THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 5, 1995 TAG: 9506290025
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A10 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Medium: 59 lines
The Allen administration presided over the creation of learning standards for math, science, English and social studies. They were intended to demand more of students, but critics - including state school-board members, teacher groups and system superintendents - found some elements objectionable on pedagogical grounds and others on political grounds.
Now a compromise has been reached. That's good. Virginia's schools need to get on with providing an education that insists on greater rigor without increasing rancor. Not surprisingly, there was the least dispute about math and science standards. It is harder to politicize areas where the facts are clear and not open to partisan interpretation.
Social studies and English were contentious because the debate was less about history and literature than about political ideology. To oversimplify greatly, the discussion pitted those who believe Washington couldn't tell a lie against the Columbus-committed-genocide crowd. There was wrangling over whether students should be required to read Tom Sawyer for its romantic picture of America protected from exposure to Huck Finn's realism. Some people wanted to put Bible stories in the curriculum; some wanted to keep other cultures out.
This is obviously more a fight about what adults believe than about what students should know. Part of the compromise has been to agree that it is impossible to create a reading list that all sides will find acceptable. That's a depressing commentary on our times.
Surely it ought to be possible to agree on a few inescapable texts that all students ought to be familiar with. The documents of American liberty from the Mayflower compact through Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson, the Federalist, Tocqueville and Lincoln can hardly be in dispute. And there is really no serious academic argument about the essential peaks of English and American literature from Shakespeare and the Romantics through Dickens and Twain, Whitman and Thoreau.
At the least, the compromise seems to put all sides on the side of expecting more of students. State Superintendent William Bosher said, ``This is the most rigorous set of standards in math, science, language and social studies Virginia's ever known.'' Maybe so. But is that good enough?
Our competitors in Germany and Japan aren't tying themselves in knots debating the political correctness of their curriculum. They are teaching their kids how to read and write, to appreciate the literature of their national language and the history of the planet. Where we demand algebra, they demand calculus. Their kids learn science and economics and a foreign language.
If we don't want to be left behind in the race for 21st-century prosperity, we had better start matching our competitors rather than wasting time and energy on provincial squabbles about ideological purity. A more rigorous curriculum is a good start, and a step has now been taken in that direction. Much more remains to be done. by CNB