Letters

Headline distorts writer’s intention

In last Wednesday’s issue of the Daily Bruin I refuted
UCLA professor Christine Littleton’s statement, “It is
women who do the work of the world” (“Women don’t
do the work of the world, men do,” Daily Bruin, Viewpoint,
April 4).

Unfortunately, a misleading headline was placed on my
submission, a headline that implied that my argument was that women
do not work and that only men do. This obviously does not reflect
my views. While I believe that men’s labor and contributions
are often ignored by our society, I explained in my submission that
men and women, both in the United States and the world, work
roughly the same amount, when work both inside and outside the
house is counted.

The implication of the headline is just as absurd as Professor
Littleton’s original statement, and is exactly the kind of
one-sided gender vilification that I oppose.

Glenn Sacks UCLA graduate

Official language isn’t social threat

Mitra Ebadolahi seems to not know what she is talking about in
regard to English linguistic primacy, (“Encroachment of major
languages endangers biodiversity,” Daily Bruin, Viewpoint,
April 9). Her misunderstanding is made clear by the fact that she
claims Proposition 227 forced the state to operate on an
English-only basis. In fact, Proposition 227 only requires that
students be taught English by being taught in English.

Proposition 227 did not make English the official language of
California. English was already the official language of the state
and has been for the past 17 years (see Article III, Section 6 of
the state Constitution). It is important to have a common and
standard language to hold a country together, especially a county
composed of immigrants and the descendants thereof.

Furthermore, her belief that the presence of linguistic
variation is necessary to avoid ecological calamity is laughable at
best. Most people who know a language that is not one of the main
spoken languages of the world also knows one of those main spoken
languages.

After all, how else are we to understand each other if we
don’t understand what one another says?

Daniel B. Rego UCLA graduate, Class of 2000

Education is a right

I have a comment on the semi-literate congeries that was Ben
Shapiro’s attack on SP-1 and 2 protesters in his column,
“SP-1, 2 protesters living in the past,” (Daily Bruin,
Viewpoint, April 3). Apparently, Shapiro is concerned about the
quality of the “critical thinking skills” taught in
U.S. high schools.

In the column he commits an exemplary logical fallacy: the
protesters’ chant that “education is a right” is
false, he says, because education is not mentioned in the Bill of
Rights. But the word “right” is not only used to refer
to legal stipulations; it also has a normative sense. By this, if
you have a right to an X means that you ought to have an X, even if
the laws in your country don’t guarantee you an X.

Consider, as an example, article 26(1) of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to
education.” Surely the authors of that document ““ which
is non-binding ““ had in mind the latter sense of
“right.” So did the protesters.

Since Shapiro is a philosophy student, he should be familiar
with the principle known as “Hume’s guillotine”:
you can’t deduce an “ought” from an
“is.”

And yes, people do have a right to education, including higher
education.

Juhani Yli-Vakkuri Third-year Philosophy