Self-defense skills
This is regarding “Lawsuit alleges DOE, BOE and principal failed to protect female student” (Tribune-Herald, July 8).
I’m a single dad with two grown daughters.
When my youngest was in the second-grade, they expressed interest in taekwondo martial arts by leaving a library book on my kitchen table.
My oldest daughter went on to second-degree black belt and was a taekwondo instructor before getting married and being a mom. My youngest made it to advanced brown belt.
Both daughters are pretty, and had problems with sex-obsessed bullies.
While in middle and high school, both daughters came to me, in private, and asked permission to take out problem boys who were bullying them.
I granted it. Both left their attackers on the ground.
My youngest daughter was later physically assaulted in college by a meth-crazed boyfriend who tried to kill her. His lawyer tried to convince a jury that the extensive injuries he sustained in the attempt made my daughter the aggressor. Nice try. He spent a year in prison.
Taekwondo saved her life.
There are other martial arts. Quality of instruction matters. As our society collapses, all girls without exception should be instructed to the level of their interest.
That is how you do it, parents. Our “woke” institutions are not going to protect your daughters.
John Powers
Pahoa
‘Deplorable education’
Twenty-one thousand students in Chicago public schools are left behind every year.
Minority students attend schools that have failed to prepare them for life as adults. These students don’t have basic competence in reading, science and math. Success in school is essential for success later in life.
In Baltimore, reading proficiency rates among high school graduates is at 11%. Ditto for math.
These terrible public schools are in almost every inner city community in the nation.
In a July 11 letter to the editor (Tribune-Herald, Your Views), Vince Keelan writes: “It takes real courage to take the time and effort to craft quality lesson plans about racism in the United States.”
I would suggest that classroom time is better spent teaching children to read, learn science and understand math. Leave racial and gender politics out of K-12 schools.
Let’s see what is really going on in classrooms where only a small percentage of students can even read at grade level. Putting cameras in the classrooms of low-performing schools may help shine some light on the deplorable education these minority students are getting.
Dan Knowlton
Pahoa
