Rebuilding the Coliseum for the L.A. Raiders

After reading the article (Jan. 4) which told about the offer of $60 million and a new stadium to Al Davis and his Raiders (which incidentally seems to me to be an appropriate name), I was all set just to write “Let Al Davis go to Sacramento, Oakland or wherever so that we can keep our Coliseum as is. Why should we have to change a historical site and put the Exposition Park area through all the upheaval it would take to redo the Coliseum so that the big-time, big-moneyed attendees to Coliseum events could have their luxury seats and whatever else that would go with a redone Coliseum while they are being entertained?”

But in The Times on Jan. 7 I read that our nation has an “educational gap” that is contributing to the $50-billion U.S.-Japanese trade gap. Stating that we have an “educational gap” is like playing a broken record. I believe that we have a hard time learning that we cannot build a really strong nation technically, economically and politically when our biggest business seems to be entertainment in its various forms--particularly, the high cost ones such as sports, rock music and movies.

So now I say, maybe we better find a way to get some of those millions of dollars that could be guaranteed to Al Davis to stay here or to go wherever with his Raiders and invest them in our educational system. Our young people need to be enticed to get an education that will enable us to build a strong nation technically, economically and politically just as this latest article points out the Japanese students have done. This will be no simple task, but we should do something before it is really too late.

ELAINE SENSIPER

Los Angeles