Posted on: Sunday, July 25, 2004

FOCUS
Blame parents for illiteracy

By Arnold Bitner

What are you doing to your children? How can you sit back and simply watch your children become illiterate and mathematically challenged stooges of the future? Where is your sense of responsibility? Where is your sense of pride? Where is your compassion?

Do you have any concept of what it is like to go through life unable to read and write, or to do simple math calculations like count out the correct change for a customer? Have you any idea about the kind of utter frustration your children are going to have to face throughout their adult lives because you didn't care?

Didn't care? Yes, didn't care.

Is it little wonder one radio talk-show host recently said, "Thank you for raising the idiots of the future so my children can drive their Mercedes to the drive-through window and receive their fast food from your children."

What has happened to cause more than one generation of parents in Hawai'i to allow the development of such a deplorable condition within the public education system? Which parents am I writing about? They are you, the average man and woman who has at least one child. It doesn't matter whether your own child or children received or are receiving excellent grades. It doesn't matter whether your child is in, or is going to go, to college. Why? Because it is still you, the politician parents, the Department of Education parents, the union parents, the nonunion parents, the executive parents and the nonworking parents who have let every child in the state of Hawai'i down. Don't blame lack of revenue for the problems with public education in Hawai'i. The problem began at home a long time ago, and it was allowed to carry over into the classroom by each and every one of you.

After reading countless newspaper articles regarding the deplorable state of education in Hawai'i during the past few years, after listening to one governor after another speak out about these same conditions, after listening to and reading about all of the things educators themselves have said about this same subject, after hearing the subject of the deplorable state of Hawai'i's public education being discussed for more than a decade, nothing has been done to improve anything except arguments over change or nonchange, and a greater demand for more tax revenues from the already overburdened Hawai'i taxpayer. What has all of this led to? A continued production of high school graduates and dropouts who basically have very little future in this world except to become a bunch of very frustrated, disgruntled, illiterate worker ants. This is what you, the parents of Hawai'i, have allowed, and continue to allow to happen. Why? One can only imagine you simply don't care. You simply don't give a damn because it has been, and is, much easier to use the television as a babysitter from Day 1 of your children's lives. The television has been allowed to form your children's study habits, work habits and their appreciation for what it really takes to accomplish anything of value.

Yes, perhaps you have taught your children how to have a great sense of self-esteem, but what good is this great self-esteem going to do for them if they cannot read, write or do simple math? What good is this great self-esteem going to do anyone who can't even fill out an employment application properly?

But don't feel bad. You are not alone where such a lack of thought about your children's future is concerned. Millions of parents throughout the United States are in the same boat, and the boat is about to sink into oblivion. How so, you ask? Simply put, if you have a nation of illiterates, you have a nation of followers unable to think for themselves because they cannot read and make informed decisions. You have a nation full of people who can only make decisions based on what they are told by someone else. This is the formula for disaster. Freedom and democracy? GONE!

In my book, Evan Dobelle, no matter how many toes he may have stepped on, no matter how many egos he may have bruised — and who cares if he didn't do everything exactly "the local way" — was the right man at the right time for the University of Hawai'i.

From everything I've read and heard, this man seems to have accomplished more for the state of education in Hawai'i than anyone in the past half-century. I have never met the man, but he seems to have an eye for what needs to be done.

You may be asking yourself, who is this man who accuses the parents of Hawai'i of such a terrible slight to their children?

Well, I am a former illiterate who spent much of my life thoroughly frustrated out of my mind because I couldn't accomplish what I wanted to accomplish, because my parents did not teach me proper study habits from the very beginning of my conscious life.

My parents were hard-working people. They were good people. My father was blind from birth and worked two jobs, one a full-time day job, and the other a full-time night job. My mother also worked full-time. With little or no time or energy to make sure I did homework, my parents simply took my report card with passing grades for granted. They didn't have the slightest idea I couldn't read, and that I suffered from undiagnosed dyslexia.

So believe me, I've been there. For the first 54 years of my life, I was there, where more than 40 million adult Americans exist today. That figure comes to 15 percent of the population of all of the people who live in the United States today. Yes, exist, not live a full and complete life.

So, who is at fault in this equation? Every parent in the state of Hawai'i, that's who is responsible, because every parent did his and her part in allowing this condition to develop in the first place. In other words, no one really cared, and from everything I have heard, read and seen during this election year, nothing is going to change.

Next year and the year after, and even a decade from now, thousands more of Hawai'i children are going to graduate from or drop out of high school and become a part of a growing horde of illiterate Americans who will suffer the frustration of their unfortunate predecessors.

As an educated adult, whether you are a parent or not, when are you going to step up to the plate and stop denying responsibility for any of this? When are you going to become involved, and accept your role in helping to change the course of so many innocent children's lives?

Arnold Bitner is a writer who lives in Honolulu.