Nov. 18, 2004
Dear Mr. Moore,
I have admired your musical talent for years, and as a teacher for 20 years in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools before stopping to care for an ailing parent…. You are an extremely talented person. I appreciate you.
In the future, I want to ask you to use your “star” status and influence with poor children’s parents to help them realize just how important their role of parent could be – how critical that of helping children increase vocabulary (Word Power) by providing library books and listening to young children read in the early formative years.
You would be amazed how much better these children would excel in school, how achievement scores would soar, with simply an expanded command of words.
And if parents and/or caretakers would give the same conscientious parenting in regard to homework, perhaps columns about “divided communities,” “inequities” in the schools and “fragmentation” among elected officials would disappear – not be needed at all.
Of course, white officials have different priorities in representing their constituents, and I see the gap widening among our elected officials because the more money (tax dollars) wanted to fund programs that have done no good and continue to do not good, only angers the officials who believe the most pressing problems cannot be solved with more of their constituents’ money, but rather by more responsible parenting. Please consider.
N.S., Charlotte