Local members of a national civil-rights group ended an 18-day sit-in at the Tuscaloosa, Ala., board of education building after meeting with members of the board and two attorneys who have been involved in a controversy over implementation of new promotion standards.
Members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference emerged from the building on Oct. 23 after an afternoon meeting in which the board members agreed to review on request the records of children who were not promoted.
The protesters, who lost two court battles over the matter, held that the policy was implemented without adequate warning, leading to a disproportionate number of blacks being held back.
They demanded that the policy be rescinded or delayed.
Of the 1,071 students not promoted in the 10,480-student district, 87 percent are black.
The meeting that produced the agreement involved five sclc members, headed by Charles Steele, president of the local chapter; a three-man delegation from the school board, headed by chairman William Lanford; and lawyers who represented the two sides in U.S. District Court.
The Rev. Everett Sileven, pastor of the Faith Christian School in Louisville, Neb., has been released from jail after promising not to reopen his school in defiance of court orders.
Cass County District Judge Raymond J. Case freed him on Oct. 22 after Mr. Sileven testified that the school would remain closed.
Mr. Sileven had been jailed for repeatedly refu Cass County District Judge Raymond J. Case freed him on Oct. 22 after Mr. Sileven testified that the school would remain closed.
Mr. Sileven had been jailed for repeatedly refusing to close his school despite court orders. He has been involved in a legal battle with the state since 1979 over control of his small fundamentalist school. Nebraska state law requires all public- and private-school teachers to be certified by the state, but Mr. Sileven has resisted state regulation, claiming that the state has no authority over his school.
Mr. Sileven has promised to keep the school closed unless the legislature, at a special session scheduled for this month, gives him the authority to reopen it.
SUBJ:
In Quotes
Education Week
Volume 2, Issue 9, November 3, 1982, p 3
Copyright 1983, Editorial Projects in Education
In Quotes
“I do not think most occupations today need people to go to 12 years of school,” the eminent author, educator and child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim told an audience in Omaha last month. “By insisting everyone attend school until they graduate, we have created some of the problems we are now experiencing. More kids go to college than really need to. We don’t know what to do with them, so we send them to college. We need life experiences to mature the mind.”
“Educational research has demonstrated again and again that a family environment that supports study and learning, that rewards the child that is successful in school, will produce children who do well in school and in life later on, all other things being equal,” C. Everett Koop, the U.S. Surgeon General told an audience of pediatricians who met last week in New York. “And the reverse is true also. A family environment that is cruel and uncaring will send cruel and uncaring children into the world as aggressive, violent adults.”
