Tony reconsiders
To the editor: Let me try this again, like the good dog who chases a skunk night after night and gets peed on every time. The difference here is that this dog is trying to save that skunks life. The Delaware Valley students and parents who attack me know not what they do: I am their greatest advocate. Last weeks correspondent, for example, talks about the DV students who want to attend Dartmouth but end up at Kutztown (my metaphor) because they cant afford the better college (his reasoning). Astonishing, it is to me, that someone who has gone through four years of high school and the college admissions process at Delaware Valley can come away not knowing that the top universities in this country -- Dartmouth and the other Ivies included -- have needs blind admissions. Finances are not a consideration; acceptance is conferred irrespective of a familys ability to fund that top education, and money is provided by the acceptor when necessary. Gee, you could have had a V-8! (Ancient Ivy Eight, that is.) He illustrates my point. Delaware Valleys administrators didnt attend those schools, nor did its counsellors or most of its teachers, too many of whom were hired for their coaching experience. Is Bob Goldsack going to provide that crucial information? What about the other semi-literates on our school board? Where is the educational leadership coming from? The president of Pike Countys Chamber of Commerce? The Pike County Builders Association? Money and sports seem to be our only values. Where are Nicole Ritchie and Pat Robertson? Thus mediocrity becomes institutionalized. On the other hand, of course you had a good time at DV. These were your teenage years: you made friends, learned to drive, went through puberty, partied, did games and rallies, got crazy, maybe drank and smoked a little, maybe learned about safe sex, or at least the rainbow effect. Im not attacking or talking about any of that; Im in an entirely different channel. According to Standard & Poors, average instructional expenditures per student in Pennsylvania are over 54% of school budgets. If your recent correspondents are correct, Delaware Valley is spending only about 42% on direct eductation, only three out of every seven dollars available. Obviously, our administrators have found areas more important than education and are willing to devote substantial sums to those other costs. One can only wonder how those charged with educating our kids can justify such low educational spending, especially in a district that consistently records below-average performance on standard measures. Am I the only one who thinks somethings wrong with this picture? (see schoolmatters.com) Teacher turnover, another important indicator, is disastrously high at Delaware Valley. Of the twelve teachers in my department in 1995, only one remains. Another, shot himself during a holiday break, and two later drank themselves to death. Mrs. Wong-Bushby and Mr. Merow, two great teachers, left. Most of us wanted desperately to get away from the place, and particularly from Tom Finan. No one enjoys working for a bully, especially one with an anti-bullying program. One hopes, however, that attacking the messenger of inconvenient facts is not a strategy being taught in our schools. It certainly didnt work out well for the Bush Administration after its felonious outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, or for Louis Scooter Libby, who is facing 30 years in federal prison for his role in the cover-up of that outing. No matter what we say or how we phrase it, the distortion of facts cannot overcome their meaning; PR means less than reality. I think George Orwell wrote a book about this, and I think George Bush and Dick Cheney are living it. Reformers always expect a modicum of opprobrium -- as did the Pythagoreans when they discovered irrational numbers and fled fate, like Aeneas, to the shores of Italy (...ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, as Virgil put it), or Giordano Bruno, burned at the stake, Martin Luther, excommunicated, Galileo, censured by the Church in Rome for telling the truth about planetary motion, or Dr. Goldberg, exiled from Alabama for contradicting state dogma about pellagra being contagious rather than a result of poor diets in that states institutions, which he proved and demonstrated. Are those villagers wielding torches I see coming through the woods? Go ahead, have at me. But be careful; you may illustrate my point, as did last weeks correspondent. This is the beauty of hollow school spirit. Go DV! Go Tom! Go Candi! (Please.) But congratulations to this years grads and to the few who get a useful education here. Almost 5000 dont. We should have huge recognition for those who teach and those who manage to learn in the face of the withering difficulties in public education -- the teachers who persevere and excel (Mr. DeVizia and Ms Hess come to mind), and the students who will be leaders no matter where they are or what they do. The first step on the path to reform is recognition that change is desired. Mere defensiveness denies all possibilities for course corrections. Everyone knows that smaller classes enhance learning, that more contact hours enforce it, that fewer interruptions and disruptions allow it. Is this too hard? Tony Splendora Milford