Moral Authority of Parents vs. Teachers

Mary Laine Yarber’s Education column about suggested student New Year’s resolutions (Westside, Dec. 31) is troubling for a couple of reasons.

First, there is an assertion that the more you read, the faster a reader you will become. There is no empirical evidence to support such a contention and certainly none that justifies discussing reading speed and comic books in the same breath. Reading is, in fact, a skill. Without knowledge of specific techniques, all the reading in the world will not significantly increase speed or comprehension.

If one thinks about it, the fixed comic book “pictures” and the limited vocabulary of comic book captions are hardly likely to improve reading abilities. This is not an insignificant criticism. As an educator writing a newspaper column, Yarber owes more to her readers.

More troubling, though, is Yarber’s recommendation about students’ personal journals that “Parents sometimes stumble upon them, so realize that some thoughts are best left inside your head.”

For any teacher to make this kind of recommendation trivializes and demeans the moral authority of parents’ relationships with their children. This is all too typical of today’s teachers who forget that they have a social contract with the very parents Yarber advises children to distance themselves from.

This kind of recommendation is an outgrowth of the kind of values-clarification programs being taught in our schools. They feed on themselves. Educators cite “dysfunctional families” to appropriate moral authority for themselves and then exercise that authority to teach students that parents have no right to set standards, to judge or criticize behavior or to employ discipline. This destructive policy is readily apparent in ever-increasing juvenile crime and pregnancy rates, as well as in our educational performance in comparison to our global competitors.

Lois Timnick’s Westside Page 1 article on the same day reports an increasing number of affluent families choosing to educate children in their own homes. With schools and teachers undermining family relationships, it is entirely understandable. It is a good argument for widely expanded choice in education funded by a voucher system. This provides parents of modest or limited means an opportunity to escape the monopoly our public schools have over their children’s values.

KIP DELLINGER

Santa Monica