Page 14 THE VILLADOM TIMES II • April 4, 2012 Spanish. Had he persisted in special education in northwest Bergen County, I suspect he would have learned to read to some degree, but his full potential as a student might well have been vitiated, and he would have cost the taxpayers several times more than he would have cost as a mainstream student. Paying for the mistakes made by academic professionals in other districts should not be part of the northwest Bergen County taxpayers’ fiscal burden. Volunteer tutoring is an option for those who are interested. We do need schools to build and maintain a strong America. However, across the nation, high school kids read at the fifth grade level. They are assigned books to make them nicer people, not to expand their vocabularies or knowledge bases. Measured against the rest of the developed, (and developing) world, American kids routinely test around 16th in reading, 26th in science, and 32nd in math. The kids who depend exclusively on the schools for their educations are the ones dragging down the national test scores – because the schools aren’t cutting it for them. “Investing in education” takes on a whole new meaning when you realize that the kids in the top decile generally got there because Mom and Pop or someone paid by Mom and Pop put the hard edge on their academic prowess, and that those kids voluntarily or otherwise submitted to the kind of homework that was not compatible with what mainstreamers consider a normal social life. When the cult of The Big Game and The Prom collides with the cult of 2400 on the SATs or else, guess who gets into the Ivy League colleges, top technical schools, and the top state universities? I have been there as a parent and as a guest lecturer, and I have a pretty good idea. Spending more money on education only works when, as a corollary, you can get rid of teachers who are not doing the job and expel those students whose classroom or playground violence makes it impossible for smart students to expand their knowledge and challenged students to stay afloat. Money is not the only answer. Money is not even the most important part of the answer. The parents who should receive unconditional respect are those who are willing to pay part of their own freight. Schools all over northwest Bergen County benefit from Parent Teacher Organizations, Home and School Associations, education foundations, or sports parents who give the schools the additional money for programs they consider important. Older people, single people, and those without children derive no benefit from school athletics, but if the parents want to pay for the equipment and the buses, the other folks have no reason to grumble. The same is true of the study of art and music outside the mainstream. The kids at the Asian Festival and the other ethnic celebrations at Ridgewood High School pay for their own costumes and donate the money they raise to good causes like tsunami relief and Doctors without Borders. They have every right to take pride in the cultures they support and honor at their own expense. They would, conversely, have no right to soak the taxpayers for the bill as some sort of guilt-ridden entitlement. The school boards have taken a step forward in keeping the tax increases moderate. Now they need to take 10 or 12 steps backward in reducing school costs so neighborhoods with good schools can again become affordable for blue-collar families with bright kids who aspire to teaching or the professions, and to older people who have not had kids in school for decades but want to stick around. Towns with bad schools attract the kids of people whose negligence leads to unsafe neighborhoods and streets and a stultifying level of local culture. Towns whose sole inducement is excellent schools may shortly strangle themselves as the taxes become so exorbitant that older people do not hang around once the kids graduate and nobody wants to join the volunteer fire department or the ambulance corps. We need to strike a balance. We will not do so unless we not only slow up on expenditures, but actually shift into reverse. The school budgets coming up on the radar appear to have the right idea: It’s best to stay within the state-mandated two percent cap, rather than seek permission to exceed that limit. Restricting the annual, predictable, seemingly inevitable increase is the right idea, but the budgets are still moving in the wrong direction. They need decrease a lot instead of increase a little. American Lockstep is the dance at the school gym: Education is the answer! Without education we will all go back to the caves, the tepees, the tenements, or the log cabins and mud-and-wattle huts from whence we sprang. Spending 12, 16, or 19 years in school is the only way to prepare for a job that can facilitate the American dream of a house in the suburbs with a manicured lawn that drains into HoHo-Kus Brook and floods Ridgewood Village Hall, a car for everyone in the family over 17 years of age so we can finish off the polar caps within our lifetimes, and the sort of professional skills that would leave our public health system crippled if we did not import physicians from India and Pakistan and nurses from Korea and the Philippines. Can there possibly be anything wrong with this picture? Is it better not to think about it, because nobody else thinks about it and you don’t want to stand out in the crowd? Northwest Bergen County represents a special case, because there are no really bad schools. The money we pay in residential property taxes – not to mention that most of our residents have at least one college degree and are educated consumers where education is concerned – protect us from the worst excesses of a system which has, in many locations around the state and the nation, gone absolutely wild. Take as a case in point a 10-year-old who recently moved from Hudson County to a northwest Bergen County town. The local school district tested the kid and placed him in the second grade, which means he was effectively left back twice based on his birth date. He was then placed in special education. The kid’s mother had a friend who was a college graduate from days of yore with a dusty teacher’s certificate, and the friend started to tutor the kid one-on-one. The tutor discovered that the child appeared to be of normal intelligence, even though he couldn’t read many words. The accredited non-teacher taught the kid with books from the public library and, in two weeks, he was sounding out words like “printer” and “inventor” in a book about Benjamin Franklin and enjoyed being able to understand an illustrated story in print without recourse to TV or movies. His intelligence, in fact, was now confirmed as approximately normal. The accredited non-teacher said she would keep up the program – at no cost to the taxpayer – until he was ready for mainstream class work perhaps a year down the road. When the accredited non-teacher asked the 10-year-old what he had done in school in Hudson County, she found out that he had spent all day in class coloring pictures. This, he gave her to understand, was how the school system coped with anyone whose home language was neither English nor The right idea in the wrong direction Area Mahwah resident Ariel Murphy has received the Congressional Award for her community service and personal development achievements. Murphy was recognized for various efforts that included spending over 100 hours designing safe and enjoyable events for younger children, including a Goblin Gala Halloween and a maple sugaring outing with her Girl Scout troop. She also planned a Girl Scout tour of Europe, including a hike in Switzerland and a visit to Buckingham Palace in London, England. She participated in the LEGO Robotics Team that programmed a robot to follow colors around obstacles, and refined her musical skills by practicing cello and joining her high school’s Select Strings chamber group and the Glen Rock Pops community orchestra. In addition, Murphy played on her high school volleyball team and trained to run a mile in 10 minutes. “Ariel truly embodies the Ariel Murphy with Congressman Scott Garrett. civic-minded spirit of volunteerism and dedication to self-improvement this award represents,” said Congress- vate partnership created by Congress to promote and recman Scott Garrett, who presented Murphy with her bronze ognize service, initiative, and achievement by America’s medal last month. “I know Ariel’s journey to improve her youth. Participants, ages 14 to 23, earn the award by setting community and become a better citizen is only just begin- and achieving challenging goals in four program areas: volning with the receipt of this ward. I congratulate her on untary public service, personal development, physical fitthis important achievement and wish her well in her future ness, and expedition/exploration. Participants earn bronze, endeavors.” silver, and gold certificates and bronze, silver, and gold The Congressional Award Foundation is a public-pri- Congressional Award medals. Glen Rock Pops member recognized