teachers to care for 20 infants. Or they can turn away four infants to bring the total of infants down to 16.

Option one means that one is paying additional staff and therefore the cost for the day care center has increased per infant. Option two means that one is basically operating at the same costs to care for fewer infants. Once again, the cost per infant increases. The Jackson Sun's argument is that other states Tougher standards can create barriers How teachers are taught is one of those sacred cows that has been left tottering on the roadside for decades. Academically, it is sacrosanct.

Politically, it is radioactive. Professionally, it is self-serving. And underlying all that is an even more ominous problem: the demands of state education agencies requiring extra training for teacher certification from college graduates who have not been education majors. There are valid reasons for some of the requirements. There are teaching skills that do not come naturally.

But in an era when teacher shortages are imminent, some of the demands seem to be counterproductive. In a recent letter to me, Dr. Thomas Clark of Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio, spells it out succinctly: "One of XU's business majors decided he wanted to teach high school math," he wrote. "He had a 4.00 average in a demanding subject, including nine hours of statistics, and was told it would take him 2.5 years of additional school work to be certified. So he took a job with a local company for more than $40,000 per year and gave up his hopes of being a teacher." Another student with a 3.75 average in communication arts also investigated teaching English at the junior-senior high level.

She was told that she would have to take three years of additional classes for certification and that none of the communication classes would be credited toward her English language certification requirements. She took a job with one of Cincinnati's finest banks at more than $30,000, thus removing another outstanding candidate from the available teaching pool. A faculty wife spent three years getting certified with a master's in education and now makes $30,000 teaching at an urban high school. Her husband, an economist, spent the same amount of time finishing his Ph.D. and now makes almost triple his wife's income.

He thinks she would have spent her time more wisely getting a Ph.D. What is particularly frustrating is that the education major is known as one of the least demanding majors, attracting less academically talented students. Bright students often avoid it because they want academic challenge and the prestige of succeeding against other highly motivated students. Until certification becomes reasonable for these types of students such as 36 hours of master-degree classes and a year of supervised practice teaching with pay we will continue to lose the best and brightest to organizations that reward instead of punish their ambitions. "In short, 'tough' certification standards, with no proof that they produce better prepared teachers, are the most significant barriers to entry of well-qualified potential teachers," Clark says.

Even in states such as Delaware, which have alternative routes to certification, there is animus against new teachers who are taking the "short cut." Both teachers unions and state education officials, in spite of their continued calls for quality teachers, find it hard to swallow the concept of lowering requirements for certification to attract brighter teachers. It is, as professional pedagogues might say, a counter-intuitive anomaly. Perhaps it was inadvertent, but in many states, "tough" certification standards have been more successful at maintaining and protecting mediocrity among public school teachers than in weeding out those unfit to teach. Watch out for unreasonable certification detours. They keep teacher colleges happy, but discourage people who have already mastered difficult subjects but aren't interested in dog-paddling through years of teaching theory.

Unreasonable certification rules must not become a roadblock on the road to public school reform. Norman Lockman, a Pulitzer Prize winner, is associate editor of the Wilmington News Journal. Write to him at P.O. Box 15505, Wilmington, DE 19850 or nlockmanwilmingt.garinett.com, Other Opinions The Oak Ridger (Oak Ridge) State still needs tax reform Older doesn't mean I'm mellowing In case you've heard rumors that I am retiring, I am retiring only from the newspaper, the Orlando Sentinel, where I have worked for 30 years. I will continue to write columns for King Features.

The nice thing about retiring is that by the time you're eligible, you're ready. I've been working since I was about 11 years old, and I look forward to not having to get up and go to an office, especially a smoke-free office where most of my colleagues nice folks all, are liberal. I soon will be writing from the old homestead or from the road. My personal office is equipped with Tennessee started its new fiscal year without a budget for the first time in the state's history. The most apt and bipartisan observation to come out of the just-completed session involves the absolute dearth of leadership to emerge in time of budgetary crisis.

