it is bad for the lungs, the environment and the climate

letter of the day

Easter fires emit CO2, soot and particulate matter, all the more so when the wood is wet, as is often the case. That is bad for the lungs, the environment and the climate. A few years ago, with stable weather and easterly winds, we had two days of fog due to Easter fires, including German fires.

Eliminate Easter fires. Have every municipality announce where biomass or wood burning installations dry wood in a better way and save gas with more productive heat and/or electricity. Collect waste wood and take it to a nearby biomass or wood burning plant.

In this way we help health, the environment and the climate. Moreover, we are filling Putin’s war chest less: win, win, win and win.

Henri van BalenOnnen

To polish

Education minister Dennis Wiersma has come up with an ‘ambitious master plan’ to reverse the downward trend in reading and math described in the State of Education. No longer ‘celebrating Mother’s Day exuberantly’, but increasing the knowledge and skills of teachers, according to Alida Oppers, the head of the Inspectorate. NOS News†

What contempt this shows for all those hard-working teachers every day. And the same for a beautiful party like Mother’s Day. Isn’t a big part of the problem just the great shortage of teachers? So that entire primary school groups have to stay at home one day a week.

As far as I’m concerned, the master plan is ready: train more teachers. Politics and society, pull out all the stops to make this happen. So don’t talk, just brush.

Inge Vollaardremedial educationalist-generalist, Leiden

Focus

It is good that the Education Inspectorate also concludes in its annual report that there is something fundamentally wrong with education in the Netherlands. And how incomprehensible that the Chief Inspector Oppers says that this is due to a lack of focus on the part of the teachers. They should focus on language and math rather than “Mother’s Day presents.”

Apparently this lady has failed to notice that the teacher shortage in large cities has risen to sometimes 25 percent (too large groups, unauthorized persons for the group). And that the teachers who are there have to serve groups on their own that contain children with an IQ between 70 and 130, and with all kinds of behavioral and social problems. And that the list of ultimate goals, which is determined nationally, is growing every year. For example, the same Education Inspectorate is conducting research into digital literacy at our school this year. Very useful, none of that.

I invite the Chief Inspector to come along for a week at schools in The Hague, before she again talks about the causes of decline on TV.

Myra Keizerdirector Maria Montessori School, The Hague

Referendum

The discussions about the referendum mainly revolve around the question of whether it should be corrective, binding or both and how high the turnout should be. And all this, as Raoul du Pré puts it, to prevent the Netherlands from becoming a diploma democracy in which the lower educated increasingly believe that government is over their heads.

It is forgotten that we now live in a manipulation society full of conspiracy theories, fake news and propaganda wars in which Russian trolls and their minions do everything to undermine Western democracies. Even through the referendum.

An important manipulation success was the referendum on the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement in 2016, initiated by Forum for Democracy and GeenStijl. With just over 30 percent voter turnout, it was valid and with 61 percent dissenting votes, the treaty was rejected. In Russia, the flag could be removed.

As long as nothing is done against the massive anonymous manipulation via social media, the referendum will not improve democracy.

Gerard MensinkVleuten

Health

Ed Nijpels says that, unlike smoking, eating meat has no ‘immediately visible harmful effect’ on one’s own health. It will, but it does affect the health of the animal that is consumed.

Len KoetsierGroningen

Away

I am afraid that Lilianne Ploumen is the only person in the ruling Netherlands who has understood what ‘new administrative culture’ should entail. And that’s gone now too.

Elly van den BoomThe Hague

e-bike

The pinnacle of inefficiency: taking the e-bike to the gym.

Wim BijlNeighborhood near Duurstede