The media mania that erupted when a white teacher wrote, "Where
are my glasses?" in magic marker on the face of a black five-year-old
who forgot her glasses shames us all. The hysteria involved threats of lawsuits,
suggestions of permanent trauma to the child, the teacher's suspension,
panels of experts, and thunderous words from poverty and race professionals.
What this Super Bowl of soap opera melodrama revealed was that we have lost
all common sense in dealing with the simplest -- and one of the most important
-- basics in primary education, namely, effective procedure for establishing
contact between parent and teacher.
The parent shouldn't have continuously let her child go to school without
her glasses, the teacher should have used a more appropriate method of dealing
with that parent's neglect, and the administration should have set the appropriate
guidelines for resolving such a situation. Unfortunately, the loose football
at the bottom of this goal line pile-up is the child.
All schools, public or private, should have a simple, effective procedure
for establishing parent-teacher contact, both for ordinary consultations
and for emergencies.
When parents, teachers and administrators stop communicating, and contact
between the three groups breaks down, children suffer the most. Our ongoing
failure to address these problems by establishing sound policies has produced
the following tragic results:
In February of 1994, the National Right to Read Foundation published its
"The Right to Read Report," which stated that 90 million adults
(nearly half the adult population) read and wrote so poorly that they had
trouble keeping jobs even though they were high school graduates. Even so,
outcome-based education seeks to lower these standards even more.
In its November/December issue, the same report stated that the United
States is the only nation in the world with a falling literacy rate.
The same issue cited a judge from Florida who noted that children could
not read the t-shirts they wore to court, and that 90% of them were dropouts
-- with or without parental consent or contact.
By the late 60's, 70% of the students entering urban high schools could
not read above the third grade level. After the advent of entitlement programs
, the figure rose to more than 75%.
An independent 1993 broad study by ABT Associates, cited by the Heritage
Foundation, indicated that students participating in federal compensatory
education programs continue to fall further and further behind other students
as they progress through school.
A recent review of U.S. Department of Education programs conducted by the
House of Representatives Economic and Educational Opportunities Committee
(working with the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional
Research Service) cited 760 federal education programs, administered by
39 separate agencies, departments, commissions, and boards, costing a total
of $120 billion. It showed that only 6% of the programs supported mathematics,
science, or reading.
All of these incidents, facts, and figures demand that we value children
and their education more than we value entitlements, money, power, or media
attention. The failure to value children and their education has produced
a 17-year-old age group in which 66% cannot read at a proficient level.
The Ad Council estimates that by the year 2000, 67% of the American people
will be functionally illiterate. In a series beginning May 15, 1994, the
Law Enforcement News stated that "earning a high school diploma does
not guarantee that its holder can read beyond a junior high school level."
This report, entitled, "Why Officer Johnny Can't Read," by Jacob
R. Clark, points out that officers who cannot read well are incapable of
writing good reports or understanding the nuances of the law. The report
further links poor reading skills to the increased use of force.
The information included in this editorial is not a plea to end the Department
of Education, teachers' unions or Head Start.
But it is a demand that we reevaluate our policies and goals, that we place
the highest value on children and their education rather than politics,
and that we ask of entitlements, "Entitled to what?"
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Note: New Visions Commentaries reflect the views of their author, not necessarily
those of Project 21.