The Issue: A Brooklyn high school teaching its juniors lessons on “Goldilocks and the Three Bears.“

New York City’s public schools have sadly devolved into a union of overpaid sycophants and sinecures (“Bear’ly learning,” Nov. 20).

Only when parents demand that the left’s chains of mediocrity and indoctrination — which have strangled meaningful learning for too long — be broken can any real education resume.

But no one should be holding their breath. For the city’s parents desiring a solid and competitive education for their children, there seems but one recourse: Get outta town!

Anthony Parks

Garden City

The use of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” in an 11th-grade class at Edward R. Murrow HS is just the latest example of the kind of educational fraud being perpetrated by too many of our public high schools.

The attempt by someone in the school to state that this is an example of scaffolding toward more difficult work is laugh­able on its face.

Parents should be outraged and Chancellor David Banks needs to put a stop to this disgraceful educational malfeasance immediately.

Our kids need to be educated, not have their intelligence insulted.

Robert DiNardo

Farmingdale

The poor state of America’s educational system is, unfortunately, not surprising.

Big-city school systems are filled with radical Marxists. They are purposefully dumbing- down their lessons so students won’t be prepared for college, and most will either drop out or won’t apply in the first place.

But why would they want that? Many of these poorly educated students will wind up in jobs they don’t like, and a good number of these will eventually quit and seek government assistance.

An added bonus is that the majority of these students will never marry and raise a family, which is also what they want.

China must be smiling to see how we educate our children in the United States. What a disgrace.

E. Cooper

Glenmont

I understand the value of reading “Goldilocks and the Three Bears” — it’s preparing our children for today’s society.

Criminals benefit from catch and release. People who don’t work abuse unemployment, and others blame the virus for high prices No one has accountability. So teach our children the easy way out, too.

Dotty Padula

Brooklyn

The Issue: The issuing of the state’s first recreational-marijuana sales licenses to businesses.

From the moment the state legalized the possession of certain amounts of pot, shops have been opening like wildfire in all neighborhoods of New York (“Yes We Cannabis,” Nov. 22).

Just what are the consequences for these illegal shops selling pot? Are they being issued summons? Are they being closed? Are they losing their storefront business licenses? Nothing at all?

We have had at least four or five stores opened in our community of Whitestone. What is being done?

Kim Cody

Whitestone

As a teen, I remember asking older guys to buy us boys a bottle of beer as they entered a grocery, because we were too young. The same will happen with marijuana now that sale of it is normalized, like an ice cream bar.

For some, it will be addictive and a gateway to other drugs. This marijuana has a potency well beyond your grandfather’s marijuana.

My pet peeve has always been the use of the adjective “recreational” as it relates to marijuana. The adjective is used to diminish that it’s a mind-altering drug. It should be decriminalized, not normalized.

Phil Serpico

Queens

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