The Blackboard Juggle
Lisa Davis' interesting article on the Phoenix Union High School District lacked the very same thing that the movers and shakers of today's educational policies lack--no teacher input ("Does Not Work to Capacity," September 28). Davis' story was based on statistics instead of on kids. Could that be the base of the whole problem?
It's true that they get 200 of us teachers together in a room, tell us that we have the future of the nation in our hands and ask us all to write down our hot ideas on the problems and solutions concerning education. They then take the hotly debated results of our discussions and blend them together to come out with: 1) all children are capable of learning; 2) the learning style of each child must be taken into consideration when presenting a new concept; and 3) not all children learn at the same speed. We could have told them that in the beginning, saving everyone a lot of time and expense.
What the people holding the purse strings of education need to do is spend a few weeks in the classroom watching the progress of the students and talking with the teachers (the only problem being that most teachers do not have much time to spend with visitors). "It" may not be about education, as attorney Albert Flores says, but we are.
Judith A. Moler
Phoenix
Thanks, New Times, for the poignant coverage of our dismal education system. New Times is doing a great community service in bringing to light concerns raised in its recent cover story. I have taught in various districts throughout the Phoenix area for the past 13 years. Through observation and experience, I am confident in my assessment of the "cancer" destroying the Phoenix Union High School District, among others. Parental permissiveness and dysfunctional family structure have a severe impact on many teenagers today, of all color and ethnicity; instead of participating in sports, band and glee club, and dance and drama club, many are busy having unprotected sex and becoming parents. What I find appalling is how our education system, in efforts to educate, almost promotes illegitimacy and teen motherhood by providing high school on-campus infant care in many schools. Phoenix Union has at least four high schools with these child-care centers.
Teen pregnancy is contributive to the Third World subculture developing in American society, as most of these teens cannot support themselves, let alone a child. Yet civic responsibility and the detrimental effect of out-of-wedlock teen parenting on the socioeconomic health of our society are not required to be addressed in junior and senior high schools.
Name withheld
Leaves One Flat
Peter Gilstrap's trip to Hooters (Screed, September 28): How funny. How insightful. How original. Get real! I couldn't tell, was Gilstrap trying to be cleverly sarcastic about his Hooters experience? If he were a good writer, possibly that would have been clear.
I want to be inspired and provoked when I read New Times. This kind of dreck leaves me cold.
Mary J. Mandracchia
Tucson
