The Tribeca Trib
October, 1997
Letters
To the editor:
Talk to parents whose kids have just started middle school and the big question is how is he or she doing with the homework? But talk to teachers in these schools and they want to know why doesn't my child know how to spell? Why doesn't he know his multiplication tables inside and out? Why was he never taught division? Why doesn't he know something as simple as the form for writing a letter?
The teachers who spoke to us at the first parent-teacher conference bore out all the fears and complaints by parents who wrote to The Trib. How unfair it is that our children must now compete against children who are, yes, better educated, than our own. How unfair for children to have to start learning basics that it would have been so easy and fun for them to learn when they were much younger.
I have a younger child in our local schools. Do I have to send her to a tutor? Who is making educational policies in our schools? Would they let their children be so uneducated? I think not.
- Name withheld by request
Reproduced with permission from the Tribeca Trib.
Return to the NYC HOLD main page or to the News page or to the Letters and Testimony page.