The New Dare to Discipline (19 page)

Unfortunately, IQ testing has all but disappeared in many school districts. Because these instruments (such as the WISC-R or Stanford Binet) were perceived to be unfair to minorities, their use has come under increasing criticism in recent years. Thus, it is no longer “politically correct” to use them. As a result, parents who desperately need the information previously available from testing in public school settings now have to seek out a psychologist or counselor in private practice who can conduct the evaluation. Those who lack the funds to obtain this expensive assistance, including many minorities, are deprived of the help their children need. I regret the political situation that prevents school districts from evaluating their students with the best tests available.

But what about minorities? Are standardized IQ tests unfair to African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans? I do not think so. It is true that minorities sometimes do more poorly on these tests because their cultures do not prepare them for that kind of exam. But read carefully, now: The same cultural factors that affect the test results also affect school performance. Performance on test questions is correlated with classroom work. If we seek a test that does not reflect the impact of an inner-city culture, then it will be useless because it will no longer
predict
classroom performance.

Let me say it once more. The purpose of testing is to estimate how well a given child is likely to do in an academic setting. To create an instrument that will not reflect the handicap his culture will place on him, when that culture will definitely handicap him in the classroom, is to play games with “political correctness.”

If you didn’t understand what I just wrote, please remember this. All children with learning problems, including some minorities, need to be evaluated with standardized tests of intelligence. Until that occurs, we don’t know what the difficulty is and how it should be treated. I say, bring back the IQ test.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

A
Your question reflects the viewpoint of the old progressive education theorists. They wanted the school curriculum to be nothing more than “life adjustment.” They placed a low priority on intellectual discipline for the reasons you mentioned. Even some college professors have adopted this “no content” philosophy, as I mentioned in a previous chapter. They reason that the material we learn today may be obsolete tomorrow, so why learn it? I strongly disagree with this approach to education. There are at least five reasons why learning is important, even if we forget much of what we’re taught:

(1) As indicated earlier, teaching self-discipline is a very important component of the academic experience. Good students learn to sit for long hours, follow directions, complete assignments, and use their mental faculties. Accordingly, homework is relatively unimportant as an educational tool; it
is
a valuable instrument of discipline. Since adult life often requires self-sacrifice, sweat, and devotion to causes, school should help shape a child’s capacity to handle this future responsibility. Certainly, play is important in a child’s life, too. Youngsters should not work all the time. The home and school should provide a healthy balance between discipline and play.

(2) Learning is important because we are
changed
by what we learn, even if the facts are later forgotten. No college graduate could remember everything he learned in school, yet he is a very different person for having gone to college. Learning changes values, attitudes, and concepts which don’t fade in time.

(3) Even if the learned material cannot be recalled, the individual knows the facts exist and where to find them. If we asked a complicated question of an uneducated man, he would likely give a definite, unqualified response. The same question would probably be answered more cautiously by a person with an advanced degree. The latter individual would say, “Well, there are several ways to look at it. . . .” He knows the matter is more complex than it appears, even if he doesn’t have the complete answer.

(4) We don’t forget 100 percent of what we learn. The most important facts lodge in our permanent memory for future use. The human brain is capable of storing two billion bits of data in a lifetime; education is the process of filling that memory bank with useful information.

(5) Old learning makes new learning easier. Each mental exercise gives us more associative cues which to link future ideas and concepts.

I wish there were an easier, more efficient process for shaping human minds than the slow, painful experience of education. But I’m afraid we must depend on this old-fashioned approach until a “learning pill” is developed.

Q
Some educators have said we should eliminate report
cards and academic marks. Do you think this is a good idea?

A
No, academic marks are valuable for students in the third grade or higher. They reinforce and reward the child who has achieved in school and nudge the youngster who hasn’t. It is important, though, that marks be used properly. They have the power to create or destroy motivation.

Through the elementary years and in required courses of high school, a child’s grades should be based on what he does with what he has. In other words, I think we should grade according to ability. A slow child should be able to succeed in school just as certainly as a gifted youngster. If he struggles and sweats to achieve, he should somehow be rewarded—even if his work falls short of an absolute standard. By the same token, gifted children should not be given “A’s” just because they are smart enough to excel without working.

The primary purpose in grading should be to reward academic
effort
. Those who disagree should consider the alternative reflected in the following illustration: Joe is less than brilliant and knows it. In second grade, he quit trying to do well in school. However, when he reached sixth grade he was taught by a man who challenged him to do his best. He worked very hard to please this teacher, despite his problems with reading, writing, and arithmetic.

