According to a recent survey, there is widespread agreement among the American people on a number of important educational issues. On some issues, the public supports education reformers, governors and businessmen, but there are also huge differences. Focus groups revealed that parents were not merely responding to media coverage of violence but to their own children's experiences. Safety is another major concern. Most Americans are not convinced that schools adequately enforce the standards of behavior and cooperation that allow teachers to teach and children to learn.
People see order as a prerequisite to learning.
The third major concern is that there's not enough emphasis on the basics, such as reading, writing and math. The public is not saying that students shouldn't learn more than the basics or shouldn't get challenging courses, but there's great suspicion of reformers who look down on the basics and emphasize team skills, critical thinking and higher-order skills. The message the public is sending is loud and clear. Americans favor making learning enjoyable and reject spanking. But they're wary of some of the new methods proposed by reformers, such as allowing students to use calculators before they can add, subtract, multiply and divide mentally or to write compositions without paying attention to spelling and grammar.