Backgrounds affect student learning

To the editor:

I was a teacher for 33 years and was not surprised that the "Getting Ready" study showed 25 percent of kindergartners were not ready to learn when they started school.

I challenge anyone to teach kids who already are mad, sad and bad when they enter school as kindergartners. What experiences while under a parents care could make a child that way? We all know.

Schools try to make up for these deficits but often are not successful. In the last few years students have been tested and the district report cards have been printed in the newspaper. With those numbers, you only see have of the equation. We should report how many students come from dysfunctional homes and separate their scores, because that has a great bearing on how much they learn.

Schools teach children who have a poor home life right next to those who were sent off with a good breakfast and lots of love. How a child will learn depends on that "Getting Ready" in the home. Most motivation comes from the home.

Now the federal government has come up with the impossible idea that no child will be left behind. Educators wish that were only possible. Sadly, it is not. Unlike factories, schools do not reject poor raw material coming in.

Another factor is the mobility of families today. The adjustment a child has to make after a move is difficult. It upsets the continuity of learning and the development of good study habits.

BETTY LANDRE, Cape Girardeau