Opinion

It seems that the suggestion in this space and in a letter or two that some teachers somewhere might be less than optimum touched a nerve. We’ve received and printed a number of very defensive letters from teachers, many of them zeroing in on one sentence in a long editorial which was generally supportive of teachers’ demands for better pay and smaller classes. This is the offending sentence: -more-

A lovely spring weekend sparked an impromptu trip to see wildflowers last Sunday. Pinnacles National Monument is about an hour and a half south of the Santa Cruz grandchildren, so it seemed like the right destination. We spent Saturday night in Santa Cruz in order to leave by 7 a.m. on Sunday, though daylight saving and the five-minute rule (add five minutes to departure time for every person in the party) got us going with our five adults and four children at about 10 instead. While we were waiting for everyone to get organized, we had an unusual opportunity to read the fat Sunday edition of the metro daily, something we usually skip because the ratio of ads to interesting content is unappealing. -more-