TERRE HAUTE —
I am an advocate of public education; I pull no punches about that. I have taught in public schools for 32 years, and I think it is an inherently American institution. I am proud to call myself a teacher, and I am proud that I am a product of public schools.
That being said, I will also say this: Public school teachers want school reform. Any teacher worth much knows that change is a vital part of the job of helping children learn. But true school reform doesn’t throw the baby out with the bath water; it doesn’t suggest that things are so broken that they can’t be fixed either. School vouchers and ending teachers’ rights to negotiate for working conditions, as attractive as they may sound to some, are not going to help public schools be better places to learn, and no one and no data will convince me otherwise. Perhaps you’ve heard Mark Twain’s words: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” All three are at work in painting a picture as to how easy it would be to clean up the “school mess.” Well, it’s not simple, and in many instances, it’s not a mess, either.
Our citizenry doesn’t appreciate the value of education as it once did, and until it does, I’m not sure we will ever see schools be as effective as we’d like them to be. We’re teaching children, not producing drainpipe. I wish more people understood that. If I could suggest a few changes that would help schools be better right now, this is what they would be:
• First, I’d like to see our youngest students go to kindergarten all day. I know that sounds simplistic, but it makes sense to me. Kids who are in school all day learn more, and that certainly has to prove true for 5 and 6-year-olds. It will take money — state money — but it’s a great investment in the future of our children, particularly for those whose first schools — their homes — are not education friendly. Personally, I don’t see how kindergarten teachers survive. I can deal with a classroom of surly, groggy seniors any day, but give me one 5-year-old who’s wet his pants or is crying for his mom or has a death grip on my leg, and I’d be lost.
• Second, if going to school for an entire day helps the youngest of our students, why wouldn’t that be true for the rest of them? Hoosier kids miss too much school, and they are absent too often without consequences. Schools should have rigorous attendance policies in place, and it will take money — again, state money — to see that those policies can be enforced. Teachers and administrators are not responsible for getting children out of bed and ready for school (or in bed the night before at a decent hour either). Every school system in the state should have the funding it needs to employ truancy and attendance officers and extra hours at school for students who need to make up for lost time. Ronald Reagan popularized the phrase, “Trust but verify.” That should apply to student absences, because whether they like it or not, many of these chronically absent kids will actually have to show up to jobs some day.
• Third, we should be expanding the arts in public schools, not hacking away at them with the budget axe. I know, that’ll take money too, but the arts — music and philosophy and painting and cooking and sewing and woodworking — all help make our kids better people, not just better students; they help equip our kids for a future of enlightening and entertaining themselves, and they help them think more creatively, which I believe helps anyone headed to the factory, the boardroom, or into parenthood. The testing mantra has been chanted long enough; take a look at how much time and money is being spent on that agenda. The arts are subjects that can’t be evaluated through ISTEP or End-of-Course Assessments, and that irritates those who advocate for and profit from such things. We are not creating worker drones; we are helping prepare people for a life in which they can think — or guess — in terms past a multiple choice exam.
Our kids need to read more and they need to read better. Reading will help them in every phase of their lives. Reading and comprehending good books and essays and poetry and short stories can, in the long run, help make our children more compassionate, more caring people. That may sound naïve, but it is true. So they can teach to the assessment tests, more and more teachers have to pass on teaching what our children should be reading and discussing. Money is needed right now for more reading specialists, and more teachers in all disciplines need training so they can teach children with reading difficulties how to read and comprehend what they read. And for goodness sake, please keep funding libraries so they’ll have a place to get a book, even an electronic one.
• Fourth, fund alternative schools. That may sound a lot like a charter school proposal, but it isn’t. Every public school corporation, and I mean even the smallest and most rural, should have at least one alternative school program going. They can even be shared between neighboring school systems. The one-size fits-all concept of education has never worked very well. Some students take more time to earn a diploma, more time to pass a standards-based performance test, or they may have one or more of myriad personal issues to deal with. Students should have an option within their own local school corporations. It will take money — state money — but right now there is an inequity in who can offer alternative education, and the state should help fix the problem, not by suggesting that new charter schools will take these students in, because I doubt that most will.
