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France is one of those countries where students today almost certainly doing far better academically than their previous This is a decade or two ago. The stakes system in Britain and now comes on the very heavy attack principally from people who believe that the movement towards comprehensive education has caused a decline in standards particularly for the most able children. Japanese public schools primary and junior high level meeting difficulty because of the tough entrance examinations of a higher institution. This is Francis Laurie in Paris. This is Ronald butts The Sunday Times of London. Can you list your mood a commie. WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT. Last year it cost us seventy five billion dollars to educate the 50 million elementary and secondary school pupils in American schools. That is
four times as much as we spent in 1960. And yet figures indicate we are getting less for our money. As one indicator scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test or S.A.T. a prerequisite for admission to most colleges they have been declining for the last 14 years and scores on other academic achievement tests show a similar steady decline. Another indicator reveals that some 19 million Americans over 16 are functionally illiterate unable to read traffic directions. I want an ad or a job application form unable to distinguish between medicine bottles by reading simple labels American secondary education has deteriorated to the point where some states now demand that high school seniors demonstrate some competency in basic arithmetic and reading before getting their diplomas. Beginning in 1979 students graduating from high school in New York state must answer questions like this. Fred has four candy bars. If he
divides each bar in half what is the total number of pieces he will hire. Now why should this be so. Depending on which expert you consult before described everything from the design of the tests to national dramas like the war in Vietnam you are more a comic reports period begins with a somewhat different perspective on education. We don't have natural resources and the resources that we do have other people. Consequently they would have to have a high level of education. Let us the rate is ninety nine point eight percent. Even the beggars in Tokyo's dirty streets would be reading newspapers and that is the result of a very rigid tough examination system as they start from kindergarten to primary school to junior high to high school up to education but the Japanese are not completely satisfied where their students performance either. Once they passed this entrance examination to college it is
then that's the time when they stop studying because as long as they're just going to classes as long as they are doing mediocre it's not too difficult to get passing Mox too good get by by exchanging notes with fellow students. Buying a textbook of a certain professor who would be using the same textbook we are after. And as long as you read those textbooks and exchange notes just before the examination it's not too difficult to get a passing grade in Japanese colleges. So despite the fact that everybody says that the Japanese students study very hard and they do study they had they said that they had one of the toughest examination system in the world. I believe they do. And yet the fact that they are not producing historic inventions they are not producing enough number of novel prize winners in the sciences and education academic field prove that their defect lies in the highest level of education.
That is the college education no matter how much importance is ascribed to the playing fields of Eton and other independent British schools what they call their public schools. The fact remains that nearly 95 percent of all British schoolchildren attend the publicly maintained school. None the less Ronald but reports of these schools are experiencing some problems. The state system in Britain comes under very heavy attack principally from people who believe that the movement towards a comprehensive education has caused a decline in standards particularly for the most able children in the past more able to older was sorted out by an examination at about 11 years of age and those who were the more academic went to what we called grammar schools where they hope to find a path which would lead them on to university. In 1974 this approach was altered altered radically. However it's become a prevailing social or 10 year rate socialist. Perhaps
I should say doctrine in Britain that this division at about the age of 11 was socially divisive and ought to be stopped. And so there's been this movement toward comprehensive schools to take all kinds of children. The reason why they built so many large schools was cause that it was said that only a very large school if it was comprehensive and had the full range of abilities in it only a very large school could support a decent 6:04 not just to say the kind of form which prepares people for universities. Francis Laura's report about French schools has a very different. France is one of those countries where students today are most certainly doing far better academically than their predecessors. Educator to a go. Let's take mathematics for instance. To quote one example the level of studies of a 10th grade pupil today is equivalent to a former 12th grade level in the 60s.