Nonetheless, we agree with Gov. Sundquist that, however one may feel about implementation specifically of an income tax, there does exist more broadly a need for substantial tax reform in Tennessee. Without more sweeping reform, those already high state and local taxes will continue to climb unchecked, placing Tennessee at a disadvantage and placing new hardships on elderly homeowners and fixed income residents. The real squander of the past two legislative sessions has been lawmakers' absolute failure to at least start the ball rolling on that constitutional revamp. Had that process been started two years ago, Tennesseans would by now be deciding the issue.

my decrepit, inherited dog, a glass of Rebel Yell, my .45 and a Cuban cigar -about the only thing that lying thug Fidel Castro CHARLIE Reese J- If, Join the dialogue Recently passed city of Jackson and Madison County budgets do not contain increased funding for the Madison County Health Department. One result is that the department's Rabies Control unit will cease collecting stray animals though it will continue to take in animals delivered to it and might be forced to cut other services to the community. Last year, Rabies Control collected and took in about 2,000 animals. Some citizens have said the cutback would be bad for public health and public safety. 1.

Considering that Jackson and Madison County budgets are tight, how should continued stray animal pick-up services of Rabies Control be paid for? our memories and experiences are positive, we will feel good. If they are negative, we might get our dander up. But whether we feel good, bad or nothing is entirely internal and subjective and gives us no reason to make a public issue of our personal feelings. There's nothing about feelings in the Bill of Rights. I can understand that some black folks might not like the Confederate flag.

I have no hard feelings about that. Who knows? If I were black, I might feel the same way. The people I have a problem with are whites who, scared somebody might "cause trouble" or greedy for every penny they can grab, fall down and kiss the foot of any wandering demagogue who says: "I don't like that historical symbol. It offends me. Take it away." You have to be a pretty sorry, worthless human being to cave in to threats or unreasonable demands.

I've always believed that the best reason to do something is because somebody tells you not to do it. Nobody has the right to censor American history. Nobody has the right to commit cultural genocide. Nobody has the right to insult the memory of those who died bravely in a noble cause. Since we're on the favorite topic of so many people, race, I might as well point out that some black people don't like white people and never will.

Some blacks are racist bigots, too. The point is, we should pay no more attention to a black bigot than we do to a white bigot. Bigotry is bigotry. If the Southern people, however, have lost the will to honor their ancestors or have become so ignorant and dumb that the past is meaningless, then, by God, they deserve the fate that is in store for them. I personally will shun such folks, for life is too short to spend it in the company of cowards.

There are many fine folks brave and principled people, people not afraid to defy tyranny, speak truth to power, people who lead instead of following the crowd. I'm thinking of true Southrons, Cuban exiles, Palestinians, Armenians and all the rest of the courageous people who truly care about the kind of world we will leave our children. What am I going to do in retirement? I'm going to enjoy the company of the finest people on Earth. I'm going to avoid the company of cowards and of those who think the most important things on Earth are the National Basketball Association draft picks and who might win an Academy Award. As for the column, I'm going to continue the practice of H.L.

Mencken of "comforting the uncomfortable and discomforting the comfortable." Charlev Reese is a columnist for King Features Svndicate Inc. Write to him at 235 E. 45th New York, NY 10017 or e-mail him at hbriarlearthlink.net. hasn ruined. One of the interesting things I've learned about growing old is that I haven't mellowed.

On the contrary, I've grown more intolerant. I never could think of many reasons to suffer fools lightly or otherwise and now I can't think of a single one. I was thinking just the other day of the Confederate battle flag. People who call that flag a symbol of slavery are just showing their ignorance, and I don't see any reason at all to cater to an ignoramus. The Confederate battle flag never flew over a slave state for a single day.

The soldiers of a great army who were fighting for independence carried it. The flag that did fly over many slave states. North and South, for seven decades was the federal flag, the good old Stars and Stripes. I wonder what these politically correct types and timid folks are going to do when the American Indians tell them that they are offended by the Stars and Stripes, that to them it is a symbol of genocide. That is certainly a truer statement than the false charges against the Stars and Bars.

You would think, at this late date in the history of the human race, that folks would know that when you give in to blackmail, you get more blackmail. You would think that people would know there is no such thing as a "right to be not offended." You would think sensible folk would realize people who say they are offended by an inanimate object are revealing their own neuroses. Being offended (which means insulted) is a subjective feeling. When we look at an inanimate object, our subjective feelings will be the result of experiences and memories associated with the object. If there are none, we will feel nothing, just as I feel nothing when I look at the flags of most foreign nationsi They are, to me, meaningless.

If 2. Should there be increased funding for Rabies Control? Yes No Please include your name, address and a daytime phone number for verification purposes. Name: Address: Phone: Mail: The Jackson Sun, Editorial Department, Box 1059, Jackson, TN 38302 Fax: (731) 425-9639 e-mail: opinionsjacksonsun.com On the Net: www.jacksonsun.com.