The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration last month awarded 16-year-old Marnie Kleven from Cook, Minn., a certificate of appreciation for a peer-education program she developed to help combat drunk driving.
Ms. Kleven also has been named National Home Economics Student of the Year and has been awarded a $5,000 scholarship from Chesebrough-Ponds Inc., for her work against drinking and driving.
The peer-education program grew from her concern about statistics that show an intoxicated driver kills one person every 20 minutes in the U.S., and that half of those drivers are between the ages of 16 and 24. As part of a 4-H project, she developed a 30-minute slide show for presentation to high-school students.
Jerry Falwell, the leader of the Moral Majority, holds the National Education Association responsible for a moral decline in public schools, he told a group of students and faculty members at Princeton University recently.
“Public schools in the last 20 years have not just simply become amoral, but anti-moral,” Mr. Falwell charged. Without explaining why, the conservative religious leader said he blames the nea for public schools’ moral disintegration.
Mr. Falwell continued his lecture despite a bomb threat and a protest gesture by 30 members of the audience, who rose and turned their backs when he began to speak.
Robert E. Boose, a former New Jersey school superintendent, has been sworn in as Maine’s commissioner of education. He replaces Harold Raynolds, who left the position earlier this year to head Alaska’s education system.
Mr. Boose, 37 years old, was selected last month by Gov. Joseph E. Brennan and confirmed by the state Senate.
Until his appointment, Mr. Boose was the superintendent of Mercer County schools and the acting superintendent of Essex County schools, both in New Jersey.
The University of Michigan has named Carl F. Berger to serve a three-year term as dean of its school of education.
The University’s board of regents approved the appointment at a meeting on Sept. 16.
During the same meeting, the board approved a 40-percent reduction in the school’s budget over the next five years. The cuts were made following an 18-month review of the school’s quality and its importance to the university.
University officials predicted that the reductions would result in the elimination of 30 faculty positions and all but one of the school’s doctoral programs.
Mr. Berger, who has been associate dean of research in the education school since 1979, joined the faculty in 1972 as an associate professor and was named professor of science education in 1976. Last year, he was named president of the National Association for Research in Science Teaching.
Vanessa Williams, who earlier this month became the first black ever to be crowned “Miss America,” said the musical training she received in elementary school was the key to her success in the pageant. Ms. Williams’ parents are elementary-school music teachers who taught her piano, French horn, and singing. She began to take dancing lessons as an elementary-school student in Millwood, N.Y.
After watching a segment of the CBS Evening News that described dramatic improvements in disci-pline at once-troubled East Side High School in Patterson, N.J., President Reagan called the school’s principal, Joseph Clark, to commend him for a job well done.
Mr. Clark, who took over as principal last year, is credited with having turned the inner-city high school--once labeled a “cauldron of violence” by city prosecutors--into a model of decorum. Mr. Clark’s disciplinary policies include handing out automatic suspensions for drug possession, fighting, vandalism, and assault or profanity against teachers.
Lesser infractions, such as tardiness or disruption of classes, are punished by barring students from classes and assigning them to do chores at the school.