• Fifth, schools should be offering classes in civics and citizenship again. Another idea that has no immediate pay off? Maybe, but we are graduating more and more students who have little idea of what it is to be a citizen, and that puts us all in peril. When I look at old civics texts, which emphasized responsibility and manners and punctuality, I can’t help but think that there’s no less need for those now than 40 years ago. American Government — taught mostly in the senior year — is a fine course, but for most of our kids, that single semester class is all they’ll ever really have that is primarily concerned with how our governments are supposed to work. I hardly think reading accounts about the doings at the Statehouse will help them much.
And, while we’re at it, let’s have our kids take consumer economics before they graduate. Learning about the gross national product and stock portfolios is great, but if they have no understanding as to how to manage a credit card or balance a checkbook, they’re in trouble. As terrible as it sounds, that means we may actually have to hire teachers, and if we did, I sure would hope they hold valid teaching licenses. The idea that we should be sending more and more of our students off to college campuses after their junior year sounds a bit nutty to me too. They should be using their senior years to go to proms and play sports and take extra course work and to grow up.
• Finally — and I mean for now — let kids take trips to places away from their schools, to museums and symphonies and planetariums and places of business, and, yes, even to Indianapolis to watch our General Assembly at work. Field trips have gotten a bad rap for years as being lost days and playtime, and they’re dropping from curriculums like dead flies. I can still remember the trip my fourth grade class took to Vincennes; the bullet holes in William Henry Harrison’s house remain burned into my impressionable little mind even now. I learned more about Indiana history in one day than any book ever taught me, and I had fun learning it. If we’re going to invest money into maintaining historic sites — or, in the case of the Ernie Pyle birthplace, abandoning them — how about canceling one measly standardized test a year to send kids on a trip to one of them? A school trip may be their only exposure to such places.
I have mentioned money — state money — on every one of these points, and I know that the easy thing to say right now is that throwing money at education won’t work.
Throwing it probably won’t work, but putting it where it will do the most good just might.
Mike Lunsford can be reached by e-mail at hickory913@aol.com or by writing to him c/o The Tribune-Star, P.O. Box 149, Terre Haute, IN 47808. Read more of Mike’s stories at tribstar.com/mike_lunsford, and visit his website at www.mikelunsford.com. He is currently working on his third collection of stories.
Mike Lunsford
MIKE LUNSFORD: A lesson plan for public schools
- Mike Lunsford
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We’ve created a honey of a problem
The Dutch clover is making its appearance in my yard this week. A cooler-than-usual spring has slowed its arrival by a few days, but it is here for now, bringing the honeybees and bumblebees with it.
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A walk in the woods
I went for a walk in the woods one day last week after work. It was a warm and green afternoon, and a fresh blue breeze blew in from the west like a new spring friend.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘Dowsers’ provide hope more than science
My grandfather was a man of God. Many times I saw him, his right hand held high in the air at his Wednesday night “prayer meeting,” praising the Lord before weeping at the altar on his knees. And yet, he was a “dowser,” a “diviner,” a “witcher” who, as a favor, would grab a forked sassafras stick and find water for some poor unfortunate whose well had gone dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: As of today, it’s unofficially spring
Despite the calendar telling us not to rush things, I think it is all right to go ahead and say spring is here. The Ides of March has passed, Easter is coming soon, and I have already been out in my yard with a rake, getting my boots muddy. It looks like spring to me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Twain’s Sawyer helps us yearn for ‘wilderness of childhood’
My cousin, Roger, stopped in one day last summer for a glass of tea and a little conversation. Rog has lived an hour’s drive away for years and now, and besides summer reunions, I don’t see him nearly often enough. He’s a good man who has raised a good family, and he owns a healthy sense of appreciation for not only the life he has now, but also the lives we had years ago as kids.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Cheerful green of wheat fights winter blahs
There is a light drizzle of freezing rain tapping at the door of my cabin today. It is little more than a week before the words I am writing are due to appear on your breakfast table or work desk with your morning coffee and scrambled eggs. But I write when I can, and today, despite a full schedule of televised football games, and the stacks of ungraded papers in my briefcase, and a good book lying open on my nightstand, I am clacking away on a keyboard to the whir of a heater and the steady drip of my gutters.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On the simple joys of watching it snow ...
