Letters for Nov. 28, 2015 Religious wars, foreign policy, kill many I don’t know much about Mohammad, but if you look at history, religious wars have killed more people than any other kind of conflict, and it continues today. If
Letters for Nov. 28, 2015
Religious wars, foreign policy, kill many
I don’t know much about Mohammad, but if you look at history, religious wars have killed more people than any other kind of conflict, and it continues today. If you want to talk about terrorism, read the John Pilger article about “Pol Pot” and its relationship to the current Middle East situation.
Our present and past governments have killed millions of innocent people with air strikes and drones that they call collateral damage, making our foreign policy the most terroristic organization in the world. If you listen to most politicians, it will be more of the same in Syria without new leadership. They will then express dismay about why there are terrorists doing what they are doing.
Rich Hoeppner
Lihue
Environment can affect student learning
On Nov. 4, 2015 teachers at Kekaha Elementary School went on strike in response to their principal’s claim that student achievement scores were low due to the teachers’ “ineffective teaching,” and not due to the students demographics.
As a health care professional, I have another outlook on this.
Kekaha Elementary School children are chronically exposed to up to 90 pesticides on a regular basis. A very dangerous pesticide, Chlorpyrifos (originally manufactured by Dow), was found in air samples four separate times at Waimea Canyon Middle School. It is likely that air samples at Kekaha Elementary School would show similar exposures, given that Chlorpyrifos is the most heavily sprayed restricted use insecticide on Kauai. In the last two years there has been 3,096 pounds of Chlorpyrifosm sprayed on Kauai by the chemical seed companies.
In December 2014, the EPA finally acknowledged the extensive body of peer-reviewed science associating Chlorpyrifos exposure with brain damage to children, including reduced IQ, delayed development, ADHD, autism, concentration problems, loss of working memory and other serious effects. Fifteen years ago, Chlorpyrifos was restricted for home use due to serious human injury and death.
These effects from Chlorpyrifos are a parent’s worst nightmare — that their child cannot learn or possess normal brain development. So when we consider explanations for low student achievement, it is short sighted to not take into account what is in a child’s environment (almost daily) that may be harming their brains. We learned this painstaking lesson about secondhand cigarette smoke a very long time ago.
Marghee Maupin
Primary care provider
Kalaheo
