That's a tragedy. It will continue to be a tragedy until colleges and universities train teachers to teach the reading process. If every college and univer-sity with an education curriculum will require at least one practicum in reading instruction through a structured, systematic, phonologically based approach, the results will be dramatic. This methodology, in concert with the beauty and creativity of the Whole Language approach so firmly established in today's schools, will most certainly turn the tide. But if educators such as Ted Sizer believe they are preparing teachers for service in a regular school, I think they're kidding themselves.
Compulsory attendance means that any school, public or private, feels like jail to the average kid.
Unfortunately, credential-based education, with its required courses, authoritarian judgments, and formal assessments, is inherently coercive. Our schools and colleges are not, as happens in a good home education, turning out the flexible, creative, question-asking, and socially adept citizens we need. It was not resolved by people reading the professor's learned discourses. It was not resolved by convoking an international peace conference and getting the two sides to sit down and talk. It was not resolved by sending in peacekeepers.