Back to Moral Basics : OUR CHILDREN AND OUR COUNTRY <i> by William J. Bennett (Simon & Schuster: $19.95; 238 pp.; 0-671-67062-X) </i>

Our former secretary of education (1985-1988) liked what he said the first 24 times, and in case we missed his original talk(s) or so appreciated them that we would enjoy reconsidering them in an edited version, he has compiled them into one volume.

A word about proceeds from the sale of this trade book. There’s a note explaining that since the original speeches were made by a public servant, they are, then, public documents; therefore the publisher will donate proceeds toward the Department of Education’s annual School Recognition Program.

I was asked to serve as a judge for middle and junior high schools in the 1987 School Recognition competition. I discovered that not only did schools nominate themselves for the honor but that they answered a battery of questions about their programs, none of which asked anything about the relationship between professional and support staffs; about the teaching of art, dance, music or drama; about mainstreaming and special care of handicapped and learning-disabled pupils, about desegregation policies and practices, about the distribution of costs between instruction and administration, or about the impact of federal funding.

Instead, the questions, like the reprinted speeches, were designed to focus on a few Bennett pets--the teaching of values, politically conservative convictions and on just how much time was given over to study of the U.S. Constitution.

While the pronoun “our” begins Bennett’s book title, it is “I” which dominates the 24 chapters. It’s what I, Bennett, think--be the issue AIDS or sex education or bilingualism or the defense of a common culture or the need for a fundamental change in higher education.

A quick count confirms that 38% of the chapters contain the world “I” or “My” in the first sentence, if not the first word. And “I” is scattered throughout the text. Page 85 may hold the record: “I” appears no less than eight times.

Methinks Mr. Bennett has written his “Conscience of a Conservative” and that, like that outspoken voice of values from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, did some decades ago, Bennett is looking to a future in a race for a “high public office.” If he’s not, and this is some “last hurrah,” then only friends and fellow-believers need spend the time to read this volume.

But if Bennett is positioning himself to run for or to be appointed to another “high” office, then we all should read what this self-appointed Jeremiah has to say about “our children” and “our country.”

For example, in the chapter dealing with moral literacy, he asks if we want our children to know about kindness and compassion, and their opposites. If yes, then he asserts, they should read “A Christmas Carol” and “The Diary of Anne Frank” and, later on, “King Lear.”

Bennett makes some strong points about the need for what we teach in our schools to prepare our children for life in--and a good understanding of--our nation’s very special form of both participatory and representative democracy. He’s almost eloquent when riding this theme. Perhaps it is his most important message.

Yet, since each of the speeches has been edited and adapted for book publication, it is curious that former Secretary Bennett has retained as many references as he has to President Reagan--particularly to Reagan and moral values.

At one point Bennett effuses: “Now on this front--on this moral and cultural front . . . it may be that nothing the President has done is more important than his achievement here.”

Curious. Apparently the Iran-Contra debacle troubles this reader of Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” not at all.

But Bennett deserves credit for raising the issue of whether our schools are meeting our childrens’ needs. He is correct; our schools are not as good as they should be, and it’s our children who are suffering because this is the case.

Unfortunately Bennett would have us believe that many needs could be met if we used more classical (read Western) reading lists.

He says several times--and of course he is correct--that the family is an important basic unit and should be strengthened. But something like one-half of all U.S. schoolchildren today come to school from unstable family units. These children need the bread of comprehensive care (housing, health, job skills) and imaginative schooling; not the cake of a classics curriculum.