LETTERS: STUDENTS WERE DEGRADED IN TELEVISION REPORTING

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following letter is a response to the recent series televised by KFVS-TV called "Making the Grade."

To the editor:

Do wonders never cease? Once again I have had to listen to outsiders degrade and humiliate the students of the school that I represent and have great pride and faith in.

The recent story on high school seniors making the grade has proven nothing about the amount of knowledge that our seniors graduate with. It has only proven that you can put a camera in a teen-ager's face and make him forget even the most basic facts.

Our students today are graduating with more knowledge of how to get along in the world that we live in, not the world that our parents graduated into. Our students know more about computers, math and science than many of the generations before us. That story did nothing to prove that we didn't.

I can ask many questions that would seem very simple to me that others would probably have trouble answering. These are questions that I deal with every day that others probably wouldn't even think about. Students aren't worried about what is half of 39. We need to know how to take derivatives and how to graph functions in math. Our world isn't dependent on simple facts that the story says we don't know. Our world is dependent on the complex values and thoughts that we couldn't comprehend if we didn't know the facts that were stated that we don't.

Nothing has been proven. Once again someone has managed to misrepresent a group of bright and intelligent students who are the future of this community to the people whose support we need the most.

My question is, where were the reporters when Central's scholar bowl placed in our district, when our knowledge mastery scored so well among the other high schools in the nation? Why weren't they in our hallways praising the almost half of every class that makes the honor roll? Is it really necessary to make our students look like fools, our teachers look like they don't do their jobs and our school system look like it's producing people who can't function -- for the sake of a story that doesn't provide any substantial information about the amount of learning that takes place within the walls of our high school and only proves that kids get nervous on camera?

ANGIE FORNKOHL, Student Body President

Central High School

Cape Girardeau