Editing 78-06-A5 (section)

=== Transcript ===
Think back for a minute to the lines of that old song--"School days, School days--
dear old Golden Rule days. Reading and writing and 'rithmatic, taught to the
tune of a hickory stick." To a modern day student that must sound as far out
as "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

Author-educator Solveig Eggerz has written an essay on "What ever happened to
Public School and Why?" She makes the point that over the past 10 years or
so our schools have been drifting away from the traditional concept of teaching,
toward some idea about shaping the students' emotional and cultural attitudes,
involvement in social engineering and contemporary fads.

I've been critical of the National Education association before in these
broadcasts and here I go again. The N.E.A. has published a document titled,
"Curriculum for the Whole Student." It declares --QUOTE--" the curriculum
must move away from an emphasis on retention of facts to an emphasis on the
processes of inquire, comparison, interpretation and synthesis." --UNQUOTE--
There is more, but that should be enough to give you the idea.

Miss Eggerz points out that a flood of so-called "progressive" innovations--
teaching consumer education, environment, minority affairs and others heavily
larded with cultural relativism have replaced "reading, writing and 'rithmetic."

It is this that explains how, in our nation's capital, an honor student--
straight A's and class validictorian--was rejected by George Washington University
because of unsatisfactory scores in his college board exams. He was pronounced
unfit for college level work. The Dean of Admissions said sympathetically--
QUOTE--"He thinks he's a real scholar. His parents think he's a real scholar.
He's been deluded into thinking he's gotten an education."--UNQUOTE--

Remember how often we've been told that classes are too big, schools need
more money, and so forth. Well, over the last 14 years spending has increased
from around $400 per student to $1400. Teachers' salaries have almost tripled
and in just five years public school enrollment dropped by more than 50,000 in
that Washington school district alone. Total national spending for primary
and secondary education is four times what it was in 1960.

In roughly the same 14 years student scores in the Scholastic Aptitude
tests--the college entrance exams called SAT's--have dropped every year, ranging
from totals of 50 points in verbal skills to 30 in math. The sponsors of the
tests said--QUOTE-- "the schools are demanding less and less from students and
getting it." --UNQUOTE- - Yet, they are handing out higher and higher grades.
Homework has been reduced (heaven forbid education should interfere with watching
T.V.). Playing hookey (now called absenteeism) is ignored and text books
simplified.

We'd better start singing "School Days" again--this time to the educators. 

This is Ronald Reagan.

Thanks for listening.
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