We asked Laura how explain this apparent improvement. Public schools in France have been under five successive republics and still are today a sort of cornerstone of French education. Not that private schools are any better or worse. But the fact is that this sort of political lay radical socialist tradition has always given a preferential status to publicly maintained schools. The entire French educational system is essentially based on the public school system and a majority of successful Frenchmen whether in politics or in arts or diplomacy or letters or mathematics or physics or what will you are a pure product of a lethally where education as you know is scot free. By contrast this is what Ronald but had to say about the way Britons currently view their schools. In the past a great deal of prestige has attached to having been educated at some of the great independent schools and schools like Eton
or Winchester or rugby because they were schools of academic excellence which gave a very good all round education. They are also schools of course which are of come under certain amount of criticism for being socially divisive. I think nowadays the attraction of the independent schools isn't their snob value or their social prestige but simply that at a time when a great deal of controversy surrounds state education they are still today schools which provide a very high level of academic education for children. After university age the French have their own unique view of such matters. To have attended one of the better known Leith is it in itself as sort of green light to a promising career whereas no one specifically boasted having attended such a private school. I would even go as far as to say that a private school is sometimes sometimes synonymous
of a failure to follow the courses at least the concept of comprehensive schools that describes in great Britain has not yet come to France. There are many divisions over here in France between programs preparing for the trades and those preparing youth for advanced academic work at the age of 12 and then at the age of 16. Most children have a choice of lying before them. They can push academic work with a view to entering university. They can start to specialize in a career which might lead them to anything really from craftsmanship to engineering art sociology Industry Trade and an infinite variety of manual occupations and specialties. Currently French public schools are funded through general revenues but Laura reports there have been discussions about altering this arrangement and the outcome could affect more than just
who pays for schools. The whole problem of education is going to be one of the most critical issues in the forthcoming French legislative elections in the spring of 1998. Now there is a strong tendency among opposition leaders today to want to nationalize education and therefore to press all aid to private religious schools in the name of equality and fair access to education. Obviously the more conservative parent teacher groups have lost no time in denouncing such plans. And the quarrel now is becoming extremely bitter and even at times violent left wing associations have taken a determined stand in favor of Nash and I think and the growing during the next seven months is going to be extremely rough perhaps even decisive for the future of this country in the US to come.
British teachers through their unions have a say in setting up the curricula they will teach as a result. A delegation of British educators visiting New York last summer was shocked by the idea that teachers here must work with curricular that they had little role in developing. But like it or not there seems to be the way of American schools if only because the federal government is playing an increasingly important role in education. This role has grown since the early 60s to the point where the federal government supplies public schools with more than 6 billion dollars a year and those dollars have a lot of strings attached. Increasingly whatever the federal government thinks is important educationally the new math the phonics approach to reading or the open classroom becomes what is important for public school children across the nation. Money or the withholding of it is now both carrot and stick for affecting federally conceived social progress through the schools. This is Dr. Thomas Stich associate director for basic skills at the National Institute of Education
and the education system. We have simply taken on the burden in this nation of truly trying to educate everybody. Now that means that people who were traditionally screened out of schools or out of traditional schooling such as the educable mentally retarded we find them today in the classrooms and teachers are being asked to teach these children and bring them to the levels of achievement that they would other children. One basic way of working with that problem is to avoid it. And that was an earlier strategy. And we're not doing that anymore. That is not the current ethic in the country the ethic in the country is to bring people in to the mainstream bring people in for a share of the pie. Not too early on screen them out. We asked Dr. stitch what the current argument about basic skills is all about taking a look though at research evidence we're finding that the direct instruction kind of approach is really much more effective and particularly with the group of people who are poor learners and that of course has been who most people been
concerned with. You can argue that the child left his own devices as an adaptive learning organism. But I think almost any parent understands that when you have a skill. That you almost always have to set the child down and encourage them coax them to stay with it while take playing the piano. There's just no way you develop skill without many hours of practice the very same thing is true about reading for instance or arithmetic. It simply takes work and there has to be a certain amount of drill and practice. There's no way about it. Dr. Spitz described how this theory works in practice. For instance we look at relationships between written language an oral language skills. It's almost a common sense notion that children ordinarily have or a language skills before they have written language skills and that when you initially acquire written language skills you acquire the ability to comprehend in print what you could previously comprehend in spoken language. It suggests then that you need to have some very formal training system
for bringing people to be able to decode the printed language so that they can then comprehend it as though it were a spoken language. When you understand that then you understand the reason for having a fairly strong phonics or decoding emphasis in school problems changes as children get older. When you had the fourth grade the language of the fourth grade becomes different. It becomes more like written language it has its own style and begins to introduce concepts and vocabulary that isn't systematically introduced in the earlier grades. Beyond that then there is the whole problem of the special study skills that students need to acquire to be able to really shift from as they say learning to read to reading to learn. Like most people involved in formal education Dr stitch recognises limits to the classroom. We asked him where else he believes such words can or should be done. What I think we have is the need to give a great deal more of attention to the educational value of the family. As I say we have all kind of programs for
