Recent editorials from Mississippi newspapers:
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Jan. 30
The Commercial Dispatch on school weather days:
There was a time in this country when the threat of bad weather meant waking up in the morning and flipping on the TV or radio to discover whether or not schools and businesses were going to be closed.
In those ancient times, someone - a school official or your boss - rose early, looked out the window and made a judgment. He or she would then call the TV or radio station with the verdict and the word would be passed through town.
…
Today, our technology allows for instant communication. …By the time you turn on your TV or radio, you’ve already been informed about the implications of any weather emergency on your normal routine.
Likewise, our technology in predicting and charting weather systems is far superior to that of our primitive forebears.
We are better aware of impending weather conditions and can make real-time judgments based on what we know, right?
Well, then, somebody needs to explain what happened Monday afternoon.
By 3 p.m. - a full 14 hours before snow was predicted to hit - Mississippi State had called off Tuesday classes. Other schools and districts followed. The National Weather Service had predicted possible overnight snowfalls of 1-to-3 inches in the Golden Triangle as TV meteorologists interrupted regular programming to breathlessly report the merciless advance of a “polar vortex” heading in our direction.
Now, 9 out of 10 people in our area don’t know what a “polar vortex” is, but everyone admits that it sounds pretty serious. It’s not the sort of thing to be trifled with, these polar vortexes.
Kids were informed there would be no school on Tuesday long before there was a need for the dog to eat the homework. There was no need for bedtime snow prayers. Everything had been arranged.
It was not until sunrise Tuesday that we realized we were all the victims of a fraud.
Through mass-calling and mass-texting technologies, we’re now able to … inform parents and students of canceled school. Do we really need to make that call 12-plus hours before the weather is supposed to hit? Could someone stick their nose outside before the school buses run and make the call then?
People know a bad call when they see one. When school is closed on account of snow, people tend to notice the absence of it.
Even NFL referees said it was a terrible call.
The old-timers, people now in their doddering 40s, are laughing at us.
We deserve it, too.
There’s nothing more pointless than a snow-less snow day.
Online: http://www.cdispatch.com/
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Jan. 25
The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal on compassion and the opioid epidemic:
It’s no secret that Mississippi is battling an opioid crisis, along with the rest of the nation.
But while most people are likely aware of that fact, it’s easy to gloss over its true scope.
Sure, there are lots of numbers. In 2017, nearly 183,000,000 dosage units of opioids were prescribed in Mississippi, enough to give 61 pills to each person living in the state. National employers spend $2.6 billion on addiction treatment, compared to $400 million spent in 2006. Painting a true picture, however, is more difficult.
“There is no corner of this state not affected by this crisis,” Angela Mallette, outreach coordinator for the Mississippi Department of Mental Health, said in a meeting with the Daily Journal editorial board. “It’s in every corner of the state, in every county. You’d be hard pressed to find someone not affected by it. Addiction touches everyone.”
Mallette works with Stand Up Mississippi, a collaboration of state and federal agencies dedicated to combating the epidemic. The group grew out of Gov. Phil Bryant’s Task Force on Opioid Addiction.
Stand Up Mississippi has championed outreach, funded treatment, facilitated access to overdose antidote Narcan, and hosted 33 town hall meetings across the state. It is now shifting its attention toward the professions most impacted by opioid addiction.
As the group’s efforts continue, we asked Mallette the greatest challenge they face moving forward.
“It’s the stigma of addiction, of acknowledging it and being nonjudgmental,” Mallette said.
She talked of the depiction she remembers hearing in school that presented addicts as bad people who lived substandard lives. The problem, she said, is such stigma leads to fear. It keeps people struggling with addiction from coming forward. It fuels judgment from peers. And it makes employers resist hiring those in recovery out of concerns doing so will hurt their businesses.
The truth is addiction paints with a broad brush, impacting individuals of all backgrounds. Opioids are such a powerful agent, and addiction - in all of its forms - is such a vicious trap. There are so many stories of people from all parts of society leading normal, everyday lives who suddenly find themselves ensnared. Maybe it started with a surgery, followed by a sudden intense reaction to pain pills that triggered a severe downward spiral.
It is important we remain mindful of the fact that addicts are people no different than you and me. It is important to cut through stigma, to greet with compassion and not condemnation, to support rather than judge.
The epidemic’s reach is deep. The path to ending it will involve collective action. That means reaching out to those who need help, embracing those seeking treatment, and standing by them in their recoveries.
Online: http://djournal.com/
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Jan. 26
The Greenwood Commonwealth on required subject-area tests:
Here’s a multiple choice question. Some Mississippi state lawmakers and a bunch of Mississippi high school teachers and administrators want to do away with the required subject-area tests because:
A. The tests are too hard
B. The tests are keeping otherwise good students from graduating.
C. The tests waste time that could be better spent earning college scholarships.
D. None of the above.
The correct answer is D.
Even though opponents of the required tests in algebra, English, biology and U.S. history might cite some of those other reasons, it’s nonsense.
All four subject-area tests have a low bar for a passing score. The state has already watered down graduation requirements - mostly with alternative paths to a diploma for those who can’t pass the four exams - that 84 percent of seniors graduated this past year, the highest ever. If a student can’t pass those four tests, it is illogical to think that the same student could score high enough on a college entrance test to get a merit-based scholarship.
Still, some of this nonsense recently got a forum at the Capitol thanks to state Rep. Tom Miles, D-Forest, who has been pushing to further de-emphasize the subject-area tests.
Miles apparently wants to return to a time when social promotion was rampant in this state, when it was much easier than it is today for weak schools to graduate students who couldn’t read or do math past an elementary-school level. He would like to replace the objectivity of standardized tests with the subjectivity of classroom grades to measure whether a student knows enough to get a diploma. Or if not that, use the ACT college entrance exam instead as the graduation barometer.
“It’s a sad world we live in today that a child can go all the way through school but because they have test anxiety they’re unable to graduate,” Miles said.
That test-anxiety excuse is laughable. The only students who have reason to be overly anxious about the subject-area tests are those who have acquired so little knowledge over 12 years of schooling that they are clueless as to what is being asked. Plus if they’re anxious about subject-area tests, they should be just as anxious about the ACT.
What is truly sad is what one of the educators, presumably called to bolster Miles’ case, had to say. The 10th grade English teacher in the failing Jackson School District claimed that her students on average read at a fourth-grade level. She doesn’t see how she can be expected in one year to get them ready to pass the English test the state requires.
This teacher understandably may be feeling pressure, but the problem is not the test that’s coming up for her students next year. It’s all the tests - if they were even given tests by their teachers - that they must have failed and were still promoted to the next grade year after year.
If the 10th grade English teacher is not able to perform a miracle, should these students be awarded diplomas anyway?
A. Yes.
B. No.
C. Not just diplomas but also college scholarships.
D. Depends on their level of “test anxiety.”
The answer should be obvious.
Online: http://www.gwcommonwealth.com/
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