Readers write: student homework, life sentence for Boston bomber, fossil fuels divestment,
Letters to the editor for the May 25, 2015, weekly magazine.
Xavier Cattelona works on homework in the room he shares with his brother in Hillsdale, New Jersey, in 2010.
Ann Hermes/The Christian Science Monitor
Students: Do your own homework
Regarding the May 11 story “The homework crunch: Is it too much?”: Why are parents calling homework hotlines? Children should be doing their own homework – on their own. All of this parental involvement is not healthy for student growth. Parents need to support their students, not be overly involved. Support does not mean calling homework hotlines themselves.
Elaine Baker
Morrisville, N.C.
Life sentence for Boston bomber
Regarding the May 4 Monitor’s View “Why Boston bomber Tsarnaev deserves a life sentence”: The answer is simple. Because he’s a human being. No one has the moral right to purposefully take the life of a fellow human. That is equally true for a government representing its citizenry. We, as a race, preserve our humanity by preserving the lives of others, including criminals. Americans execute our own humaneness when we execute a person via state or federal capital punishment cases. Mercy for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev would provide one additional deterrent not mentioned in your editorial: It would help stop the decivilizing effect the death penalty has upon the collective conscience of our entire nation.
Lise Glaser
Tulsa, Okla.
The ‘why’ of fossil fuels divestment
Regarding the May 11 Briefing, “Behind a new push for divestment”: Robert Stavins’s argument is specious that divestment from fossil fuel holdings is not valid on moral grounds. That argument is based on a fallacious conceptual partitioning that denies the fundamental interconnectedness of everything that affects the human condition. Precisely because climate change is a scientific, economic, and political challenge, it is a moral issue. Having divested my accounts from fossil fuels, I enjoy the moral satisfaction of noninvolvement in economic activity that damages Earth, as well as better performance of my investments, and freedom from uncertainty as regulations prohibiting the burning of fossil fuels kick in.
William H. Cutler
Union City, Calif.