Helping children to succeed: schools and parents must work together.

• Author: Riley, Richard W.

THE STATE of American education today is not about the latest ranking of schools or students. It is about whether society is working fast enough to educate and save this generation of young people and whether the quality of education has kept up with the rapid changes in the economic and social structure of our country.

Can a nation truly be connected to its children and committed to their futures when it allows one of out every five to grow up in poverty and often with violence? When children kill children, can we way we have listened to them with all due care?

Most troubling is the fact that the nation seems to be drifting toward a new concept of childhood that says youngsters can be brought into this world and allowed to fend for themselves. There is a disconnection that demands Americans' attention, one so pervasive between adults and children that it seems we all are losing touch with one another.

There is a moral urgency to our coming together, a need to act, to reconnect, to make U.S. schools the best in the world. Public education has many problems. Like any entrenched institution, it can be intolerant of new thinking, bureaucratic, and reluctant to give up old habits.

Nevertheless, it must be recognized that public education is at ground zero of almost every social, economic, and cultural tension of the times. Long before public policy is debated politely in Washington, teachers and principals directly have been confronting violence, the breakdown of the family, ethnic and racil tension, and the growing mismatch between the classroom and the job market. They are dealing up front with the education needs of new immigrants, the rise of teenage pregnancy, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and the AIDS crisis.

Yet, teachers and principals, parents, and volunteers do not regard the cause of education as lost. They see the resiliency, capacity for innovation, and beginnings of a fundamental shift away from the old assembly-line version of education to something new, exciting, and more efficient.

The time has come to move from the negative crisis of education to a positive solution. I want to stress four new connections that deserve special attention:

First, the breakup of the American family and isolation of members from each other, even in intact families, has had a profound effect on the education of children. Parents need to slow down their lives to help their offspring grow. Increasingly, Americans seem to live in a world of fax machines, car phones, and beepers--technology that is meant to speed up their lives and make them all more productive.

In a 1993 survey on violence in schools, half the students with below-average grades reported that their parents had spent little or no time with them on schoolwork. I wonder whether this oversight by some parents sends a subtle, but powerful, message to kids that they are "on their own" when it comes to their education and learning. I believe all parents, regardless of their station in life or level of education, have the capacity and obligation to teach their children a love of learning.

To that end, I have announced a new family involvement campaign to encourage every adult--parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and stepparents--to take a special interest in the lives of young people, to act as mentors and tutors. Moreover, businesses, churches, and community groups must extend themselves even more than they do now to help families nurture children to their full potential.

A second new connection vital to the success of American education is the reconnection with alienated minority youth. Today, too many young people are giving up and dropping out; growing cold with fury; and living lives of anger, poverty, and spiritual numbness. Too many Americans are separated from each other by the pernicious belief that kids who are poor and disadvantaged do not have what it takes...