In response to Jack Jakucyk’s letter “We’re Coddling Them” (Sept. 7), while I agree our standards have certainly been lowered way too much, the hair on my arms stood up when he had to include a jab to Southerners with his referral to a bumper sticker, “We don’t care how you did things up North,” and the fact that he “studied all those subjects while attending a rural public school up North more than 50 years ago.”

Well, guess what, Jack. I also studied those subjects 50 years ago in a rural Southern public school in North Carolina! So that’s not the issue. How well are the schools up north doing?

Standards have been lowered all across the United States, not just the South. When I hear the abysmal statistics comparing the U.S. with other countries in math and science, the numbers don’t just come from Southern schools.

Why you had to include the insinuation that they do things better in the North than in the South is the very reason why you see those bumper stickers you mentioned.

Sherry Gwaltney

Pinehurst