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Opinion
Blame
the ‘real’ problem
for failures in education
January
13, 2006
Every
once in a while someone gets around the smoke and mirrors that
distort the reality of public education in South Carolina. One
South Carolinian recently did just that.
He’s Reed Morton,
a former Gamecock football player and law school graduate who
now works for a pharmaceutical company in
Greenville.
Morton looked at the recent decision by Judge
Thomas Cooper in a lawsuit involving several state school
districts, which claimed the State Legislature didn’t properly
fund them.
Morton noted that although the districts’
facilities, spending and teacher quality all met
constitutional standards, the court said:
“THE
CHILD BORN TO POVERTY whose cognitive abilities have
been largely formed by the age of six in a setting largely
devoid of the printed word, the life blood of literacy, and
other stabilizing influences necessary for normal development,
is already behind, before he or she receives the first word of
instruction in a formal educational setting. It is for that
reason that early childhood intervention at the
pre-kindergarten level and continuing through at least grade
three is necessary to minimize, to the extent possible, the
impact and the effect of poverty on the educational abilities
and achievements of those children.”
Morton notes that
“What Judge Cooper is saying is clear: Children of
poverty-stricken families are not prepared for kindergarten,
Or said another way: Poverty-stricken parents are not
preparing their children for kindergarten, and the earlier the
state can intervene, the better it is for the
child.”
MORTON GOES ON TO CITE the litany
of legislation and the huge amounts of money spent in the last
quarter-century on public education, along with the failures,
and the extended litigation of this particular suit, trying to
prove what we should have learned from the “Court of Common
Sense.”
Stop blaming the state and teachers, he says. Blame
the real problem … the evaporation of parental responsibility.
The reality, he says, is that we live in a time when too many
people expect more from their social worker than from
themselves.
Maybe personal responsibility and
self-determination can end cyclical poverty and hopelessness,
he reasons. Or, he pointedly notes, we could always just add
another penny to the sales tax, and let the state take our
kids home from the hospital.
Oh, yes, there is one other
thing we could throw in: Resolve to stop babies from having
babies. That might stop some of the “parental” problems.
Editorial expression in this feature represents
our own views.
Opinions are limited to this page.
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