MAD AS HELL: THE SEQUEL

I empathize with Belinski but would remind her that we are all teachers, all our lives; the whole world is a classroom.

Just as surely as Belinski is a teacher, so are Nicholson, Cruise, Magic Johnson, Madonna, Elvis, the disgraced Richard Nixon and the corrupt Charles Keating and Michael Milken, among uncounted others, myself included.

Outside the classroom, even in it, many of the lessons learned are unintended. One is that the teaching that goes on in the places we call schools is not very valuable--witness the wages paid to the people we call teachers. Many parents also teach their children the same lesson because they do little or nothing about it.

ROBERT M. GORDON

Los Angeles

A transcription error in Belinski’s letter rendered her math incorrect. The affected passage should have read: “If I can afford to remain a teacher for another 20 years . . .I would make a little more than what Nicholson made for one day!”