Help with homework might solve student math woes

One thing glaringly absent from the article regarding efforts to change how students learn math in Baltimore’s public schools (“Baltimore’s math scores consistently trail Maryland’s. Here’s city schools’ 5-year plan for improvement.” June 12) is the missing importance of a parent working with their child doing the homework.

The planners speak of individual teams arranged according to student progress, with such smaller teams providing attention where needed. But there will be no better team than the bond of a parent working with their child on homework.

Instead, the plan described is another rocket science approach — with percentage benchmarks and multiple teacher-pupil segments. They all amount to the latest high-cost dart throwing at the same basic target of teaching basic math that hasn’t changed for centuries. Algebra is the basic math of problem solving, which the planners themselves are having a problem with.

— Charles Herr, New Oxford, Pennsylvania

Biden’s border policies are longstanding and humane

In recent letters to the editor (“President’s border policy is a joke,” June 10; “Biden is the one not serious about border security,” June 9), critics of President Joe Biden falsely claim his interest in the southern border is a recent phenomenon.

The Biden administration has issued 535 proclamations on immigration in his first three years of office. I certainly don’t agree with every proclamation of the Biden administration on the subject of immigration but the campaign promise Biden has kept is to steer clear of the human rights abuses of his predecessor such as child separation and “Remain in Mexico” policies, which were purposefully calculated to inflict horrifying brutality on the most desperate of humanity.

This is why you will never hear of any nativist who can demonstrate one iota of personal harm in the processing of asylum applications, work permits and parole authority by the Biden administration. I would be willing to bet the farm these critics have sustained zero personal inconvenience.

— Paul R. Schlitz Jr., Baltimore

Williams loses credibility with one-sided column

In response to the recent column by Armstrong Williams, I have questions about the one-sided narrative (“Armstrong Williams: Mainstream media gets black eye over Hunter Biden’s laptop,” June 7).

Williams presented several examples of former administration officials and intelligence officials from Jen Psaki to Mike Morell, Leon Panetta, Jim Clapper and others as a link between the Biden administration and the mainstream media. The only mention of the incestuous relationship between the Trump administration and Fox News was to lend credibility to Karl Rove and Rudy Giuliani of all people.

I would remind Williams that he has a journalistic responsibility to call balls and strikes without such selective right-leaning borderline misinformation. He loses credibility when he attempts to gloss over the corrupt sleazy actions of Giuliani.

Do better.

— Wayne Beigel, Hydes

Substance abuse disorder is not mere laziness

The recent commentary by Jeffrey A. Schaler and Richard E. Vatz, (“Hunter Biden is guilty, but he wasn’t addicted,” June 11), is strong on dogmatism, short on empathy, and devoid of any balanced arguments about substance use disorder.

For more than a decade, the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) in the National Institutes of Health has produced a strong case that substance use disorder is a bona fide brain disease and not simply a matter of the drug user’s laziness and neglect by not quitting. These are echoes of “Just say no.”

Rather, NIDA asserts “addiction is a chronic disease characterized by drug seeking and use that is compulsive or difficult to control, despite harmful consequences.” In 2021, the journal Neuropsychopharmacology published that the foundational premise that addiction has a neurological basis is fundamentally sound.

I work as a certified peer recovery specialist at Voices of Hope in Aberdeen and previously worked in Harford County’s four drug courts. My colleagues and I help individuals whose brains have been hijacked by powerful drugs like fentanyl. Schaler and Vatz portray scenes that these drug users should just quit using because, well, it’s as easy as deciding if you want cookies for dessert. It’s not. The drugs have hijacked the user’s brain. Cravings and the fear of withdrawal overpower normal thinking.

From my drug court days, I remember a women in her mid-30s, in shackles and prison garb, telling the judge, “Your Honor, I love my children and I love and miss my husband and family. But if someone laid out some lines of heroin and asked me to choose, I’d have to choose the drug.”

Her confession stands in stark contrast to the simple solutions offered by Schaler and Vatz to address a complex problem.

— Don Mathis, Havre de Grace