Fritz: All Fritz/All Fritz.zip/All Fritz/FILES/INFOTEXT/WHATWORK.LZH/FOREWORD.TXT

Text File | 1986-03-19 | 6KB | 94 lines

William J. Bennett
Secretary of Education

    Unlike many government reports,  this report is addressed
to the American people.   It is intended to provide accurate  and
reliable  information  about what works in the education  of  our
children,  and it is meant to be useful to all of us--parents and
taxpayers,  teachers  and  legislators,  newspaper reporters  and
newspaper  readers,  principals and school board  members.   But,
first  and foremost,  this book is intended to be useful  to  the
adult with a child--or grandchild, niece, stepchild, neighbor--in
school  or  soon to enter school.   It is designed to assist  the
adult who cares about the education of that child,  both at  home
and in school.
    The  preparation of this report has been in my mind since
the day,  a year ago,  when I was sworn in as Secretary of Educa-
tion.   In my first statement upon assuming this office,  I said,
"We  must remember that education is not a  dismal  science.   In
education  research,  of course,  there is much to find out,  but
education,  despite  efforts to make it so,  is  not  essentially
mysterious."  In an interview shortly thereafter, I added that "I
hope  we  can  make sense about education and  talk  sense  about
education  in terms that the American public can  understand.   I
would  like  to demystify a lot of things that don't need  to  be
mystifying.   I would like specifically to have the best informa-
tion  available  to the Department and therefore to the  American
people...."
    The  first and fundamental responsibility of the  federal
government  in the field of education is to supply  accurate  and
reliable information about education to the American people.  The
information  in this volume is a distillation of a large body  of
scholarly research in the field of education.
I trust it is a useful distillation.   Of course,  it is a selec-
tive  one.   It consists of discrete findings about teaching  and
learning  that are applicable at home,  in the classroom,  and in
the school.   Many larger policy questions, many important educa-
tion issues,  are not addressed in this volume.   And research on
other important issues that could have been addressed was  judged
too  preliminary  or tentative to be included.   But we now  know
certain  things  about teaching and learning as a result  of  the
labors of the scholarly community.
This  book makes available to the American people a synthesis  of
some of that knowledge about education.
Primary responsibility for assembling the material in this report
has been borne by Dr.  Chester E.  Finn, Jr., Assistant Secretary
for Research and Improvement,  and his staff.   Immediately after
Dr.  Finn took his oath of office, I assigned him the preparation
of this document as his first task.   As he explains in the brief
introduction  that follows,  many have contributed  their  ideas,
knowledge,  and energies,  and I am grateful to them all.  Beyond
these  individuals,  though,  we all have cause to be grateful to
the  scholarly community whose research is  distilled  here.   We
salute  their accomplishments by paying them the highest possible
compliment:   taking  their work seriously and trying to make  it
accessible to the American people.  Many readers may find some of
the  research findings suprising.   Most readers will,  I  think,
judge  that most of the evidence in this volume  confirms  common
sense.  So be it.
Given the abuse common sense has taken in recent decades,  parti-
cularly  in the theory and practice of education,  it is no small
contribution  if research can play a role in bringing more of  it
to American education.   Indeed, the reinforcement these findings
give to common sense should bolster our confidence that we,  as a
people, can act together to improve our schools.
I for one am confident that the American people are ready,  will-
ing,  and  able  to improve their schools,  and to  assist  their
children to learn.   The principal contribution that the  federal
government can make is to supply good information to the American
people as they embark on this endeavor.  Armed with good informa-
tion,  the  American  people  can  be trusted to  fix  their  own
schools.  As this report makes clear, there is also much they can
do at home.
This volume is not the only effort that the Department of  Educa-
tion  is  making  to supply the American people  with  important,
accurate,  and useful information.   We publish regular data com-
pilations,  such as the annual Condition of Education.   We  have
produced  pamphlets explaining to parents what parents can do  to
assist  their  children  to acquire some of  the  basic  academic
skills.   We  have supported work by others that has yielded such
exemplary reports as Becoming a Nation of Readers (the Report  of
the Commission on Reading, many of whose findings and conclusions
are cited in this volume).
Nor do we intend to stop.   I would, in fact, welcome suggestions
for future efforts that would be helpful and informative, as well
as comments and criticisms about this volume.  And please use the
comment  card inside the back cover of this volume to pose  ques-
tions about education not addressed in this report.   For now,  I
am  pleased to offer this volume to the American people.   I  be-
lieve  that it represents an important step toward fulfilling the
mandate of Congress,  dating back to 1867,  that the federal gov-
ernment  should provide information to the people of  the  United
States  so  as to "promote the cause of education throughout  the
country."