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Did you know?
By James T. Hammond
jhammond@scbiznews.com
The Big Number for the summer of 2009 is 54%. For the first time, more than half the state’s 700,000 students in public schools are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches.
Clearly the worsening plight of children in South Carolina is exacerbated by the worst recession in a generation, the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate – the highest in the South – and the worst decline in state tax revenues in a half-century.
Those who would give taxpayer resources to private schools through state-funded vouchers only show their contempt for the children who do not control their own destiny. Legions of poor South Carolina children will never have access to private schools, with or without vouchers. To abandon public schools would be to abandon a large and growing sector of our population who, with a helping hand from dedicated school teachers and the rest of us, can become successful citizens and productive workers.
I constantly hear stories about public school teachers who made a difference in someone’s life. Former Gov. Dick Riley and Michelin North America President Dick Wilkerson were telling such stories recently when Wilkerson announced a plan for each Michelin facility in South Carolina to adopt a school and to contribute volunteer time to enrich the lives of children whose homes may not have books, or parents who can’t or won’t read to them.
I have such a story. When my online bank asks me the screening question “Who was your favorite teacher,” I always answer Evelyn. I first met her in the middle of my junior year, when she came to replace a departing English teacher at Blue Ridge High School. She was only about four years older than I was, and so tiny the students in the back of the room had to sit up very straight to see her over the students in the front of the room. Evelyn was a very demanding teacher. She expected everyone to do their best. I was not doing my best that year, and that caused some conflict between us.
When I returned the next fall for my senior year, I realized to my chagrin that I was again assigned to Evelyn’s class. Not wanting to spend my senior year in a constant fight with this little firebrand, I decided I’d try to satisfy her with better work. She taught me to love literature and writing. It’s no small irony I’ve spent my adult life as a writer. And she insisted that I apply for admission to college. I only sent in one application, and that one in May, well beyond the usual deadlines. But I was admitted, and that extra push from Evelyn set me on a path that made my life richer in uncountable ways.
I was fortunate to have parents who understood the value of having books in the home, and of reading to me as a small child. Even though our small country elementary school did not have its own library, the school district understood the value of books and distributed them on a regular basis on the “Bookmobile.” My favorite part of the week was always the arrival of a fresh cartoon of books to replenish those I’d consumed in the preceding week.
Yet, educators well know the tragedy of poor homes that have no books, nor parents willing or able to read to small children.
“Many studies show language acquisition is slow among children from poor households, and that irreparably holds back their language skills,” state Superintendent of Education Jim Rex told me recently. The cost of failing to expose children to books or to read to them: those children start first grade with a vocabulary of 600-800 words, compared with children from affluent homes have that starting vocabulary of 1,400-1,800 words.
“We spend 12 years trying to make up for that,” Rex says.
Slight differences in the first grade grow into huge gaps as the children rise through the grades. Poor children stall out or regress in their academic skills during the summer, while students exposed to academic enrichment summer camps race ahead.
“It’s like running a race,” Rex said. “Athletes who train 12 months are going to defeat those who take three months off.”
Michelin’s commitment to mentor schools and students in struggling circumstances is important because it is a loud and visible endorsement of a public education. It will give a few thousand students a window on possibilities they might not otherwise consider for themselves.
Michelin, and Dick Wilkerson, are challenging other companies and individuals to do the same, to give their time to cause one child at a time to consider a life of which they have not dreamt.
The current economic crisis is shoving more and more families into poverty. These are not people who will ever be able to send their children to private schools, vouchers or not. These families and their children will be condemned to generations of poverty if we abandon our commitment to a public education for everyone.
Such an outcome will produce a state that few of us will want to live in. Put simply, it’s bad for business.
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