It began to snow about 20 minutes ago, as I write this, light, wind-driven flakes that fall silently into my woods as I watch from a window.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: On this day above all, ‘Peace on earth, good will to men’
More than a year after his wife’s death, the great American poet, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Remembering a Lefty Frizzell-kind of Christmas ...
My brother and sister and I sat around a Thanksgiving dinner table a month ago, shifting in our seats just enough to make our yet-to-be digested turkey sit a little more easily, and, as we often do when we get together, we reminisced about our childhoods for a while.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The wonders of wading in ‘The Iridescence of a Shallow Stream’
I have no idea how many times I have written a story that begins with the wistful phrase, “When I was a boy. ...”
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Little man who came to dinner changes feel of household
My 7-year-old nephew, Carson, came to visit us last week. That in itself isn’t earth-shattering news, for he often drops by with one of his parents or the other, the last time dressed as a ghoul for Halloween. But for a couple like Joanie and me, whose youngest child is now nearly two decades past Carson’s age, having a little guy like him in the house, even for a few hours, takes a bit of adjusting.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Reflections: a bit of red glass and our daily thanksgivings
I sat in the half-light of my old desk lamp a few nights ago, a chilly wind blowing in from the northwest that made me appreciative of my long-sleeved shirt and purring heater.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Growing up — and ‘old’ — with many mouths to feed
At our family reunion last summer, I asked my brother if I could borrow a pair of photo albums he had put together. Over the past couple of years, I have committed quite a few of our family’s old yellowing snapshots to newly cropped and digitalized lives, and I wanted to do the same with some of the pictures John has collected for himself.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Violets in October – a pleasant surprise
I guess I don’t pay much attention to the weather forecasts these days because it surprised me a bit when our furnace kicked on a few nights ago.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A library is a good thing — even a little, homegrown one
I grew up with libraries, and I can’t imagine there ever being a time when I won’t want to wander one exploring it like some bookworm-Balboa, finding an author or title that I never really knew existed before. Creating those “Eureka” moments seems to be a dying interest now that so many of us download and digest books electronically without ever really considering that there just might be some hidden gem we’d have liked even more had we simply stumbled upon it on a shelf by accident. I think those moments of discovery are not unlike kicking up lost treasure a mile from where X marks the spot.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The ‘soothsayer’ who came to dinner
I’ve had a good time opening my mail these past few weeks. Sure, I still received the usual junk about lower credit card rates and satellite television packages, but the genuine letters made me smile; most were about a story I wrote in late August.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: The agony of de‘feet’ has this writer on his heels
I don’t know if I can electrocute myself by using a computer and soaking my feet in a pan of warm water at the same time, but I am contemplating taking the risk. My feet, particularly the right foot, have staged a 10-digit rebellion over the past few months. After a half-century of commendable service, my pods are screaming to be taken in for repairs, a big inconvenience for a guy who works on his feet all day and whose “sole” form of serious exercise is putting one foot in front of another walking the local roadways.
