Head in the sand

As an educator, I cannot help but be appalled by the head-in-the-sand attitude displayed by elementary school principal Keith Welch. Whether he admits it or not, education is in a state of crisis.

I have university students who make more basic writing errors (spelling, grammar, punctuation) in English than my intermediate Spanish students, some of whom have studied Spanish for only a year and a half, make when writing in a foreign language. Those same students are immeasurably hobbled in their attempt to master a foreign language because they do not know how to spell or to apply grammatical rules in their own language.

Indeed, the high school in the district where Mr. Welch lives voted not to teach English grammar to its students at all! One can only wonder what such teachers believe is going to happen to their students after they leave the make-believe-land of elementary and secondary schools.

Only after we begin to accept the sorry evidence of educational failure under our very noses will we begin to regain the ground, both intellectual and economic, that we are losing every day. Contrary to Mr. Welch’s selective use of data from international comparative studies, even our very best students lag behind the best students in other countries. So, yes, let us support our schools and work to improve them, but let us also admit that there are severe problems to be solved. Dr. Theresa Ann Sears Bangor