ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996 TAG: 9610220110
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
DUMBING DOWN OUR KIDS: Why American Children Feel Good About Themselves But Can't Read, Write or Add. By Charles J. Sykes. St. Martin's Press. $23.95.
Charles J. Sykes has written a most disturbing, yet encouraging, work about the current crisis in public education. Rather than offering the usual excuses of family breakdown, poverty, television and lack of funding, he places responsibility for problems squarely on the shoulders of our educational system. He also holds parents responsible for tolerating mediocrity, saying that the schools are unlikely to change until parents demand it.
The recent fads of OBE (outcome based education) and Goals 2000, Sykes says, are just new labels for old ideas. These fads de-emphasize grades, competition and even content and instead focus on the application of knowledge, lauding the "hands-on" approach and "creativity." These days, trying is enough - accuracy is optional. When children use "inventive" spelling, it's not wrong, it's "creative." There are now math tests that rate answers on a scale of 1-6: "close enough" is good enough. Collaborative writing, in which a group of students work on an assignment together, means that ignorance about a particular subject is no longer an impediment to writing about it. And history and literature texts have been rewritten to be inoffensive to any group, even if it means ignoring or rewriting historical facts. In their quest to be fair and all inclusive, the architects of OBE have created a system in which no one fails. The problem is that they have effectively deprived "success" of any meaning. The watered-down curriculum actually undermines the very self-esteem it professes to foster.
There is a difference between self-esteem and confidence. Sykes claims, "Schools that are intent on building confidence will insist on high academic standards; schools concerned with self-esteem will fear to ask too much."
The biggest single obstacle to educational reform is the educational bureaucracy, which is bitterly hostile to criticism. It is a mass of interlocking, self-perpetuating, self-interested departments and agencies, called "The Blob" by former Secretary of Education William Bennett. Sykes encourages his readers, including teachers, to join together and take action by breaking ranks with the bureaucrats, slimming down the curriculum to focus on the basics, and giving teachers more authority in their classrooms and merit-based pay (no tenure). Not surprisingly, he advocates a voucher system which would raise standards by fostering competition among schools.
Finally, the parents need reforming. Too often we tolerate mediocrity and even complain about too much homework, low marks and high standards. School reform is desperately needed but should be initiated by parents, not the professional educrats who have created the current system.
Miriam Boyd lives in Clifton Forge with her husband and three children and is a student in the Graduate Counseling Program at Eastern Mennonite University. How Dr. Seuss got loose is no ruse Reviewed by CHARLES D. BENNETT JR.
Dr. Seuss & Mr. Geisel. Judith and Neil Morgan. Random House. $25.
In late 1936, Theodore Seuss Geisel, then 32, was a successful magazine cartoonist, but he could not sell his first children's book. "Mulberry Street" had been rejected by 37 publishers because it had no moral, a criticism to which Geisel responded in frustration: "What's wrong with kids having fun reading without being preached at?" On his way home to discard his manuscript and return to magazine work, he was given a ride by a college friend who three hours earlier had become juvenile editor at Vanguard Press. His friend published the book, and the rest is history.
That is the history Judith and Neil Morgan tell. They illuminate for the reader the bright thread of imagination that began in Ted Geisel as a child and continued to shine throughout his prolific life.
Geisel grew up in Springfield, Mass., which boasts a prominent Mulberry Street. He attended Dartmouth, where he gravitated to "Jacko," the college humor magazine, and ultimately became its editor. He met his wife, Helen, during a year of study at Oxford University.
Returning to the United States, Geisel drew cartoons for a magazine for seven years and then decided to write and illustrate a children's book. He settled on "Dr. Seuss" as his pen name, combining the title of the doctorate degree he did not receive from Oxford with his middle name. From that beginning, he wrote and ultimately published 47 books, ending with "Oh, the Places You'll Go!" in 1990.
Geisel brought to his writing the imagination of a child and the talents and perseverance of an artist and poet. He would work on a single line for hours until rhyme, meter and meaning were perfect. If a color were not right, he changed it shade by shade until it was.
In addition to the constraints of rhyme and illustration, Geisel had to accommodate young children's vocabularies and publishers' limits of 250 words. Taking that limit to an extreme, Bennett Cerf of Random House bet him $50 that he couldn't write a rhymed children's book using only 50 words. Geisel won the bet with "Green Eggs and Ham."
With his fresh imagination and creative energy, Geisel published book after book. The Morgans tell his story, the story of Dr. Seuss, a genius who devoted his lifetime to the pleasure of children, children of all ages. They celebrate him, and so do we.
Charles D. Bennett Jr. is a Roanoke lawyer. A new book by Dr. Seuss published Reviewed by CHARLES D. BENNETT JR.
MY MANY COLORED DAYS. Dr. Seuss. Illustrated by Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher. Alfred A. Knopf. $16.
Some days are yellow./Some are blue./On different days/I'm different too.
So begins a book Dr. Seuss wrote 23 years ago that was not published during his lifetime. He wanted other artists to illustrate it; his publisher's search for an artist was abandoned in 1973 and the book put aside. After his death, Dr. Seuss' widow came across it, and she asked Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher to do the illustrations. So, at last, "My Many Colored Days" was published.
