Requested E-mails to the NY Times Editorial-Page Editor

[johnkarls]

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---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: Opinion Today: The keys to unlocking human potential
From: john@johnkarls.com
Date: Wed, May 13, 2020 2:15 pm MDT
To: nytdirect@nytimes.com
Cc: letters@nytimes.com
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Harvard Club – Box 126
27 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
May 13, 2020


Mr. James D. Bennet
Editorial Page Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

Dear Sir:

Re: The America We Need and America’s Permanent 30% Under-Caste

There follows immediately below our nearly-instantaneous response to your gracious request of Monday morning for comments on the referenced subject.

My nearly-instantaneous response mentioned that the next Zoom meeting on June 3 of a 175-member public-policy study-action group that I have facilitated for 14.5 years is focusing on “Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” by Jonathan Kozol.

However, as the former volunteer treasurer in the 1990’s of Eugene Lang’s national “I Have A Dream”® Foundation that oversaw 178 projects in 51 American cities, each of which provided tutoring and mentoring for an entire third-grade class of an inner-city elementary school (or an entire third-grade cohort in a public housing project) through high school graduation with a guarantee of college tuition --

and as the sponsor of one of those projects that served 200 children in public-housing projects --

I had not yet as of last Monday formulated my proposal for how to address inner-city education and America’s Permanent 30% Under-Caste that the U.S. Government has continually described for the last half century as illiterate as defined by the ability to read the warning label on a can of rat poison.

*****
My Proposed Solution???

Is set forth in the Suggested Answers to the Fourth Short Quiz posted on www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org earlier today --

Question 21

What is the ancient and long-forgotten concept of “magnet schools”?

Answer 21

Magnet Schools, in Educational Theory, were schools that pushed the percentage of inner-city children to the maximum that would be tolerated by affluent parents, BUT WERE SO OUTSTANDING IN TERMS OF FACULTY, PROGRAMS, FACILITIES, ETC., ETC., that affluent parents would still want their children to attend.

The reason why the concept is largely “long forgotten” is that taxpayers rarely, if ever, approve the necessary level of financing required for such schools.

Question 22

Would it be constitutionally permissible for states and/or school districts to establish so-called “magnet schools” in economically-depressed areas that are so outstanding that they attract students from nearby affluent neighborhoods?

Answer 22

So it would seem. After all, nobody is being forced to attend “magnet schools.”

Question 23

Would parents/families in such a setting have a strong incentive to “adopt” a less-affluent student to tutor/mentor?

Answer 23

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 24

Could admission of an affluent student (and the affluent student’s continued enrollment) be conditioned on the affluent student and her/his family’s tutoring/mentoring of a less-affluent student?

Answer 24

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

Question 25

Could this be a “blue print” for A TYPE OF “charter school” that the federal government could foster on a grand scale?

Answer 25

What do you think??? Let’s discuss!!!

BTW, if the U.S. Supreme Court as the nation’s highest (though unelected) legislative body, decides to interfere, there is a world of difference under the U.S. Constitution between what a state or locality is permitted to do, and what the U.S. Government can do. [Though this would mean some, and hopefully many, federal K-12 schools rather than the federal government funneling money to states and localities for K-12 education.]

*****
The entire Suggested Answers to the Fourth Short Quiz are available at viewtopic.php?f=587&t=1921&sid=f637d48e ... 94f5cfbc85.

Voluminous additional information is contained in --

(1) The Suggested Answers to the First Short Quiz available at viewtopic.php?f=587&t=1909&sid=f637d48e ... 94f5cfbc85;

(2) The Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz available at viewtopic.php?f=587&t=1913&sid=f637d48e ... 94f5cfbc85; and

(3) The Suggested Answers to the Third Short Quiz available at viewtopic.php?f=587&t=1915&sid=f637d48e ... 94f5cfbc85.

*****
Thank you for your consideration.

You can reach us at this e-mail address (john@johnkarls.com) or our group’s e-mail address (ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com).

Sincerely,

John Karls
JD, Harvard Law School, 1967
Who’s Who in American Law, 1988-2003
Who’s Who in America, 1988-2003
Who’s Who in the World, 1994-2003


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Re: Opinion Today: The keys to unlocking human potential
From: john@johnkarls.com
Date: Mon, May 11, 2020 8:40 am MDT
To: nytdirect@nytimes.com
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Harvard Club – Box 126
27 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
May 11, 2020


Mr. James D. Bennet
Editorial Page Editor
The New York Times
620 Eighth Avenue
New York, NY 10018

Dear Sir:

Re: The America We Need and America’s Permanent 30% Under-Caste

Thank you for your e-mail of two hours ago on the referenced topic.

You might recall that when you were in college, the front page of the 6/21/1986 New York Times featured an article about how “a wealthy business executive or entrepreneur” would be “adopting” all of the graduating sixth graders at each of six of NYC’s ghetto schools.

They were emulating what Eugene Lang had done 5 years earlier at Harlem P.S. 121 when he returned to his alma mater and, on sudden inspiration, promised the graduating sixth graders their college tuition if they would stay in school – and then provided each “Dreamer” with a tutor and mentor until H.S. graduation.

I was Gene’s volunteer treasurer of the national “I Have A Dream”® Foundation that oversaw 178 similar programs in the 1990’s and my own IHAD-Stamford (CT) served 200 children in public-housing projects.

