Readers Write: Paul Wellstone’s green bus, charter schools, peatlands

Opinion editor’s note: Strib Voices publishes letters from readers online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

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I’m sure the story “His father’s iconic bus, his dream” (Sept. 27) stirred emotions in many readers. I remember the day of the plane crash like yesterday — I was at a conference downtown when it was announced, and there was stunned silence, then soft crying all over the room. Paul Wellstone was such a unique person and U.S. senator. There were probably areas of policy on which I would not agree with him, but he was a person of great integrity and energy and a true public servant. He worked tirelessly to actually create meaningful bipartisan legislation that mattered, and the work that he did with his Republican counterpart, the late Rep. Jim Ramstad (our congressman and a person of equivalent integrity and service ethic), on mental health coverage, addiction treatment and human trafficking served as a model for what was and could be. That is, if the will to do the work is there, if compromise is seen as a positive rather than “caving” — if politicians could stop talking long enough to listen to each other and learn something and if both sides could stop caring about the screaming extremists on both ends and just work for the people they are supposed to serve.

I can’t imagine the loss for his sons, but I hope they know how much difference their father’s work made for so many. Rest in peace, Sen. Wellstone. Perhaps getting the green bus back on the road will give some healing and comfort to his family, and inspire all of us to emulate those qualities that made him special.

Cindy Smith, Edina

The debate over charter schools vs. traditional schools is moot if we judge their success by graduation rates or scores on standardized tests. If we really want to have successful students, we need to re-evaluate how academic success is measured. Let me get the conversation going.

Why have we made a distinction between elementary school and high school for hundreds of years? Any parent of teenagers can tell you that the brains of elementary kids work differently from the brains of high school kids.

Elementary schools teach concrete ideas because elementary kids think concretely. They teach students the things they need to know: numbers, letters, colors, look both ways before you cross the street, be nice to others, and the like. Fortunately, it is easy to test for knowledge: One either knows stuff or one doesn’t.

High schools introduce kids to independent thinking because by that age they should be able to think abstractly. They reproduce experiments and draw conclusions from the data. They read stories and examine how themes from other times and other cultures apply to us today. They learn what it means to know something to a mathematical certainty. They are still learning new things, of course, but the point is to use the knowledge to reason: to draw conclusions and apply their knowledge to solve problems — in brief, to think.

Unfortunately, it is difficult to test how — or if — someone thinks. Unfortunately, to overcome this difficulty, we ignore it and test for knowledge. It is doubly unfortunate in the 21st century because knowledge is as near as the internet. Society doesn’t need citizens who know the name of the plane that brought an A-bomb to Japan or who Claudette Colvin is. Society needs citizens who can think. Before we try to evaluate the efficacy of competing school systems, let’s examine what we really want high schools to do.

I submit that to be a successful adult today, in addition to basic knowledge, one must have:

(This list is not exhaustive.)

If our students have these abilities, they will have the brightest of futures.

Rolf Bolstad, Minneapolis

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The Minnesota Star Tribune report on charter schools revealed one obvious, fixable problem. Theft or mismanagement of public charter school funds has been a problem from the beginning, and a huge one in some other states that followed our lead. The answer: The state Department of Education should not just oversee charter school finances but actually provide the accounting. If the Legislature will fund this important state education function, the problem of fraud and financial mismanagement would mostly disappear. There are other problems not so easily cleaned up. For example, when a charter school fails, as did LoveWorks this month, those children do not disappear but enter nearby traditional public schools that have to take them in, no matter how disruptive to existing classrooms and studies. Permanently fixing the finances will help but not eliminate this strain charter failures place on the standard public system.

James P. Lenfestey, Minneapolis

I was pleased to see the Sept. 26 letter to the editor about Minnesota’s peatlands (“Worth a lot more than $12 an acre,” Readers Write). The writer mentions that the unique wetlands, which are vital to our planet, formed over millennia through slow accumulation of semi-decomposed organic plant material. One other aspect that must be mentioned is that these are protected wetlands, not just any acres of land. Not only are the leases the Department of Natural Resources contracts not earning very much money for the school entities, the costs of so-called restoration — in the millions of dollars — are not truly returning the peat bogs to what they were. As the writer says, the peat formed over thousands of years, and no amount of expense is going to restore them.

Scientists interviewed by the reporter for his peatlands story (“Peat sales bog state into a bad bargain,” Sept. 15) said that once the area is disrupted, trying to replant it would not replicate what was there and might do more harm. When the mossy cover of the bog is disrupted, it begins to dry out, and with oxygen penetration, it begins to emit carbon. The letter writer had a few ideas for nonextractive exploitation of the peatlands, perhaps selling them to a conservation buyer, if we must monetize them. Certainly allowing mining for less than $12 an acre for peat to be used as pot filler and garden amendment is a questionable proposition. The best use is to keep the peatlands as they are and let them do the valuable work of carbon sequestration. Even as we struggle to reduce our carbon emissions from homes, vehicles and businesses, we can continue to reduce our fossil-fuel emissions by letting the miraculous peatlands do their work in quiet solitude.

Laura Haule, Minneapolis

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The article “Peat sales bog state into a bad bargain” raises all sorts of questions. One that comes to mind is, why is the DNR mining the taxpayers to pay for the costs of reclaiming peatlands mined under the DNR’s leases with private companies? One would think that the companies mining the peat should pay for reclamation. If not, we are subsidizing the mining of peat, and the taxpayers deserve to know why. Another is whether the mining of peat for horticultural purposes, as opposed to burning it for fuel, releases the carbon stored in the peat or simply redistributes that carbon in lawns, gardens, fields and flower pots. Another yet another concerns the laws governing the DNR and why the agency is being thrust into the position of recommending the approval of permits and leases to extract natural resources that will result in significant harm to our water (above and below ground), air and the atmosphere of the planet instead of being a trustee of those natural resources and our planet for current and future generations. Perhaps the reporter can follow up with some additional articles in the future to address these questions and others from other readers. Thank you.

David R. Witte, Plymouth