Stop mainstreaming

Dear Editor,

I've been reading with some humor the ongoing discussion over how children are taught in school today. I find it humorous due to the fact that when I went to school, (sometime in the dark ages), there were in place some very simple methods for doing things.

If a child was having trouble grasping a subject, be it reading, math, science or whatever, that child was put in a class with others who were having the same problems. Those who had no problems were kept in the main body and those who were able to excel were placed in accelerated learning programs which challenged them over and above what their peers were doing.

Of course, the parents and teachers couldn't go running to some "shrink" or psychotic psychologist and ask for drugs to slow down the above average student to the point that he or she had no further ability to excel.

That all came to a halt when some group decided that all people with disabilities should be mainstreamed in the late '60s and early '70s. They did away with a lot of the special ed classes and put all of the kids in the same grade, even if the kids couldn't do the work, or found the work too boring for their mental ability. In comes the good doctor with a plethora of mind altering drugs to slow down the normal and gifted kids so that they stayed on the same level as those who weren't quite as capable of doing the work. This lead to the "dumbing down" of America, and that is evident in everything from commercials on the TV to some of the programs that are available for viewing. It seems that there is nothing much left to challenge a person's mind. Granted, there is sudoku, celebrity ciphers and cross word puzzles for those of us who can do them. Other than that, it can be mindless.

I enjoy going thru the paper just to see how many times I can find the word "there" used in place of the words "they're and their." Spell check on a computer does a fine job as far as it goes, but it can't tell the writer that the word "there" means location, as in "over there," or that "they're is used as a contraction for "they are," or that "their" is a possessive pronoun. I use these because they are the ones that catch my eye the quickest and seem to be the ones most often misused, although there are others that pop out from time to time. Another thing that catches my eye is the inability of the writer to properly break a word. The wrap function on a computer is fine for writing columns that have to be perfect, but if a reader is unable to reconstruct the word in his or her mind, it is meaningless. As far as I'm concerned, put the kids back in the classes where they belong, remedial, regular or accelerated and quit worrying about a national standard. No two people learn in the same way or at the same speed. Also, quit doping the kids, challenge their minds instead and you'll be money ahead.

Robert A. Yost

McCook