If we took the future of the nation seriously, we would end public schools tomorrow.
A friend who volunteers at a Sunday school in Harlem for low-income children called me the other day, greatly upset: She had been working with a pair of students who failed to learn the assigned reading, which was a short psalm or a prayer. She thought perhaps the fourth graders, a boy and a girl, weren’t applying themselves. The truth was much worse: The two children turned out to be illiterate…
It’s little wonder that children become disaffected, bellicose- what we popularly call “troubled.” Little wonder that they turn to drugs and gangs and crime. When material isn’t taught well, and when the children can’t understand, they often blame themselves. They feel stupid, then resentful. Before long they’ve decided that education isn’t for them, and soon they’ll be lost forever- their potential to live happy, decent, productive, and socially healthy lives is destroyed. Their teachers and the school system are the destroyers. Read more…
