What happened in school vote

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

This letter appeared in the Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) on 5 December 1997.

This item may be cited as M. R. Franks, Letter to the Editor: What happened in school vote, Baton Rouge Advocate, December 5, 1997, at 6B.

Dear Editor:

If Dr. Gary Mathews and his cohorts are wondering what happened, let one voter fill them in. It's far too easy to blame racism and prejudice for the "no" vote on the recent school bond election, but that oversimplification just won't work.

"Old wine in new wineskins" is a biblical expression that describes exactly what we would have gotten had we placed the same tired old bureaucracy and the same failed curriculum in sparkling new buildings.

Large numbers of today's products of our public schools can't spell, read, write, add or subtract. The regular curriculum has been hopelessly dumbed down. What little was right with the system when the current administration took control of it has all but been destroyed under their leadership. On Dr. Mathews' watch, the School Board virtually eliminated the self-contained gifted-and-talented program rather than extend its full benefits to the minority community.

Today's voters remember when school children learned to read and write, and when we could actually do math without a calculator. We knew our state capitals then, and we had much higher SAT scores - and we did it all without lugging posters to school on an endless string of Mickey Mouse "projects" and meaningless busywork that are in truth a diversion from real learning. Many of today's highschoolers can't even name the country that borders the United States on the south!

Employers report that they can't find workers on this side of the border skilled enough to read instructions and handle simple math. As the United States loses its markets in one field after another - garments, photographics and electronics (to name just some of the more recent downsizings) - jobs quietly disappear at home one by one, while the dollar declines even further.

Every day in Africa and Latin America, Peace Corps volunteers and church missionaries impart excellent educations in abysmal physical surroundings. The distinguishing factor is their dedication and that of their students to the learning task at hand.

The challenge to Dr. Mathews and his colleagues is to return excellence to our curriculum. We know the difference between shiny buildings and mediocre instruction. We don't need buzzwords about excellence; we expect the real thing. Only then will we give Dr. Mathews our vote of confidence by approving bonds to house that excellence in better physical trappings.

M. R. Franks
2 Swan St.
Baton Rouge

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