LEND ME YOUR EAR: SCHOOLING DOESN'T ALWAYS GUARANTEE LEARNING

No one needs a reminder that educational reform topped much of our national news throughout most of April. Because President Bush held a televised conference on "reinventing" our schools, the subject rated prime time on TV and made the covers of weekly magazines and front pages of newspapers and occupied most of the space in the Southeast Missourian's Speak Out department.

Public versus private school funding was of some concern both before and after the conference, with targets aimed at funding parochial schools because they are religious-oriented and too antiquated to deserve help from the government: Their teachers are less-well trained, paid less, less caring, and have to make do without the sophisticated equipment needed to compete with public schools. So say their critics, adding that money is still the vital tool for teaching.

Never mind that Missouri ranks 17th in the nation in student achievement, though our teachers' salaries are among the lowest. Never mind that raising teachers' salaries nationwide has had little effect on the sorry state of education in our country. Teachers representing the NEA at the conference still insisted that more money is the only solution.

True, higher pay for teachers might attract some of our brightest to the profession but going for the gold only won't guarantee a burning desire to teach. Teachers attending the conference said nothing about teaching values self-discipline, honesty, integrity, responsibility, or the damage greed does to character and we heard nothing from them about the importance of teaching the basics. What we heard in addition to the word money was a consistent disregard for grammar and usage. Distinctions between singulars and plurals seemed foreign to them, and none knew that a teacher is a who, not a which. (They had no problem with "his or her." It figures.)

From a representative of the business world, we heard not for the first time that the high school graduates they hire can't read or write. Employers have to teach them how. Plainly, schooling doesn't necessarily guarantee learning.

Say what you will about the disadvantages of parochial-school education, it's common knowledge that our Catholic schools have always ranked highest in the land. I re-discovered this every time I judged a writing contest, year after year. Top honors always went to Catholic-educated students.

More recently, I have also discovered some pertinent truths about Cape's Trinity Lutheran School teachers and their charges. Last month, copies of thank-you letters written to members of the congregation were included in a newsletter. I found only two errors in the lot, both in spelling. Our two kindergarten teachers, morning and afternoon, wrote for their classes, though a few enterprising youngsters drew their names beneath the letters. From the first graders, we received:

Dear Members,

Thank you for helping us get the things we need for school. Thank you for helping pray for us, for supporting us, and caring for us.

Your Friends,

First Grade

P.S. We typed this on the computer by ourselves.

The computer is an Apple, a gift from Schnucks Supermarket, acquired with register tapes supplied by members. So much for not caring and having no modern equipment so much for not teaching basic English, to say nothing of the art of letter-writing, in the early grades. I've had requests from adults to write or correct letters over phone, and a friend recently asked me what has happened to "Dear" in the salutations of letters we receive today. Whether the recipients are dear to us or not, the proper introduction to a letter is "Dear."

I have no way of knowing how many parochial or public schools in the country are as blessed as Trinity Lutheran of Cape Girardeau. What I'm sure of is that in the final analysis it's the parents, teachers, and students themselves who make the schools, and that without values and serious application and intent, all the money used to fund education will continue to go down the drain.