Subliterate Superintendent

http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Wilfredo Laboy, superintendent of Lowell, Mass. schools, has flunked the state literacy test. He's flunked three times.

"What brought me down was the rules of grammar and punctuation," Laboy said. "English being a second language for me, I didn't do well in writing. If you're not an English teacher, you don't look at the rules on a regular basis."

It should be "were" in the first sentence.

Laboy, who receives a 3 percent pay hike this month that will raise his salary to $156,560, recently put 24 teachers on unpaid administrative leave because they failed a basic English test.

State law requires all teachers, principals and superintendents to pass the literacy test, but doesn't specify how many chances Laboy has to pass.

These tests tend to be very basic. I find it hard to believe he couldn't pass on the second or third try, if not the first.

No Habla English

If bilingual teachers are bilingual, why can't they pass a test of English fluency, asks Rich Lowry. Massachusetts is finding that long-time bilingual teachers have trouble expressing themselves in English.

Critics of bilingual education have long contended that rather than -- as advertised -- a way to ease immigrants into instruction in English, it constitutes an educational ghetto where students are taught in their native tongues and are kept from learning in English. The fluency debacle in Massachusetts is a stark demonstration of this critique.

In Somerville, Mass., the five bilingual teachers who took the test failed. In Lowell, 22 of 25 teachers failed. In Lawrence, 27 out of 31 teachers failed. The widespread failure to pass the test is a sign that bilingual education is a misnomer. It is really monolingual education, in any language but English.

In November, Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative calling for English-immersion for immigrant students.

Wrong Lingual Ed

In Madison, Wisc., a teenage immigrant was placed in "bilingual" classes taught almost entirely in Spanish. Kiet Tran, now 15, speaks Vietnamese, as his stepfather, John Gardner told school officials. This is the part that astounds me: The educated, English-speaking stepfather could not get the boy moved to English-language classes.

Finally, the family moved out of the district, and enrolled Kiet in an intensive summer English class, where he won "most improved" honors. He'll attend classes in English from now on.

In most cases, immigrant students have immigrant parents who lack the assertiveness and English fluency to make their case. A friend of mine made dozens of phone calls on behalf of her cleaning lady, who'd been unable to get her English-fluent third grader out of a "bilingual" class taught almost entirely in Spanish. Finally, pressured by an educated, English-speaking, middle-class woman, officials admitted the boy was proficient in English -- he'd been taught in English in kindergarten, first and second grade -- and let him switch classes. He'd lost half a year of education.

Basic Black

Oberlin High's black history course will be taught by a black teacher, after all. To save money, the course is now combined with U.S. government. The black teacher isn't certified to teach government, but he'll be allowed to teach with alternate certification.

A group of black parents had argued that students couldn't learn black history from a white teacher. A local TV station set up a discussion board that asked: "Should white instructors be allowed to teach black history?" One respondent said, "I'm a black English teacher, so I guess I was way out of line teaching Shakespeare." Another asked, "Who will teach Latin?"

Bully High

Self-celebration, not education, is the purpose of the American high school, writes Mark Steyn.

Schools today are not primarily in the history or math business. Instead, they teach "self-esteem." The late Bill Henry, in his wonderfully gloomy book about political correctness, summed it up in the banner fluttering proudly over the entrance to one Midwestern schoolhouse: "We celebrate ourselves." That's the spirit, kids. If you can't get a prize for Latin, give yourself one just for being you!

This is a novel approach to education. For example, the animating philosophy behind the traditional British boys' school is to reduce self-esteem to undetectable levels within the opening month of your first term. Incidentally, they're also excellent places to get homosexuality out of your system: They were Gay High before Gay High was cool.

Steyn suggests abolishing high school.

There's barely any pretense at scholarly rigor, and it seems an awfully expensive way of providing non-threatening environments for self-celebration.

Before the First World War, most Americans left school at eighth grade or before. If we resumed that system, those who wished could get jobs, the rest could take four years off before going on to college and becoming Doctors of Anger Management or Bachelors of Queer Theory.

But, if that's politically unviable, and if it's unrealistic to expect Mayor Bloomberg's schools to crack down on bullying, wouldn't it be more cost-effective just to move all the bullies into Bully High School?

There they can bully each other to their hearts' content -- or, as the educators would say, celebrate their identity in a purpose-built mutually threatening learning environment.

Actually, Bully High School is an excellent idea.

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JWR contributor Joanne Jacobs, a former Knight-Ridder columnist and San Jose Mercury News editorial writer, blogs daily at ReadJacobs.com. She is currently finishing a book, Start-Up High, about a San Jose charter school. Comment by clicking here.

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04/14/03: Iraqi Textbooks and the English language
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