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The scare all
started when a man called John Walsh testified in
Washington before the House of Representatives that
50, 000 children a year were abducted. To this day,
most Americans believe the story to be true. In
reality, The Dever Post exposed it as a hoax by Mr.
Walsh to gain sympathy and support for a cause that
he thought justified a "big lie." The Denver Post
recieved a Pulitzer Prize in journalism for its
efforts, but in the meantime, millions upon millions
of Americans did and still do believe there is a
child abduction problem in our nation. The reality
was that 50,000 children quoted to Cogress as having
been abducted was closer to 200 or 300. Most missing
kids, roughly 95%, were runaways and most of the
rest were "abducted" by non-custodial parents in
custody battles.
This whole notion that the
end justifies the means is used over and over in our nation as
an excuse for misleading Americans about the seriousness of a
variety of problems from rape in our colleges (remember the
statistic "1 in 4 women will be raped by the end of college",
Ms. Magazine, 1987) to global warming. The college rape scare
was later refuted by research done by Mary Kate of Kent
University who discovered that 73% of women defined as victims
of rape did not themselves think they had been raped and 42%
continued to have a relationship with the man who had "raped"
them. Global warming? Well, we'll see.
Another crisis, which continues to date, is the "drug baby
crisis". The National Association of Prenatal Research and
Education reported in the late 1980's that 375,000 babies are
born each year exposed to drugs while in the womb. Douglas
Besharov of the University of Maryland, however, pointed out
that the figure is closer to 35,000 since the orginal study
counted babies whose mothers ingested alcohol or other "legal"
drug at any point in thier pregnancies.
Schools are asked again to address such crisis. To do so takes
valuable class time and resources. When parents are unable to
discern the real crisis from the grossly exaggerated ones, they
go along with their school--assuming that we have checked out
the truth of the lastest "epidemic".
Let's take the issue of gender equality. The reports we all
read in the early 1990's stated that girls were getting unequal
treatment in our schools. We in the schools mobilized yet again.
Teachers were sent off to workshops to learn about and correct
their gender biases. We modified teaching strategies and
curriculum to create a level playing field for all the schools'
children. Yet a recently-published report on research funded by
the Metropolitan Life (The American Teacher, 1997) reported that
contrary to the statistics of the early 1990's, they found the
following: (1) Contrary to the commonly held view that boys are
at an advantage over girls in school, girls appear to have an
advantage over boys in terms of future plans, teachers'
expectations, everyday experiences at school and interactions in
the classrooms; (2) Minority girls hold the most optimistic
views of the future and are the group most likely to focus on
educational goals; (3) Minority boys are the most likely to feel
dicouraged about the future and the least interested in getting
a good education; (4) Teachers nationwide view girls as higher
achievers and more likely to succeed that boys; (5) Girls are as
likely as boys to aim high, to expect to have opportunities to
succeed in life equal to those of boys and as a group, are
percieved to be as competitive in school as boys; (6) Compared
to boys, girls appear more definate about going to college and
more focused on education as one of their top goals; (7) Girls
are also more likely than boys to recieve encouragement from
their teachers; (8) Minority girls are the most optimistic of
all groups; (9) Teachers consistantly express a more optimistic
view of girls than boys; (10) Teachers beleve girls are more
likely than boys to graduate from college; (11) Minority boys
appear the least focused on educational goals and the least
optimistic about their future work life; (12) Boys like school
less and are less likely to feel as positive as girls do about
their daily experiences in school; (13) Minority boys are the
least likely to feel that they are treated fairly by their
teachers, and white boys are least likely to feel that teachers
encourage them to do their best.
One would hope that this most recent report about girls in
school was a result of becoming aware of gender inequalities
some ten years ago and the efforts of teachers and parents to
correct the unequal treatment of girls in school. However,
because we are not careful about examining the research
presented to us, often by the media or by groups with a strong
point of view, public schools often go into corrective measures
only to discover years later that the research was falsely
reported to begin with.
When I asked my college students to give me their opinion on
the most current over-exaggerated "crisis" forced upon the
schools, fully one thrid of them saw the hype for computer use
in public schools as the culprit. Surprised? I'm not. Being in
the elementary school daily, watching our teachers and
understanding the real mission they face: teaching reading,
writing, arithmetic, science, history, spelling, geography and
the like, I know just how limited and how relatively irrelevant
computers are to that mission. When television commericals blurt
out, as they did this Sunday, "What about the (poor) child who
lives in a family that hasn't got a computer" as if computers
are some educational miracle medicine that can save children
from a deadly disease.
The truth, at least at the elementary level, is closer to
what was said in the article written only two weeks ago in the
Press Democrat: "What have we learned? After a decade of
computers in the school, after billions of dollars were spent on
the promise of reinventing education, and growing numbers of
taxpayers who have footed the bill to wire schools are asking
where the payoff is."
Yet the President of the United States again has as his goal,
computer in every classroom in America as if that expenditure
above all other will save our schools. What drive! How can we be
so gullible as to accept this hype and all the other invented
"crisis" that come our way and in the process, lose focus on our
real mission?
My wife teaches seventh grade English. She just recieved from
her school district a new computer with E-mail and voice mail,
but at the same time, can't get enough copy paper to teach her
class, so she buys her own and keeps it in her car trunk to give
to students. She teaches literaure, but is short of books. What
she needs is good literature and time for great discussions that
only literature can elicit, and frankly, to be free from
checking her E-mail and returning the increased phone calls
because of her district required voice mail. She simply wants to
be free to teach. Silly girl.
It's not that there isn't a place for computer in our
elementary school or legitimate concerns over gender, child
safety, drug problems, global warming, the spotted owl or myriad
of other social problems that have often been blown out of
proportions -- but let's not go crazy. We Americans must be
gullible -- otherwise why would there be five unused exercise
machines in every house in America? We'll believe anyhing and
buy anything!
Between the crazes, crises, and fads, it's a wonder our
schools get anything done!
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