Thursday, May 3, 2012
Community | Obits | Editorial & Columnists | Society | Sports | Education | Classified Ads | Calendar of Events | Features | Newsbriefs | Legals | Archives | Subscriptions | New Photo Gallery
|
|
||
|
Thursday, May 3, 2012 |
||
|
Community | Obits | Editorial & Columnists | Society | Sports | Education | Classified Ads | Calendar of Events | Features | Newsbriefs | Legals | Archives | Subscriptions | New Photo Gallery |
|
|
Letters To The Editor Movie theater The sixth grade intellectually gifted class of Holly Springs Intermediate School believes that we should construct a movie theater. This type of recreational activity would keep people entertained and the taxes will help Holly Springs. Instead of sitting home trying to find something entertaining on television, people could arrive at the movie theater and watch the latest movie that hasn’t yet come out on Blu-Ray or DVD. A movie theater would be beneficial to our community and city by giving the people something to do. It would save them gas and money since they live here and don’t have to drive out of the city for their entertainment. Not only will it help the people, but it will open more jobs and help Holly Springs with its expenses. Our group surveyed many different age ranges. We found that 79 percent would rather have a theater than anything else. Twenty-two percent of the people surveyed said they would come to the new theater twice a month. Fifty-six percent said they would come once a week. The class believes that a movie theater would be a great contribution to Holly Springs. If you would like to support this idea, please join us for the Board of Aldermen meeting at 5:30 p.m. on May 15 at City Hall, or phone the mayor’s office at 662-252-4280. Sincerely, Response to letter I was thoroughly impressed with Crystal Stewart’s appeal to parents and other concerned citizens of public school students. Stewart’s suggestion that Charter schools may not be the solution but “they are an option” really struck home with me. I humbly submit that a half dozen in one hand and six in the other may be an option but it produces the same result. Stewart seems highly intelligent and I would encourage her to seek out successful school systems not necessarily funded by the government. I am a “victim” of that same public school system of which Stewart gave a scathing indictment. Many people I meet are disappointed when I tell them that I didn’t actually go to college but rather The University of North Panola High School! My mother had put the fire to learn in me at a very early age. She convinced me that if I were to become truly educated, I could help our people out of the deplorable condition in which nearly 400 years of chattel slavery and the heinous Compromise of 1877 had left us. For the sake of brevity I will get right to my point. I didn’t know I had gotten something from the U of NP until I left Mississippi at 18. When I found out I could compete with students from across the country academically, I was so appreciative of Byhalia native Ida Young-Allen, Holly Springs native and current resident Etoyil F. Long, Roosevelt Hall, Freddie Furdge, Coach Charles McClelland, Coaches Jimmy Pugh and Clifton Davis Jr. The list is endless! I could converse with students from across the country about Beowulf, classical literature, and algebraic formulas with confidence! When I lived in Cleveland, Ohio, I was able to “teach” Mr. Hall’s algebra formula to a 15-year-old who had dropped out of school in the eighth grade and she couldn’t balance her checkbook. When I talk to John A. House, director of theater at Rust College (North Panola Class of ’68, by the way), he uses that kind of “Olde” English that my mother and one of my honorary teachers, Wilma Muhammad, used to use. I just feel like I’ve learned something every time I talk to House. Now to the solution. As a student of the Hon. Elijah Muhammad under the leadership and guidance of the Hon. Louis Farrakhan, I prescribe to the notion that the knowledge of self, as taught by Elijah Muhammad, makes one take on the great virtue of learning. Proper education must be tempered with the knowledge of self. That statement has been attributed to one of Elijah Muhammad’s greatest students, Malcolm X, but it was actually coined by Elijah Muhammad. Min. Malcolm only went to the eighth grade and Muhammad (who only completed the third grade in rural Georgia in the early 1900’s) stood Malcolm up before the world and he is still regarded as one of the greatest minds of our time. Muhammad Ali was just another boxer but when he met Muhammad, he became the peoples’ champ all over the world. And perhaps Elijah Muhammad’s greatest student, the Hon. Louis Farrakhan, is regarded as one of the greatest scholars of Islam on the planet, East or West. Many in the East see him as the Mujaddid, or Returner to Faith. Although Farrakhan is an accomplished violinist and songwriter, he was just an entertainer until he