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LETTERS

By D Magazine |

The Search For Parents: A Selfish Reunion?



I take strong issue with your article [“Triangle of Love,” September] about an adoptee finding her biological parents and everybody living happily ever after. I believe that it is the most valiant act of love for parents to give up for adoption a child they know in their hearts they cannot or do not want to raise. Many of these people spend lifetimes putting their lives back together after the heartbreak of unwanted pregnancies. It is a very rare case for one of these reunions to be rewarding on the part of all concerned, and articles like this one only serve as false hope and add fuel to the fire of adoptees looking for biological parents who don’t always want to be found.

While the biological parent giving up the baby is an act of unselfishness, I think the adoptee interrupting the lives of the biological parents, their spouses and children, the biological grandparents-not to mention the adopted parents-is an act of extreme selfishness just to satisfy some curiosity on the part of the adoptee.

Marie Neson

Dallas



DISD: Problems-And Solutions



Ruth Fitzgibbons’s Editor’s Page on Dallas schools [September] was indeed an inspiration of hope rather than just an editor’s note. Finally, someone, somewhere, has something positive to note about Dallas public schools.

As a seventeen-year-old student about to graduate from a Dallas public high school, I can say your article was quite stimulating and well deserved by the DISD. Being a student , I have had to face all of the reform being placed on my education. House Bill 72, I admit, has its evident benefits, yet it has its problems as well,

However, we have a problem that is far worse than educational reform. This is the idea of Dallas schools being segregated. The solution is simple: school board members should take a trip through their nearest public schools and see just how unsegre-gated our schools actually are. I believe there would be a lot of heads turned, minds changed, and a very enormous amount of the taxpayers’ money put to a more worthy cause than lawsuits. When are we going to realize that racism is taught not at school but at the kitchen table? I’m saying we need to be taught a lesson in science, a lesson in math, a lesson in literacy, etc., not just a lesson in social reform.

Brad Matheidas

Sunset High School

Dallas



Glenna Whitley’s article, “Back to the Neighborhood School” [September], contained research data from Stapp Education Resources. As the creator and co-owner of this company, I want to clarify two major points that were omitted.

1) We were asked to use our database to aidin the choosing of the “best” elementaryschools in the area. The writer decided touse achievement test scores as the basis forthis comparison. To do this fairly, StappEducation used third-grade test scores dueto the DISD’s fourth- through sixth-gradebusing scores. Since busing ended last fall inelementaries but the test score data runs ayear behind in its collection, the fourth-through sixth-grade scores in the DISD nolonger reflected the student population ofthose elementary schools.

2) Court-ordered busing ended in theDISD elementaries last fall. The informationprinted in the magazine misled some readersinto believing that it still exists. The majordrop in the achievement test scores in thefourth-grade was not a result of poor teachers; it was merely due to the infusion of a different demographic of students.

Stapp Education Resources deals with many out-of-state relocating families. Although the above information may be obvious to Dallasites, it was a major point of confusion to some of your non-local readers who are considering buying homes in Dallas and using the public school system rather than the private schools.

Becky Stapp

Dallas



Lessons of “The Lottery”



I was upset to see that the Texas Board of Education has forced the deletion of “The Lottery” from all high school curricula [“Why Does Johnny Read Drek?” September]. Of all the literary material I waded through at Arlington High School, none would stay with me (and haunt me) as did that macabre tale. Its ending was gruesome enough to make an indelible mark on my memory, but the message of the story was driven home.

The point I extracted from “The Lottery” was somewhat akin to the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. In the present period of increasingly | vociferous social intolerance, it might do a lot of people some good to realize that while they are safe to throw stones right now, there might come a day when their number is the “winner.” Then they too, like the woman in the story, will belatedly see that they were wrong, that they were hurting other people.

James Cribbs Jr.

New York, New York



Strong Words From Basking Ridge



Re: “Graffiti and Pavarotti: What The Penney’s People Will Miss Most About New York” [“Inside Dallas,” August], I have to tell you that I am rather offended by your one-sided reporting. Where is it written that driving to work on your confusing, congested roads is better than a train or bus? As far as culture goes, at least we have Pavarotti. Who do you have-Willie Nelson!

I happen to have two handicapped children that I have to transplant from good programs to your state, ranked “fifty-first of fifty states,” and I’m quoting a Texas judge in a recent court case concerning services for the handicapped. We are being asked to give up more than your slanted article states. Get your state to improve conditions for the handicapped and then maybe some of us won’t mind the change.

Yes, my name is Anger and I’ve already heard all the jokes about it.

Helen Anger

Basking Ridge, New Jersey



Bodice-Ripping All the Way to the Bank



A colleague of mine at Barry University, where I teach law, speech, and fiction writing, gave me a copy of Skip Hollands-worth’s article, “Romancing A Romance Writer” [September]. He thought I would be interested because I am also a romance writer, one of the 1,000 present at the Dallas convention in June. I thought the article was terribly clever-offering the tongue-in-cheek approval that is the only way other writers seem to be able to treat us and our genre. In an opening paragraph he suggests romance writers are misunderstood, treated as stereotypes. Then he proceeds to misunderstand and stereotype us. He is not alone. No one takes romance writers seriously except our bankers and our publishers, who know romance writing is big business. And of course there are those 20 million readers Hollands-worth alluded to, who find in our books the kind of sensitive, caring man Skip Hollands-worth can only aspire to be.

Joan Johnston

Author of A Loving Defiance, etc.

Miami Shores, Florida

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