At the end of the term, Joe was still hard at work, although his writing had improved little and he was struggling with a third grade reader. What was his teacher to do with Joe’s report card? If he graded the youngster in relation to his peers, he would have to fail him. If he failed him, Joe would never work again.

Since Joe had done his best, should he receive the same grade he got last year when he sat with unfocused eyes day after day? I think not. Joe should be praised for his diligence in the most obvious manner, and given at least C’s on his report card. The teacher should quietly inform his parents of the bigger picture, and enlist their support in encouraging Joe’s continued effort.

Any other system of grading will result in discouragement to children of lesser ability. Even sharper students usually work better when they must stretch for excellence.

One exception to the “grade on ability” policy should be implemented: college preparation courses in high school must be graded on an absolute standard. An “A” in chemistry or calculus is accepted by college admission boards as a symbol of excellence, and high school teachers must preserve that meaning. But then, Joe and his friends need not take those difficult courses.

To repeat, marks can be the teacher’s most important motivational tool—provided they are used correctly. Therefore, the recommendation that schools eliminate grading is a move away from discipline in the classroom.

Q
My child has what has been called an attention deficit
disorder (ADD) that makes it hard for him to do well in school.
I understand his difficulty. But he brings home D’s and F’s in
most of his classes, and I know that will limit his opportunities
in life. What should be the attitude of a parent toward a child
who fails year after year?

A
Obviously, tutorial assistance and special instruction should be provided, if possible. Beyond that, however, I would strongly suggest that academic achievement be de-emphasized at home for the youngster who has a demonstrated learning deficiency.

Requiring a child with ADD or dyslexia (an inability to read) to compete academically is like forcing a child with cerebral palsy to run the hundred yard dash. Imagine a mother and father standing disapprovingly at the end of the track, berating their handicapped child as he hobbles across the finish line in last place.

“Why don’t you run faster, son?” his mother asks with obvious displeasure.

“I don’t think you really care whether you win or lose,” says his embarrassed father.

How can this lad explain that his legs will not carry him as fast as those of his peers? All he knows is that the other sprinters run past him to the cheering of the crowd. But who would expect a disabled child to win a race against healthy peers? No one, simply because his handicap is obvious. Everyone can see it.

Unfortunately, the child with a learning deficit is not so well understood. His academic failure is more difficult to understand and may be attributed to laziness, mischievousness, or deliberate defiance. Consequently, he experiences pressures to do the impossible. And one of the most serious threats to emotional health occurs when a child faces demands that he cannot satisfy.

Let me restate the preceding viewpoint in its most concise terms. I believe in academic excellence. I want to maximize every ounce of intellectual potential which a child possesses. I don’t believe in letting him behave irresponsibly simply because he doesn’t choose to work. Without question, there is a lasting benefit to be derived from educational discipline.

On the other hand, some things in life are more important than academic excellence, and self-esteem is one of them. A child can survive, if he must, without knowing a noun from a verb. But if he doesn’t have some measure of self-confidence and personal respect, he won’t have a chance in life.

I want to assert my conviction that the child who is unequipped to prosper in the traditional educational setting is not inferior to his peers. He possesses the same degree of human worth and dignity as the intellectual young superstar. It is a foolish cultural distortion that causes us to evaluate the worth of children according to the abilities and physical features they may (or may not) possess.

Every child is of equal worth in the sight of God, and that is good enough for me. Thus, if my little boy or girl can’t be successful in one environment, we’ll just look for another. Any loving parent would do the same.
²

After two years of investigation, Bauer’s commission learned that Americans in every age category were better-off at the time of the study than they had been ten years earlier. Both adults and younger children were found to be more healthy, better fed, and better educated than before. More tax money was being spent on children and more programs and bureaucrats were in place to address their needs. There was, however, a striking exception to this conclusion.

Teenagers were found to be considerably
worse
off than in the prior decade. Their many problems could not be blamed on government, on educators or on the medical community. Rather, Bauer and his co-workers found that young people were busily killing
themselves
at an alarming rate. It is shocking to see just how hostile the world of the young has become and how poorly they are coping with their difficulties.

Suppose the parents of yesterday could visit our time to observe the conditions that prevail among our children. They would be appalled by the problems which have become widespread (and are spreading wider) in our homes, schools and neighborhoods.

