Uncle Sam Needs You--to Help Schoolkids

I was raised to think of this as a can-do country.

When we needed to win a war, we won it. When we absolutely had to find a polio vaccine, we found it. When we decided we had to be first on the moon, the Eagle landed.

These days, we hear a lot of talk about the “crisis in education.” Even for those who think that’s an exaggeration, they agree there’s much work to be done. We need look no further than our neighbors in Los Angeles County, where school administrators this week said roughly half their students don’t merit promotion to the next grade.

Why don’t we act?

I’m not talking about educators. I’m talking about the rest of us.

In some things, we’re relatively powerless. No matter how much you or I might want to end the AIDS crisis, for example, we can’t do much about it except ask Congress to spend more money on research.

But we can help schoolchildren.

We need soldiers again, just like we needed them in 1941.

And just like in 1941, the soldiers are available.

Why can’t massive numbers of citizens--whatever the number needs to be--answer the call to help our public schools? Maybe we don’t need to draft an army, but we can certainly mobilize one.

A Ready Ally

My call to arms found a ready ally in Bill Habermehl, an associate superintendent of schools with the Orange County Department of Education.

He’d direct the army toward helping youngsters read, because that’s a huge key to educational success.

While teachers and parents play crucial roles, teachers don’t have enough hours in the day, and parents sometimes don’t get the job done.

However, reinforcements are available.

Habermehl pictures an army--college students, for example--who’d have their student loans forgiven if they volunteered for after-school programs. He pictures institutional fixtures such as Boys and Girls Clubs insisting that their programs include academics. He pictures private companies freeing employees, even if during the workday, to provide personal or academic mentoring to struggling students.

In short, he’s talking about what I’m talking about: some kind of national commitment.

Habermehl readily acknowledges that teaching is a profession that requires “artful skill.”

He quickly adds, however: “You and I both know people who have never taken a day in an education course who are great teachers. We need people who can spend time with children and help them. You don’t need a college degree; just the willingness. If you know how to read, you can help them read just by reading to them.”

Give Us the Vision

A person doesn’t need a year of college to capture the imagination of a young reader. You don’t need a teaching credential to have children read to you and ask them to paraphrase what they just read.

“What we need is for somebody, whether it’s the government or somebody else, to give us the vision,” Habermehl says. “It needs to be a vision that everyone can understand and that does not have a thousand roadblocks in the way to do it.”

Another commitment should be to preschool reading, Habermehl says. One example: Pediatricians and child-care professionals could adorn their offices with reading aids “to help kids build a base in reading readiness.”

In Orange County, roughly one-third of its 470,000 students have limited English-speaking ability. “Those students need good role models to learn English,” Habermehl says. “The way to learn to speak English well is to put them with someone who can help them learn to enunciate and speak it well.”

As a society, we just haven’t made it easy for volunteers to help, Habermehl says.

“Everyone is looking for someone else to do it. Everyone agrees it needs to be done. What needs to be done is to give someone the charge.”

When President Kennedy committed America to putting a man on the moon, he worried about the details later.

Most of us couldn’t help NASA with our time, but we can certainly help our public schools.

The prospects of success are dizzyingly appealing.

“If we were committed,” Habermehl says simply, “we would turn the U.S. around.”