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Mike Lunsford: Summer’s hidden beauty worth the wait
The great naturalist John Burroughs once said that nature teaches more than she preaches. I can’t recall a summer where that rings true more than this one, for that old sun of ours truly taught us a thing or two these past three months.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time to redefine the concept of ‘assisted living’
Although it has been nearly two months now, I can’t forget the few afternoon hours I spent on a hot June day this summer at a local “assisted living” facility in town. I had been asked to speak to a group of men there about Father’s Day, but for most part, the wonderful old guys who came to listen certainly made my day more memorable than I did theirs.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Observations on smooth stones and blue-green water…
It was raining when I began to write this. Although no one could rightfully call what we got this afternoon a “downpour,” it was nice to have my windows open to hear the steady drops of a passing shower tapping on my dry-as-dust deck and hard-as-concrete yard.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: This summer has us recalling the heat of ’36
It was “only” 99 degrees one afternoon last week when I decided to work on a backyard deck. With a jack and a drill and a little more sweat than I wanted to invest in the project, I went about the business of leveling its sags and dips a bit. The sun pounded down on my head and shoulders like a thug’s blackjack, but as I packed my tools and drank a glass of cool water under a big maple tree a few hours later, I couldn’t help but think about how lucky I’ve been these past few dusty and drought-stricken weeks. I have worked under this summer’s heat lamp for only a few hours at a time, but God help the roofers and utility linesmen and firemen, and so many others, who are out in it day after long hot day.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: We had no better friend than Andy Taylor
The world is a sadder place now that Andy Griffith has died, but at least we still have Andy Taylor.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Wading deeper into the subject of Blue Herons
Like a relative who has worn out his welcome, the hot, parched weather of this young summer has already overstayed its visit with us, so my wife and I have found ourselves walking our road later in the evenings to keep our feet cool and our backs dry.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Thanking two dads whose gifts have never stopped coming…
It is nearly a week until Father’s Day, but I have had my dad, and my father-in-law — a second dad to me — on my mind today. I wrote about both men just a few weeks ago, but I have set my mind to write about them again anyway. I don’t want this story to be sad; they both loved to laugh and wouldn’t want that. No, I just wanted to tell them hello, and to thank them again for what they still do for me.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Raising a flag for my father, veteran or not
My daughter, Ellen, and I stood at my parents’ graves on Mother’s Day a few weeks back and talked about how it couldn’t possibly have been so long since we lost them. My dad, for instance, has been gone for 16 years, and that is nearly unimaginable
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Time to become one of the boys of summer again …
Besides writing for a living, I teach school, and I’m not ashamed to tell people that I still love my classroom. I’ve been a teacher for 33 years, all of them in the same school district, and virtually all of them in the same building. But I also have to tell you that if the next few weeks don’t slide by pretty quickly, I may just let loose of the last thread of sanity from which I have been dangling for a while now. There are a lot of teachers out there who feel the same way.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: It’s time for us to get the real lowdown on dirt…
I have had my hands in the soil as of late. Two Fridays ago, I planted a viburnum bush, three chrysanthemums and a yellow poplar, not because it happened to be Earth Day, but because it was sunny and warm, and I had the whole afternoon to myself. The dirt I scraped out of and back into the shallow holes I dug near a backyard picket fence smelled good, and when dampened with a few sprinkles of water, it soon found its way into the deep wrinkles of my knuckles and under my fingernails. For the most part, I have nothing but good things to say about dirt.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: Make big money: Raise worms at home for fun and profit…
When I think about all of the crazy things my brother and sister and I did just to make a few dollars when we were kids, I can’t help but feel a little sorry for teens this summer as they try to find jobs in what is supposed to be a very tight market. Money, to say the least, was a rare commodity when we were growing up, but you have to at least give us credit for trying.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: ‘When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d…’
Had white lace curtains been hanging in the west window of my cabin, I would have had a perfect Wyeth painting to watch last Thursday. A gentle breeze was wafting through my screens, and the sunlight of a warm late March day was fractured by the window sill as it poured onto my legs and feet. I could catch the scent of lilacs as it was carried in by that wind, and it and the subtle melody of the chimes that hang just outside made me as lazy as an old cat.
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MIKE LUNSFORD: A report from the country as a new season brings sense of renewal
Regardless of what the calendar may yet say, spring has happened. It couldn’t have come too soon, and it wasn’t just last week and its windy 70s that have convinced me. I have been keeping a journal of sorts in my head for a fortnight now, stashing away reports of birds and buds and sounds in the crammed cabinets of my mind, all in a file marked, “The New Season.”
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