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Page 4 NORTHWEST HERALD Section B Thursday, September 12,1985 Opinion Bureaucratic nightmare If you want something done right, don't ask the government to doit. . Another instance of government bureaucracy fouling things up, was reported this week when the state of Missouri announced that because of clerical error, a bill which had been amended to classi­ fy the rape between spouses a crime. That measure was not adopted, but the pursuit of parlia­ mentary procedures resulted in the foul up. The measure was part of a larg­ er omnibus crime bill. The section of the law covering the sate' stat-- ute was covered in the bill's title as being repealed, then re-enacted. However, a state senate clerk printed the section as being re­ pealed not re-enacted. This error slipped by everyone and the gover­ nor signed the bill into law. The state is waiting for its Su­ preme Court to act on the obvious error. If it doesn't, a special ses­ sion of the legislature must be called to re-enact the statute and re-pass the entire bill. -*• This is not the ordinary, laugh­ able bureaucracy error. It is a nightmare. Education dollars wasted WASHINGTON - More than two years have passed since the gov­ ernment exposed the scandalous state of American education in its blockbuster report, "A Nation At Risk." Yet the Department of Edu­ cation's research arm continues to squander millions of dollars on wasteful studies while higher edu­ cational priorities go begging. The agency in question is the National Institute of Education, and as one critic in the department bluntly put it, "What we do at NIE doesn't do anything to improve American education." NIE has thrown away more than $800 million in its 13-year history, including $52 million this year, on research grants of dubious merit and effectiveness. With the help of my assistant, Tracy Fletcher, I've* examined hundreds of NIE research grants that have been awarded over the past two years. Here's just a tiny sampling of some of the worst ex­ amples we've pulled from NIE's files: -- A study of whether graduates of cooperative education programs "feel more powerful" in their jobs than do graduates of typical bach­ elor degree programs. Cost: $25,961. -- A study of the social interac­ tion of preschoolers, ages 3 to 5, to show that using computers does not have to be a solitary activity. Cost: $168,000. -- A study of what influence sec­ ondary schools and social relation­ ships have on how students adapt to the workplace. Cost: $278,011. -- An analysis of teacher pen­ sions from 1967 to 1977 to deter­ mine the causes and consequences of pension "underfunding." Cost: $40,033. -- A study to determine the role that sex differences play among California third- to sixth-graders when solving math problems. Cost: $69,226. -- An analysis of the purposes and consequences of requiring high-school students to do home­ work. Cost: $13,647. -- A three-year study of why and how students seek help in schools when they need it, focusing on how students learn to evaluate their own abilities and how that evalua­ tion differs between white and black students. Cost: $752,096. -- A study of letterwriting in a bilingual school in Los Angeles. Researchers believe that much classroom writing instruction is done in "artificial situations" in Ponaid Lambro which student writing "is not a true indication of what they are capable of doing when motivated real and personal needs to com­ municate." The kids were asked to write letters, in English or Span­ ish, to anyone they wanted, but the iletters were not read or graded by teachers. Cost: $31,420. Does any of this in any way help to improve the education of our kids? The answer is a resounding no. In fact, many of these esoteric studies may very well have con­ tributed to the decline in educa­ tional standards. According to Department of Education statistics, one-fifth of the nation's adults are functionally illiterate. The 18-to-29 age group, which was educated after NIE came into existence in 1972, has an illiteracy rate of 16 percent, which is 5 percent higher than the 30-to-39 age group educated before NIE began studying how to improve education. A Senate oversight official who deals extensively with NIE says, "We know a lot more about math than in Euclid's time, but we don't know how to teach math any bet­ ter. We know more about reading, but we don't know how to teach that better, either." Tragically, as Nflfi funds more and more of these wasteful stud­ ies, other potentially important educational needs are neglected. According to critics both inside the department and in Congress, re­ search in phonics, reading, math and science remain seriously un­ derfunded. Says one Senate inves­ tigator, "The research has all been in the psycho-social area." Chester Finn, the new assistant secretary for educational re­ search, who is responsible for NIE, admits that much of its re­ search has been wasteful. "The American taxpayers haven't got­ ten their money's worth,?' says the former Vanderbilt University professor. Incredibly, however, Education Secretary William Bennett and Finn are making every effort to restructure NIE to save it from elimination, a move that will pre­ serve a highly questionable bu­ reaucracy that has done more harm than good to public educa­ tion. More on NIE in an upcoming column. (Donald Lambro is a columnist for United Feature Syndicate) NORTHWEST HERALD "Genius is 1 percent in­ spiration and 99 percent perspiration." Thomas A. Edison ROBERTA. SHAW Editor and Publisher LEONARD M. INGRASSIA MICHAEL E.MORSCH Executive Editor News Editor/Regional Me M ,/i% / '$Ln n "'.ifi i© i Unanimity on South Africa Here is what's happening among many conservative legislators in the matter of South Africa. On the one hand they tend to believe, with Mr. Reagan, that "constructive engagement is the way to go. On the other hand, many of them fear that How He Voted on South Africa will become, in the months and years to come, something on the order of the watershed How They Voted on the Civil Rights Bill. How Barry Goldwater voted on that bill (negative) has haunted him to this day. Not because the bill was other than what he said it was (dubious constitutionally) but because the bill worked, became popular, and retrospectively it was assumed that anyone who voted or indeed declaimed against it was insuffi­ ciently indignant over racial dis­ crimination in the SOuth. These are matters that aspiring young politicians take very seri- , ously, and understandably so. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is an exam­ ple. Another was the vote on Jo­ seph McCarthy, iris hard now to recall it, but the division over Mc­ Carthy in 1954 was the sharpest political division tn the United States since the pre-Pearl Harbor division over whether to get into the war or stay out of it. People who never fought political battles before, and laid down their arms the day after, rallied against the censure of Joe McCarthy. The Democrats solved their problem. (Yes, it was very much their problem -- probably a major­ ity of voting Democrats were pro- McCarthy; and indeed, John F. Kennedy, running for the Senate in 1952 from Massachusetts, asked McCarthy to back him against Henry Cabot Lodge on the grounds that the Kennedys had always been more pro-McCarthy than Lodge had been.) Well, the Demo­ crats in the Senate settled their problem by deciding to make it a party question: So everybody who was a Democrat voted for censure. That way, future recrimination could be dealt with by the shrug of the shoulder and the statement that it was a party vote, and one had to maintain the disciplinary obligations of the party. We may be headed in that direc tion. And it is interesting that we are doing so notwithstanding that the most popular president in mod­ ern American history, Ronald Reagan, until Monday had come out against sanctions, and this not­ withstanding his slide on the mat­ ter of the Krugerrands; and that the polls show that the American people oppose sanctions by a vote of 3 to 1. But the fact of it is that there is deep emotional movement against South Africa. William F. Buckley The movers and the shakers are almost united in desiring anti- South African actiOh. And although there are here and there politi­ cians who will vote their con­ sciences even if the end of the world threatens, these gentlefolk are scarce. When Barry Goldwater was asked in 1978 how come he had voted against the Panama Canal Treaty when he had been vocally in favor of it, he said with the candor that disarms all, "I got 7,500 telegram^gainst the treaty, and one telegram Hi favor of the treaty. So I am in \avor of the treaty." What is shaping up, then, is an absolutely overwhelming vote on sanctions against South Africa. Such a vote as, to recall another example, was registered against Mr. Reagan's premature proposed modifications on the Social Securi­ ty Act early in his first term. What will it be in the Senate? Maybe 85 to 15? And in the House,, maybe 400-35? " Now one wonders, given Mr. Reagan's repeated analyses on the subject: Why does he not stand by his position and permit his veto to be overridden? That is the advice of a moralist, which advice successful politicians manage to ... transcend. Mr. Rea­ gan knows, and undoubtedly is be­ ing told by his advisers, that to be overridden once invites a vision of political vulnerability that would serve him ill in many ways. The great political