Letters to the Publisher

Passing the Baton on the Independence Day Fest
As co-presidents of the Kiwanis Club of Columbia, we wish to express our personal appreciation with that of our club members to County Executive Ken Ulman and the leadership of Recreation and Parks for their initiative and resolve to continue the July 4th Independence Day Festival, which we have reluctantly had to forego.
Our club agonized over the decision to end sponsorship and production of the festival, but realized we had no other choice. Continuance of sponsorship had simply become beyond the scope and ability of our declining active membership. We withheld our decision from the public while seeking help to find a successor organization with the help of the Columbia Association, which has been a staunch supporter throughout the years, and the Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks.
We are delighted that there now is a movement afoot to find a suitable replacement for our past efforts. Our club pledges to make the transition to a successor group as easy and painless as possible. We stand ready to help make the future of the Independence Day Festival bigger and better than it has been during our nearly 20 years of production.
Although our reduced membership dictated that we give up sponsorship of the festival, this Kiwanis Club will continue serving the community, especially children, by recruiting new members to help us support projects of other organizations. We welcome interested individuals to join us at our regular meetings, which are held the first Wednesday of each month at 6:30 p.m. at the Bob Evans restaurant just off Route 100.
-Jesse and Ruby Schneider, co-presidents, Kiwanis Club of Columbia

Knowledge Wasted, Nothing Learned
Bob Wilson was the first African-American to get a Ph.D. in computer engineering from his Midwest engineering school in 1971. After coming east, he first taught at UMBC and eventually set up his own company to exploit a patent on a data compression technique that he developed.
His Howard County-based B-W Data Engineering Co. made millions on federal contracts and commercial applications, and he retired very comfortably when he reached his 50s.
Not wanting to vegetate as a home gardener, he got a job teaching advanced high school electronics and math for the Howard County Public Schools.
The above story is fictitious, although there are similar true stories among residents of this area. The complete fiction is that such that a subject matter expert would be allowed near a high school classroom - not without going back for two or three years to get a teaching degree.
The shortage of engineers and scientists in this country, about which this newspaper wrote on its front page in April, is our own danged fault. Math and science are the foundations of the electronic and biological technology that have so much improved our lives and driven our national economy [over] the past four decades.
But they are not cool, and we do not teach them properly in high school.
We cannot control the "cool," although the exploits of MIT students in the movie "21," inaccurate as the movie is, may help the subjects' "coolness" quotient. We can do a lot about math and science teaching.
For whatever political reasons, Bob Wilson would not be allowed to teach - state law requires undergraduate "Secondary Education" courses, which he never had. If you have them, your lack of a graduate degree in math, science or engineering is no impediment.
In central Maryland, we have many retired and retiring folks from NASA, NIH, DoD and other federal agencies, universities and local tech companies with a wealth of knowledge that is being wasted.
What fire they could bring to high school classrooms with stories of the things they made and discovered. If there were programs to recruit them, give them short courses in teaching if they need them and set them loose. What a boon.
Other states are doing this, so why are we not here in Maryland?
-Phil Marcus, Columbia