Rhetoric Not Reality

PLUGGING THE newly-released Department of Education report on "What Works" in primary and secondary schools, President Reagan told us that the findings confirmed "the common sense of the American people." Unfortunately--and perhaps predictably, in light of the Administration's misguided policy on education--the report seems to have done little else.

The report enshrines in "research" that sounds more like rhetoric the policy of cutting valuable federal programs in both secondary and higher education--a policy which many of us, as students, have come to know all too well. In his endorsement, Reagan makes a mockery of what it means to provide for the education of the nation's youth.

His astounding characterization of the state's role in public education as "government interference and fancy gimmicks" would lead us to believe that we don't need a Department of Education.

If there's anything we don't need in this era of slashed funding, it's a Department of Education spending its time and money to tell us nothing more about teaching and learning than--as the department itself pointed out--what most experts already agree on. What we do need is sufficiently-funded and well-administered public education programs--like the successful Head Start program that the Administration has spent its energies trying to cut.

Admittedly, there are cases--like the decision to cut across-the-board subsidies of school lunches--in which the Administration can see itself as getting rid of "fancy gimmicks. But, the gross inequities between military and education budgets, as well as dramatic disclosures in recent years of wasteful procurement and contract practices on the part of our armed forces, illustrate that cutting education funding in the name of "balancing the budget" is hardly more than a convenient excuse.

The Administration that tried to cut funds for Pell Grants, Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants, state block grants, Guaranteed Student Loans and virtually every other federal education program draws lessons from the 65-page report that include the need for consistent school discipline policies, "hard work" on the part of students, rigorous textbooks, and regular homework. Translation: obey rules and do your homework. Nobody is disputing these values; but they should not be a substitute for instituting programs. And if this is the theory behind the practice, it seems a poor cover-up for cutting federally funded programs--especially those for the underprivileged, whose effectiveness has been emphasized by educators such as Patricia A. Graham, dean of the Graduate School of Education.

The report's moralizing is a tired replay of the Administration's inability to see that preaching middle-class family values is no help to those Americans who are denied middle-class opportunities--like a public education system with enough money to carry out its programs.

Dissenting Opinion

IT CERTAINLY WOULD be wonderful if the federal government had the money to fund all the possible public education programs that could benefit America's youth. Unfortunately, it doesn't. It would be nice if we could provide students with more than just the basics and hackneyed advice to "do your homework." In many cases, we can't.

We simply cannot afford to spend the kind of money we have been spending lately. In the last decade we have run up such an enormous deficit that we are now in the position of having to cut out not only the fat from federal programs, but also the flesh. Valuable military, social, and educational programs will have to be jettisoned. We have to pay for our past extravagence.

The staff editorial has a selfish tone to it. We are all students here, and obviously we have a lot to lose in Federal education cutbacks. But to ask that education programs be spared is to ask, indirectly, that other programs suffer more. All America will have to expect less from the Government in coming years; we students ought to tighten our belts with the rest.

Finally, it is amusing to hear the Federal Government criticized for coming up with a report that contains little more than "common sense." We should applaud the fact; the Feds have outdone themselves in reaching such a high level of intellectualization. Let's see more common sense.