ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 14, 1996 TAG: 9602140066
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Associated Press
Computer literacy, citizenship and basic skills are more important than learning Shakespeare or Hemingway, according to a survey of public school teachers.
Fewer than 25 percent of 1,164 teachers listed classic works from Shakespeare and Plato, or writings by American authors, such as Ernest Hemingway or John Steinbeck, as ``absolutely essential.''
Instead, at least 70 percent of the teachers ranked the three R's, the value of hard work, citizenship, computer skills and U.S. history and geography as essential components of public school curriculum.
``They don't think Shakespeare is the be-all, end-all for kids,'' said Steve Farkas, who worked on the survey released Tuesday by Public Agenda, a research group founded by pollster Daniel Yankelovich and former Secretary of State Cyrus Vance. ``Computer skills emerge from the pack because the teachers connect that with survival in the real world.''
Among the survey's other findings:
Of factors that might determine career success, teachers place ``an excellent academic education'' a distant third, with only 21 percent saying it is the most important factor. Persistence and inner drive, and knowing how to deal well with people rank first and second.
Some 27 percent of the teachers think A students are ``much more likely'' to get good jobs, while 46 percent say they are ``somewhat more likely'' to do so.
The survey also showed that teachers are concerned about pressures from social problems, lack of funding, overcrowded classrooms and a lack of parental involvement, the survey showed.
``Schools are trying to do the parents' job and, in some cases, having to neglect the school's job of teaching a body of knowledge and thought needed to have thinking, educated people,'' said Delores Obermiller, a teacher for 27 years and dean of instruction at King High School in Corpus Christi, Texas.
``If we valued the classics and history and advanced math and science, and gave kids those concepts so that they would be thinking and knowledgeable, they could learn about computers later,'' she said.
The findings of the teacher survey mirrored another Public Agenda study of the public's attitudes about education.
Chester Finn, a former Education Department official in the Reagan administration and a Hudson Institute research fellow, said he was not surprised that only a quarter of the public ranked the classics or American literary works as ``absolutely essential.'' But he was disappointed that teachers didn't rank them higher.
``I think teachers have been brainwashed by the political-correctness crowd to think that anything associated with `classics' is tainted as `dead, white, European male' imperialism,'' Finn said.
Keith Geiger, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers organization, said he was glad to see that the teachers and public both put basic reading, writing and math skills at the top of the list of ``absolutely essential'' curriculum items.
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