met Elijah Muhammad. This man has written volumes of books on diet and nutrition that, if adhered to, would give us that life abundantly Jesus offered in the New Testament. He taught us the circumference of the earth which is 24,896 miles and the diameter of the sun which is 853,000 miles. Do you think this man put a tape measure around the sun or the earth when the technology to measure either hadn’t been introduced prior to 1930? His teaching on the deportation of the moon has been substantiated recently, when NASA scientists determined that the particles found on the moon were in fact compatible with the earth! He taught us the origin of man that has also been substantiated by famed anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey and the “father of modern genetics,” Dr. Gregor Mendel. In the world of physics a thing is considered dead until it is acted on by an outside force. If, as Stewart has observed, that the state of public education is dead, shouldn’t we be looking to an outside source? The Muhammad University of Islam is a privately funded school system with outstanding results. The nearest one is in Memphis and they recently took a fifth grader who had been failing miserably in the Marshall County system and turned that young man into a spelling bee champion! This is just a representative sampling of what can happen when a child is taught more than the state requirements. I would implore Stewart to seek out these educators and find out what they are able to accomplish with the nickels and pennies of a few. The director of research and development for MUI is, ironically, from right here in Holly Springs! Lastly, in an article written by Ohio University professor of economics, Richard Vedder, titled “Why Did 17 Million Students Go to College?,” he documented all the Americans with high level education degrees that are either not working in their field or not working at all. “Over 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees (over 8,000 of them have doctoral or professional degrees), along with 80,000 bartenders and over 18,000 parking lot attendants. All told, some 17,000,000 Americans with college degrees are doing jobs that the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) says require less skill levels associated with a bachelor’s degree.” At least 5,057 Ph.D.’s are working as janitors. Farrakhan’s message is the antidote to this problem. He urges students to get an education that enables them to go into business and become entrepreneurs that they may be able to employ those who have been deemed un-employable. “Education” is derived from two Spanish words that mean to lead out from. With all of the well intentioned educators that we have, and there are many good ones, do they have the necessary tools to lead us out? I respectfully submit that public schools are not the problem, but an outdated educational system is and one has indeed come to “make all things new.” Sincerely, Dead man’s curve There is a curve in the Holly Springs city limits that has caused many wrecks and deaths since in was built in the last few years. I am speaking about the curve on Hwy. 4 East, just past the Alliance HealthCare System hospital. Many people have criticized the poor engineering job on the road and call it “dead man’s curve.” My residence is across the highway from the hospital and I am saddened every time someone leaves the road and ends up dead or hurt badly there -- because of the lack of signs warning of the dangerous curve. As of today, there is only one sign showing the curve. It is in the curve. A person not familiar with the road is in the curve when they see the sign. Then it is too late for some. My concern is -- how many more lives will it take to get guard rails and decals put around the curve? I have counted 27 wrecks in the curve, including a man that was badly injured a couple of nights ago. There’s no telling how many who have wrecked that I don’t know or wasn’t told about. If this plea is swept under the rug, I am sure there will be many more deaths to occur in the curve. What will it take to get action? How many more families will suffer the loss of a son, daughter, mom or dad because no one bothered or cared enough to correct a wrong? Who knows, the next one might even be mine or yours. It would be devastating to know another person met death or was injured badly in “dead man’s curve” because everyone sat back and did nothing. A concerned citizen |
     
|
Report
News: (662) 252-4261 or southreporter@dixie-net.com
Fax: (662) 252-3388
Questions, comments, corrections: southreporter@dixie-net.com
The South Reporter
P.O. Box 278
Holly Springs, MS 38635
©2004,
The South Reporter, All Rights Reserved.
No part of this site may be reproduced in any way without permission.
The South Reporter is a member of the Mississippi Press Association.
Web
Site managed and maintained by
South Reporter webmasters Linda Jones, Kristian Jones
Web Site Design - The South Reporter