THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, November 19, 1995 TAG: 9511170171
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J1 EDITION: FINAL
LENGTH: Long : 149 lines
For the past decade, America's public schools have come under mounting criticism for their perceived failure to improve the academic achievement of the country's young people.
But as important as academics are, Yale University child psychiatrist James P. Comer argues that the country faces a far more critical problem - a deficiency in three R's of a social kind: respect, responsibility and resiliency.
Comer attributes an array of modern ills to this failing: teenage crime, drug use and pregnancy.
Children, bombarded by an assault of negative and conflicting messages, desperately need the guiding hands of parents and other adults, Comer says. But that need is not being met, he contends.
With more two-parent working families and single-parent homes, coupled with today's economic and social stresses, the links that once connected home, school and other social institutions have snapped, he says.
Comer's remedy calls for mending that broken sense of community, for rediscovering the shared values of right and wrong, good and bad that adults once spoke with a ``common tongue.'' Public schools were a vital link in that chain and today have an even more important role to play, he argues.
Comer, director of the School Development Program at Yale's Child Study Center, is nationally known for his school reform ideas, which rely on building a sense of community ``ownership'' through creation of a caring, supportive, no-fault climate. Schools across the country, including Bowling Park Elementary in Norfolk, have adopted Comer's ideas for reform.
Recently, Comer attended a Common Wealth in Education conference at Norfolk Academy. He spoke with staff writer Jon Glass about a range of issues involving educating today's children:Q:
What in your view are the major problems or challenges facing America's public schools and what do you see as remedies?
A:
The major problem facing them is that support for them is decreasing for the wrong reason. We're blaming the problems of the society on the schools. The problem, really, is that we failed as a society to invest in families and communities after World War II. And, as a result of that, when the economy changed and lots of people came under economic and social stress, many families began to not function as well and social problems increased, and many people weren't able to prepare their children for school. We then blamed the schools.
Q:
Is this investment government's responsibility?
A:
You want to have it private, you want to have it public. It doesn't matter. But somebody has to make certain that our communities function, that our parks work, that our recreational activities work, that our arts flourish, that our schools are adequate, that there's enough child care, that there's adequate health care.''
Q:
Congress is almost sure to reduce funding for programs like Head Start, Title 1 and other educational efforts that benefit poor children. Is this a good idea?
A:
``There's a commercial about a filter for a car engine, and it says, `Pay me now or pay me later.' If you don't use the filter to prevent the dirt from getting in, you'll destroy the engine. That's the situation we're in as a society. We'll either pay for education and well-functioning families and children or we will pay on the other end with jails to contain them and efforts to control and punish them, which cost more and are less productive in the long run and will destroy the society in the long run.
Q:
There seems to be a growing disconnect among many Americans, especially conservative parents, with the public school system. Why is that?
A:
Well, there's a new book out called ``The Manufactured Crisis,'' and it points out that, in fact, achievement test scores have not gone down, that SAT scores have not gone down. They went down one brief period when a large number of people who had never taken them before came in, but they've gone back up. All of the screaming about what's wrong with our schools appears to be a manufactured crisis. . . . Somebody's trying to convince us that we shouldn't invest in public education, that private education is better and that profit-motivated education is better. . . . Private schools don't do any better than public schools, for the most part. The elite private schools do better, but they do better because they select, and they select from those children who are most privileged in the first place.
Q:
Can you talk about needed improvements?
A:
I think that you need to have schools in which parents and teachers and administrators work more closely together. And in which they, together with young people, decide on what they want in the way of desirable performance and desirable behavior for their young people and set standards in those schools. And then provide the kind of support for development that those young people need.''
Q:
There's been a backlash to your theories on enhancing children's self-esteem from people who argue that schools are in the business of reading, writing and math, not making sure students feel good about themselves.
A:
In fact, demanding academic work can, in the short run, lead to lowered self-esteem as young people struggle with and feel inadequate because they have problems. But that's part of the developmental dynamic; In time, out of struggling with difficult, demanding work and being able to do it, you develop a sense of adequacy that is more permanent and stronger than if you don't struggle at all.
Q:
There are stories of teachers afraid to correct a child's work because of fear of wounding the child's self-esteem.
A:
If that's so, then they're not doing it well. There's a way to set up a climate so that examining your work becomes a natural part of learning. The words that I've never misspelled over the years are the words I missed on the spelling tests years ago, when we examined that and thought about why I missed them. . . . You have to build a climate that makes assessment for the purpose of learning rather than punishment or a reflection of your intelligence.
Q:
The debate over whether schools should teach values often hinges on the question, `Whose values do you teach?'
A:
The word `values' is contested and controversial. But what we're really talking about is attitudes and beliefs that allow people to live with each other successfully, that's all. It's respect for the needs, rights and opportunities of other people and at the same time insisting on and expecting that your own needs, rights and opportunities will be respected.
Q:
Guns and violence in the schools make headlines, but most parents and teachers are more concerned about kids who act up in class and prevent everyone from learning. How do you address that problem?
A:
Schools should operate in a way so that enough families are involved in the work of the school that those kinds of behaviors are minimized . . . When parents are involved with the school staff in deciding what's good for the school, good for the children, then that kind of behavior is greatly reduced.
Q:
Norfolk and Portsmouth have stopped busing for integration in the elementary schools, creating some community schools that essentially have resegregated black children. Is this a mistake?
A:
What is really important is to have a school that turns out kids who function in the society, regardless of what school they're from. But what is most important after that is to have an opportunity or a structure that will allow them to move into the mainstream economic system. And it was economic integration that we should have paid attention to, once we broke segregation and segregated schools, and we didn't. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Yale University child psychiatrist James P. Comer says schools
should help rebuild social links.
by CNB