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LETTERS

Description does not fit chairman

Perhaps some, maybe even most, members of the state Liquor Control Commission are "failed" or "would be" politicians (see October 1996, page 12), but to characterize Chairman Albert McCoy as either is way off the mark.

In fact, the former Aurora mayor completed three very successful terms in office and today remains one of the most respected, accomplished and involved Republicans in all of Kane County. To imply anything to the contrary merely suggests writers Tom Brune and Jennifer Halperin were guilty of doing "homework lite."

Kay Catlin

St. Charles

School reform update

While your September issue was at the printer, the Chicago School Reform Board changed a policy I discussed in that issue (see page 34).

Chicago students no longer will be promoted automatically to high school if they are 15. Beginning this school year, 15-year-olds who do not "pass" the summer Bridge Program following eighth grade are to be tunneled into special preparation centers and then given the chance to enroll in a regular high school the following January.

In addition, last school year it was only low-scoring eighth graders who faced mandatory summer school — I erred in saying sixth graders did as well. This year, the requirement will be extended to third, sixth and ninth graders.

Linda Lenz

Editor and publisher. Catalyst

Chicago

Economics of P.E.

As a retired secondary school teacher, I never had a problem with the Illinois requirement for physical education on a daily basis. Susan House-worth Herrel's article, "Gym teachers on guard" (see September 1996, page 22), revealed P.E. deficiencies due to incompetent board policies and administrative supervision and not the Illinois requirement. On the other hand, I did — and still do — have problems with the single salary schedule that equated the work load of "academic" teachers with "P.E." teachers, who were then able to supplement their base salary with coaching/sponsorship/supervision stipends while "academic" teachers prepared lesson plans and tests, graded papers and conferred with students for their base pay.

It appears the days (daze) of the $100,000 P.E. teachers on the North Shore are numbered more so due to the economics of it all rather than the fact that P.E. is an expendable subject. Regretfully, Herrel does not approach the subject from this avenue.

John" Bill" Handzel Sr.

Skokie

Insider sees damage caused by welfare system

I read with interest Charles Wheeler's editorial on welfare reform (see September 1996, page 42). While it is clear that he has the highest honorable intentions, it is equally clear that he, like so many others in America, does not fully comprehend how damaging our current welfare system is.

I consider myself somewhat a hands-on expert. I have now spent 20 years working in various facets of the welfare system, first with the Department of Children and Family Services and for the last 15 years with the addicted. I have seen the welfare mothers and their children. I have met these children's fathers. Most important, I have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.

We have infantilized our welfare recipients to the point that they treat and anticipate their welfare checks like a laboratory rat anticipates the next food pellet. It is all very dehumanizing and ultimately very ineffective. Physicians take an oath to "first do no harm." It is an oath that every well- meaning politician and media observer should have to take also, for I cannot think of a better definition of the term iatrogenic than welfare in its current form. When you give people money for doing nothing and you give them the implicit or explicit message that you expect nothing of them, you teach them to be helpless. I suggest to you that welfare is the way it is today because we, as a society, have institutionalized this way of life so much that it is we, liberal and conservative alike, who are uncomfortable with taking the dependent off welfare.

Brian Heatherton

Springfield

42 / November 1996 Illinois Issues