Mark Snyder’s eighth-grade government students at Shirland School have been studying the meaning of citizenship. As part of their study, students have learned that citizens have several rights, responsibilities, and duties. One of the responsibilities of citizenship is to be engaged in your community.
As a way to put that responsibility into practice and as a culmination of our study, students selected a topic of interest or concern, researched it, and wrote a letter to the editor on that topic.
“As their teacher, I often find myself disagreeing with the opinions of my students, and the students often disagree with each other as well,” Snyder wrote. “Part of responsible citizenship is learning to appreciate the opinions of others civilly, even when those opinions differ from our own.”
Student letters will appear on these pages in the coming weeks.
Some of my family members have visited or lived in Tennessee before. There are many cities in the U.S. and Tennessee specifically, but a massive issue is the amount of horrible crimes in Memphis.
Many cities in the U.S. are dangerous, but Memphis is the worst.
According to neighborhoodscout.com, Memphis is safer than 0% of U.S. cities. This angers me because not only is it dangerous, but it is hardly seen on the news.
Reolink.com states, “Aggravated assaults dominate the violent category, making up three quarters of all violent cases.”
This shows how dangerous Memphis is because there are many assault cases and makes me upset that people have an increased chance of getting assaulted if they go to a dangerous neighborhood there.
These people that are committing crimes in Memphis are horrible and evil. Anyone who is committing these crimes must be stopped immediately.
If you have been to Tennessee or not but care, please take action and help support those who are trying to stop these sick crimes in Memphis.
People in Memphis can try to contact their mayor or even their governor and get more attention drawn to what is happening in their city. They can try to get more attention so others can try and help.
Henry Kovanda, Rockton
This article originally appeared on Rockford Register Star: Something should be done about the crime rate in Memphis | Letter
Reporting by Henry Kovanda, Special to the Rockford Register Star / Rockford Register Star
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