theorist Max Weber opined that the charismatic leader must never appear to be weak. Fidel Castro takes such advice so seriously as actually to hide Out at home whenever he has a cold -- Great Men Do Not Suffer Mere Colds. Mr. Reagan is not running a heliocentric administration. But neither does he want to advertise that, with impunity, the Congress can override him. If you are looking for the poi­ gnant angle to all of the above, it is this. The probability that sanctions will be decisively effective in bringing about what the liberals now want (one-man one-vote) is about the same as that the govern­ ment of Israel will hand over East Jerusalem to the Arabs. Then therefore other things will be brought on by the sanctions. And these, which will retroactively bear out the reasoning of Ameri­ can conservatives, whose instincts are moderate and progressive rather than confrontational, will never be vindicated in public opin­ ion, which does not go in for retro­ active apologies. (William Buckley is a columnist for Universal Press Syndicate) Reader Forum STEVEN H. HUNTER Marketing Director KAREN A. ANDROS Saturday Editor DENNIS M. AAcNAMARA Editorial Page Editor RONALD L. STANLEY Circulation Director School board defense To the Editor: Once again, reading the editorials of the Crystal Lake Herald takes on a local flavor. This always seems to happen when the word referendum is printed somewhere in the paper. As someone who does not attend the public meetings of the Board of Education, I will not attempt to criticize their actions. What I feel deserves the most criticism is the sudden emergence of all experts at the time that these referendums are presented. It is somewhat similar to the Monday morning quarterback, who has all weekend to diagnose the decision the coach and players had to make in less than 30 seconds. While the school board and administration have more time than 30 seconds, they still must make a decision based on facts and circumstances at that time. The requirements that the state and federal governments put on all enterprises, whether they be business or education, can boggle the mind. The peopley unning our schools m u s t c o m p r y w i t h t h e s e requirements, which is no easy task. It sounds much easier to attend an occasional meeting and criticize, than to become involved on a day-to­ day basis. The point is, anyone that criticizes what the present school board and administration is doing, should run for the school board. If these critics are as qualified as they sound, they should have no problem getting people to support their campaigns and elected to the positions, thus saving (in their minds) the school system. I look forward to the next school board election, with all the experts out there. It should be quite interesting. I t h i n k t h e b o a r d a n d administration deserves a word of thanks, as do our teachers, and we the citizens and parents should be thankful we do not have the annual Chicago fiasco here in Crystal Lake. And all of us involved citizens, school board, and teachers realize that nothing is perfect and all of us can improve. Why heck, I may find the courage to attend one of these school board meetings and become a Monday morning expert myself. Then I can write more editorials in the local paper. Kenneth W. Martin, Sr. Crystal Lake Peterson on the mark To the Editor: Twice in roughly a week, Dick Peterson has hit the mark, first on Aug. 29, 1985, with his column "Forget Lotto, sue for your millions," and, more recently, with his column on the tribulations of being an Iowa football fan. With regard to the first column, Mr. Peterson has captured well the appearance that many personal injury claims give. To say that anyone who brings a lawsuit to recover from personal injuries is acting frivolously, would obviously be unfair (and Mr. Peterson does not suggest this), but both the legal and the general press seem filled these days with claims that lawyers and laymen alike, could characterize as nothing but preposterous. Whether the same mentality that keeps Lotto in business also keeps lawyers in business is hard to say, but Mr. Peterson has astutely identified a disturbing trend. On matters of perhaps less consequence, Mr. Peterson will simply have to learn to deal with the frustrations of cheering for a winning team. I am a fan of the football teams at both Northwestern University and the University of Nebraska and, while I take great pride in Nebraska's success, I find it often more fun to root for Northwestern. Any game Northwestern wins is cause for celebration, while any game Nebraska loses is cause for anguish. Still, I am confident that Mr. Peterson will endure. If all else fails, he can becomei a_Cyb.s fan, David L. Applegate Chicago >