Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 9, 1992 TAG: 9203090221
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Of course. But when they don't, it isn't necessarily their schools' fault. And while teachers as a rule should be better-paid, the answer to educational failures isn't always more money.
Look in the mirror. If your children aren't doing well, you probably bear part of the blame for the inadequate return on education funds. You along with American society, which begrudges taxes for schools, pokes fun at intellectuals and looks on accomplished students as drudges if not a bit strange.
Some American schools are badly disrupted by violence, drugs and other external influences. But most of them can teach. What they need is kids who have homes that value education over sports and watching television. One evidence of that is in a revealing study by three University of Michigan academics, written up in the February issue of Scientific American.
In the early 1980s, Nathan Caplan, Marcella H. Choy and John K. Whitmore looked at surveys and other data on 1,400 refugee households in five urban areas: Orange County, Calif., Seattle, Houston, Chicago and Boston. They gathered not only economic and demographic information but also facts on background and home life. From this they drew a random sample: 200 nuclear families with their 536 school-age children in kindergarten through 12th grade.
One of their findings is not new: Children of Asian-American immigrants do better than average in school, especially in science and math. Nor should it surprise that these specialists discovered among these people a home and family atmosphere that strongly encourages learning and does not gladly suffer lackluster performance. It's a matter of culture, not genetics.
Parents in these first-generation American families don't just tell their kids to go hit the books. They sit down with them around the kitchen table and supervise. Homework is the main activity on weeknights. The researchers report: "Although the parents' lack of education and facility with English often prevents them from engaging in the content of the exercise, they set standards and goals for the evening and facilitate their children's studies by assuming responsibility for chores and other practical considerations."
The Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan says the American junior-high student spends an average of 3.2 hours a week on homework. His Asian-American counterpart, says the Scientific American article, spends an average of 2.5 hours a day on homework; in high school, that goes up to three hours and 10 minutes. Even in grammar school, the average was two hours and five minutes.
This hard work paid off for the students these researchers scrutinized; 80 percent of them got A's or B's in math. They didn't do as well in areas calling for extensive English-language skills (such as history and social studies), but on a national basis they still were above the average (54th percentile). And despite being new to this country, they scored close to the national average in language and reading.
Such findings give the lie to hysteria about refugees swelling this country's welfare rolls. The nation has been enriched in many ways by its immigrants; prior generations from Europe were known for the kind of devotion to education - especially for their young - that these Asian refugees show.
The research does more than underscore the value of parental example and family involvement in learning; it also points up the value of what the researchers call the openness and opportunity available in American schools. All that money spent on them has not gone down a rat hole. American schools are generally sound and capable of imparting good education. But they need support from American homes.
by CNB