And if they fail anywhere along the line, we condemn them for not meeting our high-minded expectations. Yet thirty years of research reveal that it's simply impossible to have an island of educational excellence in a sea of community indifference. If we hope to achieve quality in the nation's schools, parents simply must become actively involved, not in running schools, but helping in the education of their own children. Sam Sava, the distinguished leader of this Association, said it best when he said that children absorb as many unspoken lessons about love and work in their homes as they do the spoken lessons of the classroom. Simply put, in the Basic School, building community is the first and most essential goal, with teachers and the principal and parents engaged in common cause on behalf of children.
Language is, without question, central to all learning.
Our sophisticated use of symbols distinguishes us from all other forms of life, the porpoise and the bumblebee notwithstanding, and connects us to each other. Consider the miracle of this very moment. I stand here vibrating my vocal folds, and molecules go scurrying in your direction, they hit your tympanic membrane, and symbols go up your eighth cranial nerve, and there's a response deep in your cerebrum that, I trust, approximates the images in mine. Children encounter language even before birth. My wife, Kay, who is a certified nurse-midwife and has delivered many babies, including seven of her own grandchildren, convinces me that language begins in utero, as the unborn infant monitors the mother's voice, and then following birth language exponentially explodes.