New York City public school teacher Robert Grandt writes cogently in the Letters section of the Sun that conservative solutions to the problems in our schools, such as school choice, vouchers, merit pay, removal of tenure, longer school days, and the like, are not the answer. He points out that the enormously successful public school systems of some other countries do not have these features. Instead they have, he says, more parental involvement with children, greater value for education and learning, higher social status for teachers, more qualified educators, and zero tolerance for violent students. Japanese teachers, for example, are on a par with doctors in terms of professional status. One might also add that we constantly hear of the need for more teachers and better qualified teachers. But if conservative proposals such as a longer school day and school year were to be enacted, they would make what is often an undesirable job even more undesirable, and result in worsening the shortage of qualified teachers. By contrast, simply improving discipline in the schools, without doing anything else, and without additional pay raises, would attract the many intelligent and cultivated individuals who would like to teach–including many still-young retirees who might like to teach as a second career–and would do so if they could be assured of an environment of dignity and respect instead of one of chaos and violence.