You published a letter to the editor (“Proposed minimum starting salary for teachers is high” March 5) in which the writer stated, “It is widely known that education courses were ‘gut A’s’ and as long as you showed up and didn’t die of boredom … you’d get an A.” The letter writer also went on to identify educators as “the highest paid professionals with a bachelor’s degree.” He insulted a profession responsible for our own education, our children’s, and their children’s and perpetuated the long-standing tradition of belittling educators just because.

Why? I have never understood why this is such an accepted practice. Don’t we want our future to be at least as good or better than our past?

Here is a fact – perhaps not widely known – stated by The New Yorker’s David Denby (Feb. 11): “According to Samuel Abrams, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, an American teacher earns, on average, around 70 percent of what her peers from college earn (i.e., fellow professionals who become engineers, accountants, financial consultants, and so on).”

Why would the Press Herald publish this kind of letter other than to promote divisiveness? That writer has it in for educators, college courses, unions and professional associations.

As a point of interest, today’s second-grade writing curriculum includes learning the difference between opinion ( personal beliefs) and fact (proven to be true). The students are learning how to write opinion letters and factual letters, and the importance of not confusing the two. Might come in handy when they start writing their own letters to the editor.

Janice Boyko

Gorham