What Are They To Read?
There has been a troubling trend trumpeted from Washington since the days of Ronald Reagan and William J. Bennett. Perhaps best summed up by the phrase "blame the parents'' (although "blame the victims'' would also do), the calls have come for parents to provide more help on increasing amounts of homework and more parent involvement in schools (oddly occurring in an era in which most families with school-age children now have both parents in the workforce). What seems to have happened across the last 10 years is that Washington policymakers have decided to try and redefine school failure as parent failure. (Redefining the problem is a common strategy when policies currently in place seem to be having little effect on the problem). Last month, Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley continued the assault on parents and kids by U.S. Education Deparment officials with his comments at the news conference called to present the latest report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Mr. Riley told parents to "slow down the pace of your life to help your children grow'' and suggested that the television be turned off in favor of more family literacy activities. Children should be reading substantially more outside of school, he said, and parents should be reading to their kids more and serving as models by reading alongside them in the home.
Well, yes, Mr. Riley, we agree that kids might be reading more at home and watching less television (though we also wish they were reading substantially more in school and doing more reading and fewer dittos for homework). We even agree that such a scenario would represent a positive shift in American society, especially if parents also read alongside their children. Our argument with Mr. Riley and others now riding high on the "let parents do it'' bandwagon (actually a "let Mom do it'' bandwagon) lies in the incredible failure of federal policy to even begin to foster reading in or outside of school. After peaking in the late 1960's or early 70's, federal support for book-buying has been diminished to a trickle. Our work on two different projects at the National Research Center for Literature Teaching and Learning has made us pointedly aware of just how limited access to books is for the children of low-income families, both in and out of school. The question we would put to Secretary Riley is, "What are...
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