The result is a brilliant marriage of uncommon talents. Dr. Seuss' rhymes revive fond memories from readers of all generations. Splendid artwork supports the rhymes with unmatched beauty on each page: backgrounds are painted in every color of the rainbow and illustrations are rendered in complimentary, equally vivid color.
Dr. Seuss adds still another dimension - a serious message. He proudly tells children and adults alike that it's OK to have "up" days and "down" days, red days and yellow days. On red days we kick up our heels, on blue days we flap our wings, on brown days we feel low and on black days we howl.
"My Many Colored Days" adheres to the Seuss passion for making a story fun and keeping the words simple, so that children not only want to read the book, they can. It contains less than 100 mostly one-syllable words, and it rhymes and repeats in classic Seuss. This book fits at once on children's bookshelves and coffee tables. It is artistic, fun and a little serious - "But it all turns out all right you see./And I go back to being ME."
Charles D. Bennett Jr. is a Roanoke lawyer. BOOKMARKS School superintendent's accomplishments Reviewed by GEORGE KEGLEY
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THAT PREACHER'S KID. Dr. Edward W. Rushton with Edward W. Rushton, Jr. R.L. Bryan Company. $15.95.
The preacher's kid in this autobiography is Dr. Edward W. Rushton, Roanoke's superintendent of schools from 1952 to 1966. Rushton, now past 90 and retired in Orangeburg, S.C., was assisted in the book by his son, Edward Jr., a retired Roanoke lawyer.
The son of a Methodist minister in South Carolina, Rushton is remembered in Roanoke as a progressive, innovative and sometimes controversial educator. He led in the design and construction of Patrick Henry and William Fleming high school campuses, in the establishment of links with overseas schools and with the development of the "Roanoke Experiment" - a teaching program allowing students to work individually at their own rate of speed.
After his 14 years in Roanoke, Rushton said he was "humiliated" when Roanoke City Council approved a 10 percent salary increase for teachers but cut that in half for administrators. He resigned and moved to Charlottesville as superintendent. Later, he decided that the Roanoke school system "had accomplished much and had 'run a long mile' toward greatness in many areas."
In less than modest fashion, Rushton tells of his 50 years as an educator, starting as a teacher/principal at Calhoun Valls, S.C., after graduating from Wofford College at the age of 20. He worked in his native South Carolina and Virginia, earning a doctorate at Peabody College and serving as president of the American Association of International Education. He also taught at the University of Virginia and South Carolina State College.
Busy in retirement, Rushton was administrator of a council on aging, and he worked on an elderly housing project and with Junior Achievement. His advanced years have taught him "one awesome lesson": one who has patience and who never gives up or gives in, one who never quits, may accomplish anything.
George Kegley is a retired business writer for this newspaper. Poet Linda Hogan writes novel of nature, protest Reviewed by MARTHA KUCHAR
SOLAR STORMS. By Linda Hogan. Scribner. $19.95.
"Solar Storms," Linda Hogan's second novel, shows the hand of a poet. Less driven by plot than her first novel "Mean Spirit," "Solar Storms" lingers on scenes for their own sake, usually because they tell about nature, its mysteries and riches. It tells the story of 17-year-old Angel Wing, who has returned to her birthplace. She is seeking to understand why her biological mother disfigured her, leaving facial scars that Angel tries to hide, and then abandoned her, inflicting wounds of a deeper sort.
Angel's quest takes her to Adam's Rib in northern Minnesota and to her great-grandmother, Agnes; great-great-grandmother, Dora-Rouge; and to Bush, a Chickasaw woman. It is the 1970s, but Bush survives by hunting, fishing, raising vegetables, collecting firewood from the forest floor and trading for the rest of her needs.
One spring, all four women embark on a dangerous canoe journey north through the boundary waters between Minnesota and Canada. Through pluck and an abiding knowledge of nature, this unlikely crew overcomes all obstacles, including the death of Agnes. The three survivors reach their destination of Two-Town where the native people are protesting the hydroelectric dam under construction there. The dam means the end of waterways that are deeply interwoven with their traditions and lives. The protesters shield their homes, but government bulldozers mow them down and diverted waters flood their land.
Hogan tells a story of exploitation and destruction - and of the victims' mounting anger and frustration. The protesters fail in stemming the tide of progress, but they try - and in their struggle and even in their defeat is the lyric that Hogan wants us to hear.
Martha Kuchar teaches English at Roanoke College.
Linda Hogan will give a reading on Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. in Antrim Chapel at Roanoke College and a talk, "Native Science and the Spirit of Nature" at 11:20 a.m. on Thursday in Antrim Chapel. Hogan is a Chickasaw poet, novelist, playwright and essayist and currently teaches at the University of Colorado. Her first novel, "Mean Spirit," was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
LENGTH: Long : 202 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: 1. headshot of Rushtonby CNB2. headshot of Hogan
3. cover of Oh, the Places You'll Go!