76-05-A6
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Education I[edit]
Transcript[edit]Reading and Writing and ‘Rithmetic is a fine old song, but I'm afraid its lyrics are as out of date as a nickel cigar. I'll be right back. I've spoken before about the decline in quality of public school education as evidenced by college entrance exams over the last 20 years. Well just recently I read in Washington D.C. newspapers about one of the highest ranking graduates of a D.C. high school, valedictorian of his class, who couldn't get a high enough mark on the standard entrance exams to get into George Washington University. The Dean of the university described the young man as having been conned into believing he'd had an education, but it took the news of an interview on a St. Louis TV station to get me back on this subject again. They interviewed a product of the St. Louis public school system, a young man 20 years of age, who had gone from kindergarten through grade 12 and had his high school diploma to prove it. He is a functional illiterate, unable to read or write and is presently enrolled in an adult remedial reading program. Now lest you think he's exceptional, possibly handicapped in some way, let me state for the record he is not mentally retarded, neither is he stupid, he's just plain untaught. The adult center where he's at last being taught to read says he has plenty of company in that one metropolitan area alone. Education is compulsory in our land of the free. You can't decide that you'll do without and if you try they'll all be knocking on your door asking, “Why isn't Johnny in school where he belongs.” All right then, but what is our response if little Johnny is in school where he belongs and that all that's required of him is his physical presence. If he sits in his assigned seat five days a week for nine months he'll be passed and promoted to the next higher grade. When I was governor, a black mother during the height of the controversy over desegregation in the schools told me that wasn't nearly as important to her as some of the educational fraternity would have us believe. She said, “Never mind moving them around to a different school just teach them where they are.” and then she made this request, “Stop promoting my son to the next grade just because he's come to the end of the year. Make him stay in the grade he's in until he's learned what he's supposed to know.” I'm afraid I thought she was exaggerating when she added, “One day they'll hand him a diploma and he won't be able to read it.” But what happens to a young man or woman who don's cap and gown is handed a diploma as proud parents and friends applaud, who believes he's qualified to go into the job market and learns he can't even fill out the application for a job. There have been great innovations in education and we're told the old-fashioned methods, phonics, as the way to learn to read for example, are no longer approved by educators. We'll let them answer one question. It is acknowledged that we have added more to man's knowledge in the last 25 years than in all the previous history of man. Those who did this were brought up in that earlier now outmoded school system. Surely it must have been doing something right? This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening.
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