Where the kids are:
McCarthy, Abigail
WHERE THE KIDS ARE TEACHING VALUES IN THE CLASSROOM Neither Candidate Satisfies CEOs on Issue of Educa-tion." I might have been mildly surprised by that headline had I not been preparing the last...
...And we believe that if the District of Columbia's schools aggressively champion the community's shared values, all students will be encouraged to adopt, nurture, and protect those values as their own...
...in Detroit, the number is 202...
...They represent a system which draws from a large, poor population...
...I might have been mildly surprised by that headline had I not been preparing the last several months for a speech to a teachers' institute...
...Youth Indicators 1988," a publication of the Department of Education, points to other improvements in the high school world...
...The connection of these last three statistics to school programs may seem tenuous but it is there...
...But can schools do what a troubled nation is now asking them to do-to teach all the values necessary for a good life...
...In the course of that research I learned that everybody from the million-dollar-a-year financier to the despairing single parent in the inner city is looking to the schools for help with their problems...
...And their high school years are perhaps the last in which they can be reached...
...The second is suicide...
...This year, 220 teen-agers or children have been killed in drug-related battles in Washington, D.C...
...This fact alone seems to prove that concerted effort and concentration on specific student problems can make a difference and make it rather quickly...
...Youth Indicators 1988" reminds us that the first cause of deaths among all teen-agers is motor vehicle accidents...
...It has become a subject in the present presidential campaign and prompts controversy about what kind of values should be taught...
...Others are concerned that a whole generation of young people are being shortchanged in their preparation for life...
...They are juggling home, work, and school, and have no time for community...
...Thirty-three young persons in the United States take their own lives every day...
...But it is not only in these poor populations that the value of human life has declined...
...At the Business Council meeting, Albert Shanker, president of the American Federation of Teachers, cited a recent survey showing that even in middle-class suburban schools only 15 to 20 percent of students were "getting much of an education...
...The dropout rate has declined by one-sixth in the last fifteen years...
...We have all read of the graduates from a Catholic prep school in New York who attempted a robbery, were caught in a gun battle, and dumped their dead companion in the weeds...
...Members of the school board defend the report with a sense of urgency...
...For blacks it has been almost cut in half...
...Middle-class students may not lust for things enough to kill or steal (although many are shoplifters), but they do enter the part-time work force in unprecedented numbers in order to buy the trendy designer clothing that the recreation society has taught them to value...
...Columnist Courtland Milloy puts it bluntly: "I believe we ought to teach children where we find them and for now it's in the schools more than the home or church...
...Whether classrooms are the proper setting for teaching values has been debated endlessly during the past few decades...
...ignorant of the social movements and political struggles which have shaped their lives...
...They are very materialistic...
...The report insists that there is "a common core of values'' that includes respect for human dignity, concern for the welfare of others, personal integrity, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts...
...A report of its values commission issued recently by the District of Columbia School Board brushes this controversy aside...
...Among some young people the value of human life has declined so precipitously that they believe they are justified in killing other children for their jackets or radios-or even as a response to an insulting look or remark...
...Members agree that Many are growing up with virtually no sense of identity or self-esteem...
...But why, many teachers ask, must we put the burden of teaching values on the schools...
...If we use college entrance examinations as a measure of their efforts they have been most effective in helping those students whose scores were the lowest...
...Ernest L. Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, pointed out that inner-city children remain in "disastrous educational circumstances...
...Peter Zollo, executive vice-president of Teenage Research Unlimited, says that, on the one hand, teens today are family-oriented, on the other,'' money is a prime motivator...
...The scores of blacks and Mexican-Americans have risen steadily for the past five years...
...In an era of two-career families, broken families, and single-parent families, the schools are the most structured environment that children encounter...
...There has been a slight decline in the use of alcohol and drugs during the last decade...
...All the evidence shows that if there is no consistent effort to inculcate positive values, our young soon learn negative ones from society and experience...
...Students have been persuaded that staying in school and performing well will bring rewards...
...Ergo, schools can change things for young people...
...They have had some success...
...Teen-age pregnancies have dropped by one-sixth among blacks...
...It states: We believe that schools have a responsibility to help students differentiate between right and wrong, sharing and taking, true leadership and manipulation, principled action and complacency...
...It is a population, like that in most big cities, plagued with violence, unemployment, and drugs...
...They are also the places in which they spend most of their waking hours...
...These two facts apply in affluent schools as much as, or more than, in inner-city schools...
...They lament the growing shortage of well-trained, well-educated workers...
...The concern of the corporate executives , gathered for the fall meeting of the Business Council was the quality of the work force available to them...
...For some time now the nation's schools have been under pressure to improve the academic performance of their "back to basics" movement...
Vol. 115 • November 1988 • No. 19
