European Stars And Stripes (Newspaper) - September 27, 1988, Darmstadt, Hesse The stabs and stripes Page 10 columns William f. Buckley less Carrot More stick for nation s illiteracy the debate roars Over . Illiteracy the highest in the Industrial world we Are Lold by one of or. Dukakis men. We must raise teachers salaries a commentator notes caving unexplored the question of whether a particular teacher should be earning More Money answer perhaps yes perhaps that teacher should be fired. If it is Rue that there Are about 25 million people in America who Are functionally illiterate notwithstanding our compulsory school system and the world s highest per capita expenditure on those schoolchildren then something More Basic is wrong than meetings of the Republican or democratic High com mands Are Likely to uncover. It seems Clear that there is much too much of the Carrot in the Carrot and stick approach to the problem. We learn front statisticians thai the average Schook Hild by the time he reaches 12th Grade has spent 15,000 hours watching television which is about As much time As he spends sleeping and often the two activities arc indistinguishable. One third of manufacturing companies arc said to need to begin their training of la Weir freshly employed by leaching them to read and while. The temptation today is to blame anybody for anything that goes wrong rather than to blame somebody. There arc clearly three bodies to blame if one spots a 15-year-old illiterate the Par ent the teacher and the child. For those who have not experienced the problem of illiteracy they should know thai it can be an extraordinarily vexing problem. The Captain of a Schooner 1 owned was begged by a 14-year-old boy named Bradley to take him aboard As a Cabin boy. By Nelcy s greatest skill was fishing. Three lines would go Down Over the Side with apparently identical lures. Bradley s line would time after Lime come up with the grouper. You could ask him to fetch you a Jar of Ketchup and it would arrive its size and design memorized. What distinguished the summer with Bradley in the memory is that 1 had As guests on Board Carl Rowan a half dozen intellectual swashbucklers each one of whom personally undertook to teach Bradley How to read Goddam Mit. They left broken in spirit and Bradley happily illiterate. But the time has come to apply the Slick Here Are Concrete suggestions the student who at the end or the first Grade year docs not know How to read yields every afternoon of the week to his teacher. The teacher divides the time spent in the school during the afternoon Between mowing the Lawn scrubbing the latrines and practising Reading. The moment the child passes a Reading test he is released from conscript duly in the afternoons. Teachers who fait in the course of a term to instruct All but the minority who arc pathologically troubled must move to another department of leaching or even out of the school . Cards will be Standard equip ment among children even As they Are among College students wishing to go to a bar to order a drink. Any student under 13 is not permitted inside a movie Thea Ter until he passes through a ticket office and reads a couple of lines of print flashed on the Wall and for the killer no 16-year-old applying for a Driver s License need do so without giving ample evidence that he can read. We Are told that the written tests administered by most states arc frequently outwitted by students capable of memorizing answers that need to be Given and ticking them off in Correct multiple Choice brackets. And yes we Are overdue to admin ister literacy Icsis to aspirant voters. That requirement a Cal away with the frenzied Jacobi Nical winds of the 60s. It demeans the democratic exercise to suppose that a plebiscite can he garnered by consulting men and women who do not know How to read. Already we can Sec that the two presidential candidates Are preparing to make the Issue a National political controversy. Too bad because it ought not to be and the two sides ought not to disagree about the desirable approach. Ii is As simple As recalling that in the words of the philosopher who says a says b. Whoever says children should not reach teen age without knowing How to read says that such a catastrophe shall not be permitted to happen. If not then the problem is in their hands. There is nothing wrong with the Chil Dren one must suppose else the scientists would have warned us that we were Breeding cretins. It is not so. But we Are Breeding a class of people who blame others for the illiteracy of their children. Univa Ruidl by Lynda Callb Justice Skelly Wright was a Man for his times Alexander Pope wrote that an honest Man s the noblest work of i never knew a Man More honestly committed to the Constitution to Freedom of speech and press to racial Justice than j. Skelly Wright who died last month of cancer at the age of 77. In the funeral oration of Pericles thucydides spoke of the great City of Athens and said remember that this greatness was won by men with courage. For you now in remains to rival what they have done and knowing the secret of happiness to be Freedom and the secret of Freedom a Brave heart not idly to stand aside from the enemy s Onset i never met a Man More courageous than Skelly Wright or one who understood More than he that there is no happiness Short of Freedom and Little free Dom for those who Lack a Brave heart in times when Freedom is at risk. Most readers of this column arc Loo Young to remember that when judge Wright was fighting for racial Justice in Louisiana in the 1950s and 60s he had i to stand against not Only the Kun flux klan the White citizens councils the Southern gentlemen of Louisiana and other groups of acknowledged racists he also had to endure the Wrath of the people of his genl Rifici class and they shunned him mumbling traitor i spent a lot of years As a Young reporter covering the Legal Side of the brutal and often bloody wars Over Jim Crow in the 1950s and 60s, and there judges stand out in my mind As he kind of people Pope and thucydides were referring to j. Walies Waring of Charleston scion of an old and distinguished family who became socially ostracized and haled when he said the democratic parly could not bar Black citizens from primaries and other activities. Waring opened a Small door to political participation that has led to a powerful Black Vole that both Michael Dukakis and George Bush know can be crucial in this year s presidential election. Frank m. Johnson. Or. Of Montgomery ala., who Sal on the . District court Bench during the worst years of a bus Boycott police oppression in birding Ham violent racism in Selma and Jim Crow almost everywhere. Judge Johnson stood up to gov. George Wallace and his neighbors and ordered the Alabama stale Highway patrol to admit Blacks. Against myriad threats and pressures he decreed affirmative action and other programs designed to create Equality of Opportunity. And then Skelly Wright. He is known to Many primarily As the judge who ordered the integration of the new Orleans Public schools in i960. Bui Kelty was a Man for every Issue that went to the heart of the possible greatness of an Athens whether in Greece or Georgia. He opposed efforts of the Vietnam War zealots to muzzle the press and cheapen the first he believed fervently that no child White or Black going to a rigidly Jim Crow school would learn the things necessary to building America s competitiveness and greatness in this High tech Post War world. Wright saw and warned two decades ago thai this country was turning America s cities into powder kegs into cauldrons of desperate people turning to drugs crime and ultimately terrorism by leaving so Many millions of youngsters in what he called ignorance discrimination slums poverty disease and a employ his stances earned him the Label of White lib eral which in the recent years of resurgent racism was supposed to be the ultimate insult. But the majority in this country May yet awaken to the fact that Alexander Pope and thucydides had it right. What has kept America out of sleep decline was the presence of some honest and Brave people like j. Skelly Wright. No Refl an wac Syndicate the opinions expressed in the columns and cartoon on this Page represent those if the authors and Are in no Way to be considered As representing the Fie i of the stars and stripes or the United Stales government