compensatory education for children at school. We have many many many millions of dollars less worth of compensatory education program for adults. Yet adults and parents are the most significant people in the mind. Now the developing child research evidence is so overwhelming that parental educational background is a very strong influence in children subsequent achievement. As to make me believe that we ought to be giving a lot more consideration than we do to adult education. Over at the National Education Association an organization representing some one point eight million teachers executive director Terry Herndon offered his organization's perspective on basic education. I think one of the great threats of what's called a back to the basic movements is it is going to stifle the more imaginative The more creative the more independent student the one who can benefit from a diversity of experience. So back to the basics assumptions of four walls and straight desks and
children all lined up and all doing the same thing at the same time and perfunctory in a rote manner. As a teacher I think that's devastating. I think it's going to destroy more children than it helps. Herndon told us that he believes that competency tests and basic education are short term educational facts. This he thinks is right. One I think the simple fact that a million young women became pregnant last year another million school days were lost because of an aerial related diseases means that sexuality and human sexual behavior is a very basic kind of thing in our society today. It wasn't 20 years ago. If you're going to find the scope of basics I think that has to be coped with. There are dramatic shifts in the nature of the American home dramatic shift taking place in our public values to the point where one out of every nine young people will likely be arrested and be in court before they are 18 years old. The illegal use of drugs has increased by several hundred percent. The arrest of juveniles for prostitution and the
rest of juveniles for violent crime is up. One hundred forty hundred fifty percent over the last 10 years and those values shift in our society create some dramatic changes in the way kids feel about schools and learning in grades test scores. And once we put a lot of money and time and energy in back to the basics efforts and find out that they haven't done anything for very many kids maybe we can wake up and begin dealing with the child's reality in contemporary America and realise it is more complicated than prescribing a simplistic solution to a very big and complex problem teachers face their own problems even as they try to teach in this change environment. School aged populations are stopped growing in many areas and for the past five or six years the numbers of elementary school children in many communities actually has declined. School buildings have closed programs of contract it and most significant from a teacher's point of view jobs have been lost. Teaching once taught it is a profession that was both upwardly mobile and secure if not
removed or it is now a near disaster area last year. To cite only one statistic about two hundred and twenty thousand new teachers were graduated and only 95000 found jobs. Yet despite the retrenchment school budgets are as large as ever. Terry Herndon explains why. But a 4 percent decline in a first grade population of 40 does not create any economies whatsoever. Because the school still has to be maintained in the classroom has to be there the materials have to be purchased and the teacher has to be provided in the transportation system has to be provided. So the fact that that decline is not concentrated in a given classroom or a given grade level means that it doesn't produce the economies that so often the public expects. And declining enrollment some not so all the other problems classes are still too large in many cases. Our data for example show that if we were to reduce the teaching load of elementary teachers to twenty four children per class all over the United States and if we were
to just the teaching load for secondary teachers to one hundred twenty four students per day we would have to bring another 300000 teachers into the public school system. Herndon does see some solutions to the impasse. We find widespread public acceptance of the idea. We had to use the circumstances we have to improve schools to diversify the curriculum for secondary students and elementary students to improve the intimacy of the school by increasing the number of professionals available to work with children and we find the general public receptivity to expending more money on education. But when you convert that to a property tax hike it's almost invariably a no. At least it's no more often and yes. That's what makes us feel so strongly about the need for increases in federal aid where the dollars come from the graduated income tax which is more elastic more productive more progressive more invisible more painless and the public generally is accepting that idea. Jerry Herndon added this thought those that are poor and
powerless and the American society really have a legitimate beef about the educational system because it has never served poor children well. Historically those poor children were spread all over the United States and now they're concentrated in the cities. I don't have an easy solution and I certainly don't hold the teachers culpable but I say those people have a legitimate beef about the way the schools have not performed in the lives of their children. The unnamed issue in all this is control. The framers of the Constitution expected communities to run their own schools. Education is not a federal responsibility and Jefferson went so far as to draw up a detailed plan for local school districts. But as we've heard federal and state governments are more and more involved in financing education. According to figures compiled by the National Center for Educational Statistics over 80 w o local jurisdictions across the nation now pay less than half the expenses of their schools. The problem with all that federal and state money is that it has so far been our
policy to insist that it be spent in federally prescribed ways. For instance one New York State School District has a budget of nearly 11 million dollars but can spend only three hundred thousand dollars as it sees fit. And then only on athletic programs library books student supplies and the like. Increasingly decisions about curriculum and personnel must take into account the pressures of state and federal agencies the courts and teachers unions. In Great Britain by contrast to all as the secretary of state for education as a member of the cabinet and has overall responsibility for financing schools and setting overall educational policy for Great Britain. But she has no control over curriculum discipline or the day to day running of schools. Similarly France and Japan finance their schools out of national tax revenues and eliminate some of the conflicts. Teachers unions here in the United States would like this system as
well since it would concentrate more power at the state or even federal level and they could then increase their power by bargaining for state or national contracts. But at the moment that does not seem likely. The task now is to persuade teachers parents administrators and politicians to put the welfare of the students somewhere on a par with their own. This is Edward P. Morgan in Washington. They have to the Sunday papers yesterday felt like a new peak in size on my scales I found the go word for an eight pounds. The New York Times is barely under four pounds. This invited inspection the case of the times proto about normal on separating out the readable pots from the rest as every Sunday. I got two pounds of each but the Globe called for more attention. Pulling out the sections of reading matter disclosed five sections labeled help wanted.
