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Monday, August 31, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Nation/World
Group wants teaching changes
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Teachers and textbooks that emphasize skills over content are keeping American children ignorant of history and literature, the chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities said yesterday.
Lynne V. Cheney, in a study ordered by Congress, urged elementary and secondary schools to devote more time to literature and foreign languages
Her 10,000-word report, "American Memory," also previewed a forthcoming NEH-sponsored survey that found dramatic gains in teen-agers' knowledge of epocal events, including when the Civil War occurred, when the Constitution was written and even when Columbus discovered the New World.
"Most elementary reading books contain little literature," Cheney said. Instead of learning about King Arthur, Joan of Arc or George Washington, children are subjected to dry, contemporary pros aimed at
teaching such skills as how to make grocery lists and use the telephone book, she said.
"Knowledge of the ideas that have molded us and the ideals that have mattered to us functions as a kind of civic glue. . . ." wrote Cheney. "In our schools today, we run the danger of unwittingly proscribing our heritage."
She laid the blame at the door of textbooks and teachers who "emphasize the process of learning rather than its content."
Cheney lamented that the Scholastic Aptitude Test was "studiously indifferent" to "whether test-takers have studied the Civil War, learned about Magna Carta or read Macbeth."
She expressed concern that foreign language courses emphasize oral proficiency at the expense of the culture of other lands. But she welcomed the rebound in language enrollments in high schools — 29 percent of students studied a foreign language in 1985-86, up from 21 percent in 1978 - and said grade school was the time to start learning languages.
The $69,000 study was prepared with advice from two panels of college professors and school teachers.
Cheney said a survey of nearly 8,000 17-year-olds in the spring of 1986 found that 68 percent could not place the Civil War "within the correct half-century."
"By vast majorities, students demonstrate unfamiliarity with writers whose works are regarded as classics: Dante, Chaucer, Doostovsky, Austen, Whitman, Hawthorne, Mellville and Cater."
Some 39 percent could not place the U.S. Constitution within the correct half-century, and 43 percent did not know when World War I took place.
Thirty-two percent did not know Columbus landed "before 1750." Sixty-four percent failed to pick Chaucer as the author of the Canterbury Tales, and 60 percent could not name Walt Whitman as the poet who wrote "Leaves of Grass."
A growing number of school systems, businesses and philanthropists are appealing to students' profit motive to get them to apply themselves in their studies and continue on to college.
At St. Paul's Catholic Church in Arcadia, the pastor urged 300 parishioners at Sunday Mass to search
Parents of AIDS-exposed boys weigh options after house fire
ARGCADIA, Fla. — Church-goers in this rural community searched their souls yesterday as calls of support poured in for a family with three AIDS-exposed sons who remained in seclusion after a suspicious fire destrored their home.
Arson has not been ruled out as a cause for the Friday blaze that left Clifford and Louise Ray and their children — Ricky, 10, Robert, 9, Randy, 8, and Candy, 6, homeless, destitute and determined never to return to Arcadia.
The Associated Press
Money items are rewards for students
The Ray boys were barred from Memorial Elementary last fall after they tested positive for AIDS antibodies. Acquired immune deficiency syndrome attacks the body's immune system and leaves victims susceptible to infectious diseases and various forms of cancer.
Schoolchildren are being offered scholarships, cash, fast food and even stereos to entice them to study hard and stay in school.
"They are weighing their options today," family attorney Bill Earl said yesterday.
A federal judge ordered the boys reinstated in school this summer, prompting angry protests. The boy are hemophiliacs and are believed to have been exposed to AIDS through a blood factor they take to make their blood clot if they are injured.
The family remains at an undisclosed location outside DeSoto County trying to decide their next step.
their hearts for love, compassion and understanding.
Earl said the family's spirits improved Saturday night, when they went to a cookout with some friends.
"It reminds me of the time of leprosy when they rang bells and told people to stay away," the Rev. Robert Cockey said. "There is fear in people."
Since the boys went back to school last week there have been bomb threats, a school boycott and the fire. The Rays said Saturday they were forced to flee for their safety.
The Associated Press
"I have found in today's society (that) kids are not ready to accept anything but a tangible kind of reinforcement," said Principal Dennis Martin of Barker Junior High in Michigan City, Ind., where for the past two years students have earned $50 savings bonds and free trips to an amusement park for good attendance, grades and citizenship.
Such tactics can bring short-term results. Average attendance rose from 85 percent to 90 percent in the two years since Pittsburgh's Peabody High School started its program of awarding students portable televisions, stereos, clock radios, gift certificates, T-shirts, hats and a grand prize of $100 cash for good attendance. The prizes are donated by local businesses.
Some critics call such measures gimmicky and say they miss the complex heart of the dropout problem from school and adult values.
Educator Ernest L. Boyer, for example, said scholarships were more effective incentives than stereos or hamburgers because they were tied directly to education.
Boyer, president of the Carnegie Endowment for the Advancement of Teaching, said that the trend of offering students gifts and prizes was a byproduct of the pressures put on schools by the educational reform movement.
"This campus is the best-keped secret in the country."
—William Wilson, Univ. of Chicago, speaking of K.U.
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Tuesday, Sept. 8th, 9:00 pm ($4.00)
Beth Scalet & Robin Gilmore, Barry O'Brien & Helen Magruder
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Jim Carroll, Dorn and End Sanders (with Steven Taylor) and George Kimball, M.C. Friday, 11th. 9:00 pm ($7.00)
Timothy Leary on "The Emergence of the Cybernetic Person during the Roaring Twentieth Century," Saturday, Sept. 12th, 2:00 p.m. ($5.00)
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