Despite SINGLE-DIGIT high school graduation rates for the typical class just ahead, and just behind, each “Dreamer” class, our early IHAD programs duplicated Gene’s results – 60%-65% H.S. graduation - college matriculation rates.

And the later IHAD programs typically exceeded 90%!!!

[As the volunteer national treasurer, I noticed that the early IHAD programs had more than 90% of their male students succeeding but that approximately half of the females were becoming pregnant. And ascertained through further inquiry, that the reason why the half who had NOT become pregnant was that one of our tutors or mentors had become a surrogate parent AND HAD EXPRESSED THE HOPE THAT THE DREAMER WOULD MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF HERSELF WITH THE IHAD PROGRAM AND IT WOULD “BREAK THE HEART” OF THE TUTOR/MENTOR IF SHE DIDN’T.]

I won’t deluge you with TMI at this point, but there is a wealth of information on the website of a 175-member public-policy study-action group that I have facilitated for 14.5 years in the vicinity of my Utah ski house – www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.

Its Sections 3 & 4 entitled “Inner-City Holocaust and America’s Apartheid ‘Justice’ System (In Honor of Jonathan Kozol and In Memory of John Howard Griffin)” contain zillions of legal documents relating to my lawsuits against 15 of the world’s largest financial institutions for the $84 billion they owed me which had been long-since pledged in legally-binding fashion to provide IHAD- or IHAD-style programs for 10 million inner-city children. The “question presented for review” in our final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was –

“Can state court judges order their decisions which they know are diametrically-opposed to well-settled law, not to be published or cited (a strategy labeled ‘the segregated toilet’ in correspondence with 51 inner-city clergy who represent the 10 million inner-city children who have been disclosed from the outset as the ‘real parties at interest’ in this law suit) in order to flush away the rights of the 10 million inner-city children without disturbing the rights of first-class American citizens -- without violating the ‘Equal Protection of the Law’ requirement of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution?”

The Supreme Court refused our Writ of Certiorari.


*****
Our next meeting on June 3 via Zoom focuses on Jonathan Kozol’s “The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America” (Crown Publishing 2005).

And the “book end” Supreme Court opinions in Plessy vs. Feguson and Parents vs. Seattle School District No. 1 which, of course, sandwiched Brown vs. Board of Education.

But with, in mind, the Q whether America’s “Apartheid” K-12 education system – and America’s Permanent 30% Under-Caste that it has produced – can be ameliorated with free college tuition and vocational training.

Additional info about our June 3 meeting is contained in sections 8-10 of www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org. [After the first 7 numbered sections, there is a cluster of unnumbered sections relating to each of our meetings for the last 14.5 years in reverse-chronological order.]


*****
We would be delighted if you could “shine a light” on America’s “Apartheid” (Jonathan Kozol’s term) educational system and its Permanent 30% Under-Caste.

You can reach us at this e-mail address (john@johnkarls.com) or our group’s e-mail address (ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com).

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

John Karls
JD, Harvard Law School, 1967
Who’s Who in American Law, 1988-2003
Who’s Who in America, 1988-2003
Who’s Who in the World, 1994-2003


PS – I see that your older brother is Sen. Michael Bennet who was/is one of our heroes because of his championing of nuclear power which, in our view, is the only way of solving global warming (aka climate change) without having to invade other countries to force them to adopt uneconomic measures – such as invading China to prevent them from bringing on stream every week a monster-size coal-fired electric-generation plant.


---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Opinion Today: The keys to unlocking human potential
From: The New York Times
Date: Mon, May 11, 2020 5:55 am MDT
To: john@johnkarls.com
Reply To: nytdirect@nytimes.com
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The New York Times
Opinion Today
May 11, 2020

By James Bennet
Editorial Page Editor

Because the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare structural weaknesses in American society, Times Opinion (as I hope you’ve noticed) has embarked on a major project to envision The America We Need.

The first chapter, A Nation Tested, presented an overview of how rising inequality in recent decades made American society less fair and more fragile. It recounted how past generations of Americans, faced with crises like the one confronting us today, mustered the imagination and will to make the nation stronger.

Today we’re beginning to roll out the second chapter, in which we’re focusing on the life of American cities. The pandemic is dealing prodigious blows to cities across the country. But the country can’t hope to thrive again if its cities don’t. As our editorial argues, cities have historically “supplied the keys for unlocking human potential.”

Cities not only provided shared, robust public infrastructure like schools, libraries and transit systems, they also stirred together vast numbers of people from different cultures and classes. Though American cities were beset by racism and other injustices, they fostered opportunity, invention, progress.

That was no longer really true even before the pandemic struck and intensified the challenges. As Annalee Newitz writes in her essay, as far back as the Bronze Age, once-powerful cities, and civilizations, have been brought to their knees by profound inequality.

In the editorial we describe how to repair these great engines of opportunity and set them to work powering America forward once again. In coming days, through charts, text and photos, we’ll explore other dimensions of city life — from public schools to urban design — and propose further solutions. We’ll investigate how to end homelessness, and consider whether this might be the moment San Francisco finally fixes itself.

The whole chapter will also appear in print, in the coming issue of the Sunday Review. I’d welcome your thoughts on this work, as always.

[johnkarls]

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The original e-mail to the New York Times of 5/11/2020 was posted on this bulletin board at 8:57 am on May 11.