Gang violence and one-on-one crime among the young is an indescribable shame. Wandering droves of children and teens are shooting, knifing and bludgeoning each other at an unprecedented rate. Commonly, now, innocent bystanders and little children are caught in the crossfire, as bullets from automatic weapons spray once peaceful neighborhoods. It is not unusual in the large cities for ten or fifteen young people to die in a single violent weekend. Emergency units of virtually every inner city hospital are taxed to the limit trying to deal with the casualties of gang warfare now being waged. They call it “battlefield medicine.” The killings are so common that many don’t even get reported in the news. Only when the body count reaches record proportions do people seem alarmed by what is happening. Who would have believed in 1970 when
Dare to Discipline
was first written that this would have occurred?

Isaac Fulwood, Chief of Police in Washington, D.C., blamed the city’s “love of drugs,” when the homicide rate there set another record for the third straight year.
¹
He could have just as easily pointed his finger at City Hall. At that same time, Mayor Marion Barry was making headlines around the country (and a mockery of law enforcement) for his conviction of cocaine possession.

“The United States is breeding a lost generation of children,” proclaimed one authority, citing teen violence statistics compiled by the U.S. Justice Department. These figures showed that since 1983, robberies committed by juveniles under eighteen have increased five times, murders have tripled, and rapes have doubled. The leading killer of black males aged fifteen to twenty-four is now homocide; only car accidents kill more white youths.
²

“During every one hundred hours on our streets we lose more young men than were killed in one hundred hours of ground war in the Persian Gulf,” lamented Dr. Louis Sullivan, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services during the Bush administration. “Where are the yellow ribbons of hope and remembrance for our youth dying in the streets?”
³

No longer is extreme violence something that happens only on television. It is a reality of daily life for many of our youth. In 1987, gifted students in a Washington, D.C., public school science class were asked how many knew somebody who’d been killed. Of the nineteen students, fourteen raised their hands. How were they killed? “Shot,” said one student. “Stabbed,” said another. “Shot.” “Shot.” “Drugs.” “Shot.” All of this from thirteen-year-old children.
⁴

Similar findings were compiled in a study of 168 teenagers by researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. When asked about their exposure to violent crime, an amazing 24 percent of these Baltimore teens had witnessed a murder; 72 percent knew someone who had been shot.
⁵

Wherever one chooses to look within adolescent society, trouble is evident. A root cause for much of the unrest, of course, is the continued prevalence of alcohol and substance abuse by the young. A recent Gallup Report indicated that before graduating from high school, a staggering percentage of teenagers are hooked on mind-altering drugs of some type. Eighty-five percent experiment with alcohol. Fifty-seven percent try an illicit drug, and 35 percent get drunk at least once a month.
⁶
And lest those of us with Christian homes get complacent, there is not much difference between churched and unchurched families in the evidence of teen substance abuse.
⁷
It’s enough to make a grown man or woman sick!

Indeed, there is an ache deep within my spirit over what we have allowed to happen to our kids. What is it going to take to alarm the mass of humanity that sits on the sidelines watching our kids struggle for survival? It is time for every God-fearing adult to get on our faces in repentance before the Almighty.
We
have permitted this mess to occur! We allowed immoral television and movie producers to make their fortunes by exploiting our kids.
We
allowed their filth and their horribly violent productions to come into our homes via cable, video, CDs, and network trash.
We
stood by passively while Planned Parenthood taught our teenagers to be sexually promiscuous.
We
allowed them to invade our schools and promote an alien value system that contradicted everything we believed and loved.
We
granted profit-motivated abortionists unsupervised and unreported access to our minor daughters, while we were thinking about something else.
We
, as parents, are guilty of abandoning our children to those who would use them for their own purposes. Where in God’s name have we been? How bad does it have to get before we say, enough is enough?!

At the core of these individual tragedies is a moral catastrophe that has rocked our families to their foundation. We have forgotten God and disregarded His Holy ordinances. But it is our children who have suffered and will continue to pay for our lack of stewardship and diligence.

Of all the dimensions wherein we have mishandled this younger generation, none is more disgraceful than the sexual immorality that has permeated the world in which they live. There is no more effective way to destroy the institution of the family than to undermine the sexual exclusivity on which it is based. Yet that has been accomplished, deliberately and thoughtfully by those who despised the Christian system of values. Today’s “safe-sex” advocates are advancing that campaign with devastating effectiveness.

In 1991, the humanistic organization known as the Sex Information and Education Council of the United States (SIE-CUS) assembled a task force of twenty educators, social work ers and health personnel who were asked to draw up a comprehensive sex education program for children and young people. They prepared a forty-page report for local officials preparing sex education curriculum, entitled
Guidelines for
Comprehensive Sexuality Education
. The individual members of the task force are among the foremost molders of opinion and sexual behavior among the young. Take a look at what they advocate for those in their teen years.