A retired teacher's point of view

By Gene Peterman

Avelina Lichtenegger, Raj Marasini and Carol Keen -- three recent guest columnists regarding the new math curriculum in the Jackson School District -- are all arguing about who has the best tree. If they would look around at all the religious and private schools with growing enrollments and building programs, they would see that the forest is burning.

Each of them is right, but the real question is what happens to the failures. Not one of them said his or her way was the perfect system in which not a single child was less than successful.

Logic tells this old teacher that in a perfect world it would be different. A child would start first grade eager and ready to learn. Whatever method used in each subject would be fine. Most would learn regardless. Each semester or year, those less successful students would be educated in a new system. Some more would learn with this new approach, and those failing would move on to yet another new approach. There would be system after system, year after year, until the students ran out of grades. Then we would truly be close to the perfect idea behind the law of the land: No Child Left Behind.

The minute we choose a single systemwide approach, we are doomed. We will have an average or even a slightly better-than-average school or year, but not a great one. A school with 500 students in each grade and a 5 percent failure rate will have 300 students (12 times 25) left behind. People learn in different ways.

In the old system, each class hour was 55 or 60 minutes. Math was one hour, and language was two hours in elementary school. Half of a six-hour day was spent in math and language. Taxpayers paid for reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic. History and science were bonus classes in which to use math and language. All other classes were extra things for the sixth hour. When I went to high school, that extra hour for me was sports practice.

Lately, in elementary schools, we have put more things in the day and reduced the time we teach reading, writing and arithmetic. Today, one-hour or 55-minute classes are still true in most high schools, but not all. When I started teaching, it was still true at the elementary level, but when I retired after 30 years, the class period was down to 40 minutes. Further down in the elementary grades the problem was worse.

Ten minutes a day less for a 180-day school year is 1,800 minutes or 30 class hours. A month of school is roughly 20 days. That's a month and 10 days less of instruction. Periods that are 20 minutes shorter means three months less of instruction in a school year. In simple, general terms, for every eight minutes less of class time, a child receives a month less instruction than the old way. Learning is hard work and takes time.

I've taught in the classroom, Sunday school and fire house as a state-certified fire service instructor. My old head remembers that Missouri ranks about 15th in wealth, 25th in student achievement and 40th in money spent on education. Whatever the current numbers, Missouri taxpayers get more than they pay for due to teachers like Avelina Lichtenegger, Raj Marasini and Carol Keen.

I have enjoyed reading their guest columns and feel there is hope for the future.

It always seemed silly to me that we build buildings that each year are full 180 days and empty 185 days.

Gene Peterman of Jackson retired in 1992 from L.J. Schultz School in Cape Girardeau. His three children attended Jackson schools.