This compared with one section of automobile advertising one and a half for real estate. The greatest batch of help wanted advertising I had ever seen it covered fifty six pages mostly solid type to account for one fifth the total weight of the paper. This same the paradoxical contradiction to our national concern over the stubbornly high unemployment. But examination of a few pages of help wanted ads offered an explanation of what was wanted was trained for skilled jobs engineers computer operators actuaries accountants coordinators welders hospital technicians purchasing agents production control clerks foreign auto mechanics the kind of jobs that most teenagers cannot do. Or most unemployed blacks. A breakdown of unemployment figures shows that while overall unemployment has risen since 1956 from 4 over 7 percent it's still well under 4 percent for white
men 25 to 55 for teenagers has risen to 15 percent for black adults two alright Levon percent for teen aged blacks to nearly 40 percent and for women nearly doubled to over 6 percent. The greatest increase in the total number of the labor force has been largely among teenagers women blacks to leave the corps of trained workers a smaller pot. These mostly in that 25 to 55 age white males. The demand of the help wanted ads is for this smaller proportion of the workforce. Last a thorough MIT economist draws on these figures in an article in the British economist which Anthony Lewis described in his New York Times column Thursday. Their own outfit the extreme difference in the unemployment rates of the different groups has as Louis puts it the surprise effect of feeding inflation. The reason lies with the favored group of white males 25 to 35 as it becomes a smaller proportion of the labor force it's an even greater demand. If the
economy is heated up this group in effect develops a labor shortage and its wages go up faster. Their O explains. Moreover it has a natural leverage. It's heavily unionized. The effects of high unemployment over the long run as Lewis sums up are even graver than most of us thought. The disparities are getting worse. The distribution of skills is becoming more unequal. Skill is acquired chiefly on the job so the teenager who goes for years without a job faces a life without skill. Throw suggest a way to break this vicious circle would be a government wide subsidy instead of public service jobs. Employers could hire from high unemployment groups at lower pay where the government making up the difference and Thoreau suggest trying that. The government did try it on some programs after the Second World War. My oldest son dropped his Jr graduate studies at Harvard to try for a newspaper job. He came up with a choice for jobs with the Waldemar sonnet $50 a week for The Washington Post at
35. The son was participating in a government Apprentice subsidy plan which the post had rejected. I thought the Washington paper the better prospect and offered to make up the $15 a week different because it was only a little while before the pay even DAW. I have always enjoyed reminding any Washington Post executive that I subsidizes paper in 1047 professes thorough deprecate schooling for job training job skills he says are usually acquired informally on the job from one worker to another. This view may help account for the Connecticut Board of Education announcement of an early out try and starting this September to release high school pupils at 16 with an equivalency diploma if they pass what's called an adult level performance test. California started this two years ago to deal with the dropout and the Restless people who just putting in time in school. Connecticut's test is in what they call life coping skills which as
described in yesterday's Times include making change in a store or filling out a consumer complaint and Reading Railroad timetable. Such plans of course concede failure of school with a big part of its constituency Connecticut is reversing the historical American trend to require more and more schooling. A trend that's always had the support of the labor unions to take pressure off the job market. Return of the crown of Hungary has aroused violent protests by hunger in exile. Thirty years after the communist takeover of that country is too short a time to bridge a generation of bitter memories. The crown is a national symbol like the flag in 1887. President Cleveland ordered return of captured Confederate flags to their states. But the anger of Northern veterans forced him to cancel the order in 1945. Went there Roosevelt returned the flag he had no problem. The difference was 18 years.
The embedded acts as a phenomenon of our times. A negative element in foreign relations that diplomacy has to deal with.
Series
WGBH Journal
Episode
Atlantic Dateline: Educating Our Children
Producing Organization
WGBH Educational Foundation
Contributing Organization
WGBH (Boston, Massachusetts)
AAPB ID
cpb-aacip/15-60cvf1zr
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Description
Series Description
WGBH Journal is a magazine featuring segments on local news and current events.
Created Date
1978-01-09
Genres
News
Magazine
Topics
News
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:28:30
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Credits
Producing Organization: WGBH Educational Foundation
Production Unit: Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WGBH
Identifier: 78-0160-01-09-001 (WGBH Item ID)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Master
Duration: 00:28:15
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Citations
Chicago: “WGBH Journal; Atlantic Dateline: Educating Our Children,” 1978-01-09, WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed March 29, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-60cvf1zr.
MLA: “WGBH Journal; Atlantic Dateline: Educating Our Children.” 1978-01-09. WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. March 29, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-60cvf1zr>.
APA: WGBH Journal; Atlantic Dateline: Educating Our Children. Boston, MA: WGBH, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-15-60cvf1zr