Teachers today are overpaid crybabies

If you've ever wondered why old geezers like me look in unsympathetic disapproval at the cockeyed California school system, listen up and learn.

When I was a kid, every student in my class could read a newspaper (sports and funny pages) by the end of third grade, despite the presence of large classes (40 kids); old books; majority immigrant populations; the Great Depression; yearly epidemics of mumps, measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, whooping cough, diphtheria and infantile paralysis; classroom celebrations of Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving, plus a few popular saints; no air conditioning; lead paint on the walls; second-hand smoke, soot and smog fouling the air, and bootleggers fighting the streets with Tommy guns.

We walked to school. Schools had rifle competitions. Every boy carried a Boy Scout knife and learned how to throw that knife so that it would stick.

Now do you understand why those of us with a longtime perspective on life consider today's teachers to be a bunch of overpaid crybabies? William O. Felsman Woodland Hills