letters.

nytimes.com/upfront

ONLINE SURVEY

Should the Music Industry Be Allowed to Shut Down Napster?

Here's how you voted on the UPFRONT Web site on the question posed in our September 18 issue.

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Too Much Homework?

I agree with Carrie McGourtey ("Do Students Get Too Much Homework?" 9/18/00). There is too much homework piled on students, and a majority of it is nothing more than busywork. I think assigning too much homework is a way for our school system to excuse itself for taking so much classroom time to please students who could care less.

JACKIE FRIDKIN Northbrook, Ill.

I don't think high school students get too much homework. But often the homework assigned is of no real aid in understanding the subject and simply consumes one's time and effort.

PATRICK CHEN San Jose, Calif

After a long, hard day at school, I want to relax, not sit down to four or five hours of assignments.

NORA PITTS Austin, Tex.

School for Kidnappers

As a Jewish teen who is planning on traveling to Israel later this year, I found your article ("Battle for the Holy City," 9/18/00) well-balanced. But I was appalled at the picture on page 18 of the Palestinian teens staging a mock kidnapping of an Israeli official. The only information about the picture was a brief caption stating that 25,000 Palestinian teens attended a terrorist camp. You should have gone into greater detail, or more balanced detail. Palestinians are not the only ones who have been violent.

RACHEL PETROFF Liverpool, N.Y.

The article stated that when Jews declared an independent Israel in 1948, Arab states attacked the next day. Yet it failed to relate exactly how the Jews went about claiming their...