Volunteer’s Lament Draws Both Praise and Disagreement

Comments from readers about last week’s first-person article by an 83-year-old grandmother who volunteers as a classroom aide.

Kudos to Virginia Riley for her timely piece on teaching reading in elementary school! This piece, “Dooming Students to Failure,” should be sent directly to Gov. Gray Davis and to all heads of school boards. The key issues she mentioned are teachers being forced to teach a “cookie cutter” curriculum while worrying about test scores; setting goals so high that discouragement and depression set in; school curricula that do not accommodate the needs of immigrant students; and, lastly, that the education leaders in America have dared to compare our youths to the youths of Japan.

SHEILA A. KANE, Oxnard

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Although I agree with most of Mrs. Riley’s comments and observations, I have to disagree with her final point. She says that the local school boards are to blame for “press[ing] our children into a mold of ever higher academic achievement.” I beg to differ. I have worked in three local school districts and have found each to be ethical and concerned about the welfare of children. I am quite confident the responsibility for this pressure lies with the state Department of Education and, more specifically, the State Board of Education under the guiding hand of our governor.

Politicians--not educators, not even concerned parents--are making these decisions.

AMY L. MONTE, San Dimas

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What a brilliant assessment of reading education in California by a self-described classroom volunteer, Virginia Riley. She developed these brilliant insights after volunteering in a public school for a year--insights that may never occur to “experts” in their ivory towers and politicians in their comfortable offices. Oh, to have a Virginia Riley on every school board in California!

VICTORIA HARRINGTON, Long Beach

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[Virginia Riley] is seeing the result of inappropriate classroom instruction still based on “whole language” philosophies. The example she cited of “honeysuckle” on the kindergarten vocabulary list reminded me of the word “chameleon” being in one of the first-grade stories my students were to read when we had a whole-language series.

She would be heartened to see the students in my first-grade class. They are reading, speaking, thinking and writing. They love learning and are proud of their achievements. The Open Court reading program that I use is what has made the difference in my students. Much is expected of them. But the expectations are the result of systematic, explicit phonics instruction.

JENNIFER CHARLES, Teacher, Irvine

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Virginia Riley’s comments are wonderful and heartfelt, and accurate in most respects--except a few. I agree with her laments regarding textbook subjects being inappropriate.

What I strongly disagree with is her perception about “the drive for ever greater educational achievement” and “greater test scores.” My youngest daughter is in honors classes in her first year of high school and getting A’s on her tests, both in English and math-geometry. Yet until yesterday she didn’t know the meaning of either “hyperbola” or “hyperbole.” I think I am robbed of my tax money, but she is robbed of much more. I could not have finished sixth grade with what she knows. . . . Excuses may be useful to bolster self-esteem, but much, much higher standards do far more than that. They confer productivity and job security against competition.

STEVEN BARTOK, Rancho Palos Verdes