Gold Medal Software 3/Gold Medal Software - Volume 3 (Gold Medal) (1994).iso/bbsutils/sun9403.arj/MYVI

Text File | 1994-03-02 | 6KB | 102 lines

My View: Education and Miss Dunlap
Copyright (c) 1990, Martin Weiss
All rights reserved


[Each month, a reader/writer is offered the opportunity to give his or
 her viewpoint on a particular topic dear to them. If you'd like the
 chance to air *Your* views in this forum, please contact Joe DeRouen
 via one of the many ways listed in CONTACT POINTS elsewhere in this
 issue]



          EDUCATION AND MISS DUNLAP
              By Martin Weiss

     We are all frustrated by the inability of today's children
to acquire proficiency in the basic "3R's while in the early
grades at school, let alone reaching high school as functional
illiterates. There is a very simple reason why most cash
registers today automatically tell the cashier how much change to
give a customer - it's because so few Americans can do the
necessary arithmetic in their heads. But, of all the excuses I
have read for this sorry mess, the one I have the least sympathy
with is overcrowded classrooms.
     I looked up a snapshot of my sixth grade class in the mid-
40's. There we were, all forty-one students standing in straight
rows with Miss Dunlap, our one and only teacher, in the back row.
It must have been winter because all sixteen boys were wearing
heavy, plaid mackinaw jackets and knitted wool caps. A few boys
were also wearing ear muffs. The twenty-five girls were also
dressed alike, with knee-length, dark wool coats, long cotton
lisle stockings, and plain kerchiefs on their heads. Our class
was multi-racial, multi-cultural, and multi-denominational. We
had two things in common: our relatively humble economic status,
and our absolute respect for, love of, and obedience to Miss
Dunlap.
     Many of us were fortunate to have experienced a Miss Dunlap
(or Mr. Stern, or Mrs. Robertson) or two during our school
years - tough, "no nonsense allowed" teachers who had the gift of
making you learn no matter how many students were in the
classroom, how worn and tattered the textbooks, or how slow you
were in comprehension. You walked into that teacher's class with
trepidation at the beginning of the term, and left it with tears
in your eyes when you moved ahead to the next grade. You may not
have realized it then, but you know it now - she (or he) was a
TEACHER. Years later, you still remember that classroom and that
teacher as if it were only yesterday.
     I'm sure if a teacher today was assigned a classroom of
forty-one students, there would be protest marches by the
students, a wildcat strike by the teacher's union, and a demand
for the impeachment of the entire Board of Education by the local
P.T.A. organization. Inevitably, school taxes would ratchet up
yet another twenty percent, and more illiterates would graduate
out of smaller classes.
     It is true the world has gotten a bit more complex over the
last half-century. Children are now subject to and the
unfortunate victims of many terrible hazards and negative
influences we never faced as children. However, certain education
fundamentals remain unchanged. Learning the "times table" by
heart beforehand sure does help with multiplication problems;
studying American presidents is a good way to learn our country's
history; reading aloud for the teacher in class can help you
become a better reader, as can writing book reports; classics
such as "Black Beauty" or "Tom Sawyer" remain good books for kids
to read; classroom spelling bees can be embarrassing if you
haven't studied the words; it requires lots of practice to
develop a legible handwriting; English, including its rules of
grammar, remains the basic language of communication and commerce
in this country; drawing maps of the different countries of the
world by hand, and finding those countries on the big map at the
front of the classroom is a great way to learn geography and the
world we live in.
     If all those things still are true, why is our educational
system in such a mess? Who is to blame? The answer is blindingly
obvious. We have created the current educational system, or at
least we have allowed it to reach its present sorry state.
Somewhere, in our rush to make some of our kids astrophysicists,
genetic scientists, electronic engineers, computer wizards, or
semi-geniuses, we ended up making most of them illiterate and
incoherent.
     I can identify a small handful of the culprits guilty for
what has happened to the education of our children and
grandchildren during the last generation or two. There is this
old snapshot of forty-one youngsters who later grew up to be
parents, government officials, tax-payers and voters. They - we -
let it all happen. We failed as parents, who are primarily
responsible for providing the discipline all children need while
growing up. We allowed people who cannot teach to become
entrenched as our childrens' educators. We bought into a new
scientific teaching theory every five years or so, only to see it
fail in practice. We chose to ignore that not only weren't our
children doing any homework, they probably weren't even being
assigned any by the teachers.
     So please, don't complain about classroom size or over-
crowded school facilities - that is just so much hog-wash and a
cop-out. Sure, smaller classes might seem better, but the primary
blame for the sorry state of our educational system belongs in
the hands of neglectful parents like us, and the loss of teachers
like Miss Dunlap.