Lessons From Youth’s Death, Man’s Beating

I am a teacher at Parks Junior High in Fullerton. A large percentage of our students continue their education at Sunny Hills High School. As a teacher in that area of Orange County, I share in the deep concern and sorrow over the events of New Year’s Eve that sacrificed an honor student’s life at the hands--allegedly--of other honor students.

There has been a lot of speculation about why this happened. One recurring theme is that parents and teachers have become overly concerned with academic excellence at the expense of developing the whole person. It is a notion with which I concur.

I have another concern. In that speculation, there is an implication that needs to be challenged. The implication is that this push for academic excellence comes only from the Asian community. It is simply not true.

I came to Parks Junior High in 1976 in the middle of an experiment of providing an education for everyone regardless of ability. The push from a community that was predominantly Caucasian at the time for academic rigor was so overwhelming that the school staff succumbed to the notion of academic excellence. The end result is a public that seems to recognize only academic honor. To have a child in the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) Program has become the ultimate goal of many of the parents.

Every day we read about heartless, juvenile crimes that defy explanation. Part of the explanation I am convinced lies in the fact that we as a society are willing to sacrifice the major portion of a child’s education that educates the heart.

We as a society don’t have enough money to support the arts in a school curriculum, but individual families have money to indulge their children with expensive “things” when their children earn high marks in academic pursuits. There is something very wrong when a society continues to be in pursuit of material things over the pursuit of those things we know educate the heart.

When we read about our children involved in criminal activity, it is not only the children who have failed; we as a society have failed them.

BEN BOELMAN

Placentia