The American Spectator

Reader Mail

Everywhere, Angst

8.13.08 @ 12:01AM

(Page 2 of 5)

Why do all teenage movies have to be about Popular Kids going to High End Universities and meanwhile Dumping Their Girlfriends/Boyfriends or committing crimes?
-- Kate Shaw
Toronto, Canada

Wait... there's a documentary about American teenagers out there? Mayhaps I should go and catch up on this, it sounds amusing. Granted, high school is still a pretty recent memory for me, it wasn't all that long ago as I graduated in '97. And honestly, I've never looked back. I could probably relate easily to almost all of the characters as mentioned here, except for the jock. I myself never really got into sports; I was always focused on the hard sciences and quite the geek. I can especially relate to the character of Jake and his difficulty with finding a girlfriend. And I'm not sure if it's Bowman's judgment, or if he's relating the young freshman girl's judgment, but you can rarely do better than the nerds. By the way, any fathers with angst over their young daughter's choices in men, provide gentle encouragement to date the nerds and the geeks. We're the best men they're going to find in high school, we don't have a reputation to keep up. And, in general, we're more considerate, more mature, and more honest. And the most likely to be successful.

Still, Mr. Bowman makes a good point. We've all been through high school, we really don't need a documentary that's trying to make us all feel like there's something to be learned here. Or perhaps the documentary that is suggesting that high school was actually, you know, important in the long-run. I think the best lesson for anyone, anywhere, who's coming out high school is pretty simple. In five years, neither you nor anyone else is actually going to care. Try to keep that in mind.
-- Charles Campbell
Austin, Texas

As I have shared with my students for the last 15 years or so: "You are going through the second most difficult age of your lives." When they inquire, as they always do, "What's the first?" I reply honestly, "Being the parent of someone your age."
-- Ira M. Kessel
Rochester, New York

LEARNING ABOUT LEARNING
Re: Rishawn Biddle's H-1B Education:

Public schools are entirely exempt from the H1B cap, destroying the basic premise of your entire article and exposing it as poorly researched. Raising the cap won't affect the ability of a school district to get H1B's because the cap doesn't apply to them.

There are lots of other errors but since the basic thesis -- that we need to raise the H1B cap to attract teachers from elsewhere -- is fundamentally incorrect a retraction seems more appropriate than a correction.

You may note that you can hire an H1B "journalist" (or whatever the writer of that thing calls himself) who would actually get their facts straight for less money than you're now paying. There's something inherently wrong with that fact, but since the writer seems to support the program he should be happy to give his job to an Indian that will spend the time doing the basic research and also work for less money.
-- Michael

RiShawn Biddle replies:
Actually, your argument that public schools are exempt from the H-1B cap is nowhere near the facts. An exemption is only granted to a public school that is an affiliate of a higher educational institution, either "through shared ownership or control by the same board or federation" according to 8 C.F.R section 214.2(h)(19)(iii)(B) of the American Competitiveness in the Twenty-First Century Act of 2000.

Although the exemption could apply school districts in states where both universities and public schools are overseen by a board of regents, such as in the case of New York (and this could depend on whether the school district and the university have a joint venture of some sort such as an alternative certification program), this would not apply to most other states, including California (whose public schools and universities are overseen by two different governance structures). And more importantly, it depends on the interpretation of the Administrative Appeals Offices of the USCIS, the division of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

As for the rest of your argument? The facts speak for themselves. Case closed.

NICE PETARDS!
Re: Sam Kazman's Crude Construction:

It strikes me as interesting that earlier this year, when Bush "failed" to get the Saudis to increase oil production, the Democrats pontificated on several counts.

First, Bush failed to increase production. Apparently the Democrats accepted, in this case, that increased production would indeed lower prices. Otherwise, why even have Bush ask the Saudis to do this? But the Saudis won't increase oil production.

Second, we learned that there is something fundamentally wrong with any country or entity that would be so cruel as to not increase production in order to relieve the masses of the burden of increased fuel costs, and the cascading effect on all other costs.

Letter to the Editor

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