September 29, 1982
Bad Impressions
In your “Connections” column about the controversy over the “Impressions” reading series [“Values, Orthodoxies, And Public Schools,” November/December] you say that parents “do not have a right to foist their own values” on the teachers and the system. You give children too much credit and parents too little when you suggest that children can forge their values out of their own maturity, wisdom, and knowledge. If public education cannot instruct children in the orthodoxies of their parents, can it instruct children in the orthodoxies of the teachers and the system?
My fellow Americans, today is a special day for our citizens of Jewish faith. It's Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, marking the beginning of the year 5743 on the Hebrew calendar. So to all of our friends and neighbors observing this holiday, and speaking for all Americans, I want to wish a happy, peaceful, and prosperous New Year.
After hiring 1,100 special-education teachers this year, administrators in the city's schools have been able to place 19,409 students who had been evaluated, but not assigned to programs, under the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 Act, the federal law that mandates the classes.
As of Wednesday, settlements had been reached in Upper Saddle River, N.J., and at the Nazareth Regional High School in Brooklyn, N.Y. But teachers in two New Jersey districts, Teaneck and Waldwick, remained on strike.
A one-page tipsheet, entitled "Working With--Not Against--the Media," observes that mutual distrust and poor communication may underlie the frequent complaint by educators that media coverage of schools is overwhelmingly negative.
The proposed committee would monitor all legislation affecting children, a function that is not now being performed by any one committee. ''The fragmented jurisdictions of the House committee system make it virtually impossible to provide the comprehensive consideration of children's needs and problems," said Representative Miller.
The filibuster, led by Lowell P. Weicker, Republican of Connecticut, and joined by a growing number of other Senators during the past few weeks, sought to halt an attempt by Jesse A. Helms, Republican of North Carolina, to force Senators to record their votes for or against prayer in the schools.
The Booth Ferris Foundation and the Ford Foundation have made grants of $375,000 and $145,000, respectively, to support the institute. It will include, in addition to the program for teachers, a library and an information clearinghouse on the teaching of writing and thinking skills. It will also house the liberal-arts college's two-year-old summer workshop in language and thinking for college freshmen.
Although many of the teachers who responded to the survey, which was conducted by mail last spring and released last week, said they felt good about their profession and confident about their performance, nearly half said they would not become teachers again if they were given the choice.
An article in the September issue of Principal, the association's magazine, restates the group's 1980 finding that the children of divorced parents do, in general, have more difficulty in school than do children with both parents present in the home.