Rukeyser on Education

Having been prepared to dislike it before we saw it, my wife and I were as surprised and impressed by “Reading, Writing, and Rukeyser” as we were disappointed by the knee-jerk review in The Times (May 13). Fortunately, we read the review after watching the actual program on KCET.

As a couple who are not aficionados of the stock market and do not appreciate Louis Rukeyser’s political humor, we were not prepared for the best hour’s length treatment of America’s educational crisis we have seen.

We found his mainstream study remarkably comprehensive, starting with individual students but covering interrelationships and factors such as family involvement, the roles of teachers, ethnic diversity, campus security, jobs and the national economy. Furthermore, Rukeyser emphasized, particularly at the program’s close, the high degree of consensus on certain basic problems and ways to overcome them that came out of his visits to schools as well as interviews with a variety of qualified spokesmen.

The only non-conservative type mentioned as having been interviewed, Albert Shanker of the teachers union, is identified as “a left-wing straw man.” This gives a false impression. Rukeyser also gave special emphasis to Clinton’s Secretary of Education Richard W. Riley, by making him the last public figure interrogated on the program. Riley firmly defended his department (in the wake of conservative attacks and plans to abolish it). Moreover, the conservative Lynn Cheney took the opportunity to declare that the likes of American black abolitionist leader Harriet Tubman should be in the public-school teaching of U.S. history as well as the likes of Thomas Edison.

LAURENCE McMILLIN

Claremont