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5 Ivy Lane, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 • Telephone (609) 452-1780 • Fax (609) 520-1712

M E M O R A N D U M

TO: Jay German

FROM: Jan Hempel

SUBJECT: May 14, 1994 Claremont Speech by Ernest L. Boyer

DATE: June 13, 1994

Here is the approved version of the speech Dr. Ernest Boyer delivered at Claremont University on May 14, 1994.

Nonexclusive permission is hereby granted for you to reproduce part or all of this speech for your publication, although it is our understanding that at this point your intent is to paraphrase the main ideas Dr. Boyer presents. Should you publish the speech, would you please send a copy of your publication with the speech to me for our records?

Thank you veiy much for your interest in the work of Dr. Boyer and the Carnegie Foundation.

6 - /'i

NEW STUDENTS, NEW SCHOOLS

Ernest L. Boyer President

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching

Claremont Graduate School Commencement Claremont University Claremont, California

May 14, 1994

Thank you very much. Kay and I are delighted to join you on this elegant

occasion and I'm especially pleased to become an honorary member of this

distinguished institution, along with Linda Darling-Hammond and Tom Payzant,

colleagues for whom I have profound respect and admiration.

We're also pleased to be here with John and Billie Maguire, whose lives have

been, for us, such an inspiration and whose friendship we deeply cherish. May I also

thank the faculty and Board of Fellows of Claremont Graduate School for your

generous recognition.

And I surely wish to extend a special word of congratulations to all the

graduates for completing with such success your academic program at one of the

world's most outstanding higher learning institutions.

I.

This afternoon I've been asked to talk briefly about the nation's schools and

perhaps the best place to begin is with the nation's first education goal, recently

ratified by Congress, which declares that by the year 2000 all children in America will

come to school "ready to learn."

This is, I realize, an audacious, hugely optimistic proposition. But dreams can

be fulfilled only if they've been defined, and if, during the decade of the 1990s, school

readiness would become a mandate for the nation, if this country would, in fact, focus

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with urgency on our youngest children, then I'm convinced that all of the other goals

would, in large measure, be fulfilled.

There is, of course, no easy answer, no simple strategy that will achieve

excellence for all. What is clear is that it's in the early years that curiosity abounds.

This is the time when learning exponentially expands. And, above all, it's in the early

years when children are empowered in the use of words. Lewis Thomas wrote on one

occasion that childhood is for language. And now that I'm a grandpa and cam observe

this process unencumbered by dirty diapers and burpings late at night, I'm absolutely

dazzled by the capacity of three- and four-year-olds to use language not only for

affection, but also as weapons of assault.

When I was growing up in Dayton, Ohio, we used to say, "Sticks and stones

may break my bones, but names will never hurt me." What nonsense! I'd say this

with tears running down my cheeks thinking, "Hit me with a stick, but stop the words

that penetrate so deeply and hurt so long."

I'm suggesting that school readiness means that every child must be socially,

emotionally, and linguistically well prepared. And for this to be accomplished wouldn't

it be wonderful if all children grew up in an environment that was "language rich"?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if all children received thoughtful answers to their questions

instead of "shut up" or "go to bed"? And wouldn't it be wonderful if every parent would

turn off the television set and read aloud to their children at least thirty minutes every

single day?

We have in America today nineteen million preschoolers. They watch television

fifteen billion hours every year. And frankly I consider it a national disgrace that not

one of the commercial TV networks devotes even one hour to the education of young

children. What they are fed is a steady diet of sex and violence and obscene language.

And then we wonder why schools are not disciplined and drug free. Simply stated,

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school readiness means parents who first give love, then language, to their children.

And it means television that enriches, rather than degrades.

Speaking of the home and family influence, I'm increasingly convinced that

children need the guidance not just of parents, but of grandparents, too.

Anthropologist Margaret Mead said on one occasion that the strength of any culture is

sustained as three generations vitally interact, creating connections vertically across

the generations. And yet in America today, we're building a kind of horizontal culture,

with each age group living all alone. And we've even "institutionalized" this

generational separation. Today, infants are in nurseries, toddlers are in day care,

children are in schools organized by age, college students spend time separated on

campus, adults are in the workplace, and older people increasingly are living all alone.

Looking back, I'm impressed that one of the most important people in my own

life was my Grandfather Boyer, who lived to be one hundred. Grandpa, at the age of

forty, moved his little family into the heart of Dayton, Ohio, surrounded by the poor.

He spent the next forty years bringing food and clothing and spiritual encouragement

to those who were impoverished, and in the process taught me that God is central to

all of life and that to be truly human one must serve. These were lessons I could not

have learned as well in any classroom.

I'm convinced that if all children are to be well prepared for learning and for life,

we simply must begin to build intergenerational institutions to bring the old and

young together. School readiness, to put it simply, means connections across the

generations.

Beyond language empowerment and strong emotional support, "ready to learn"

also means giving to all children a healthy start. A child's physical well-being is

unquestionably tied to school performance, and good nutrition is absolutely crucial.

Winston Churchill said there is no greater investment for any nation than putting milk

into babies. And yet, in America today, one out of four children under the age of six is

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officially classified as poor. One-fifth of ail pregnant women get belated prenatal

care—or none at all. Tens of thousands of babies are bom physically at risk. And

then we wonder why children come to school not well prepared to learn.

Kay, my wife, is a certified nurse-midwife. She delivers babies. For years she

worked with adolescent pregnant girls. These were children having children, who fed

their unborn infants Coke and potato chips and who belatedly were told about the

facts of life and the miracle of birth in between the labor pains. They grew up never

learning about what it means to become a mother or about the sacredness of bringing

another life into the world, and the fathers were ignorant as well.

It's absolutely clear that if all children are to be well prepared to leam, we must

build partnerships not just with homes and families, but with health providers, too,

since quality education and good health are inextricably connected.

II.

But there's another side to the equation.

While all children must be well prepared for school, it's also true that all schools

must be ready for the children.

Several years ago I proposed that we reorganize the first years of formal

education into a single unit called the Basic School. The Basic School would combine

kindergarten to grade five. It would give top priority to language, and every student,

from the very first, would be reading, writing, engaging in conversation, listening to

stories in what the foreign language people like to call the saturation method. And the

arts also would be a top priority in the Basic School, since music and rhythm and the

arts, as one teacher put it, are "the language of the angels."

Class size matters, too. And in the Basic School there would be no class with

more than fifteen students. Frankly, I find it ludicrous to hear school critics say class

size doesn't matter, especially in the early years when children urgently need one-on-

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one attention. I've never taught kindergarten or first grade, but I do have

grandchildren, and when I take them to McDonald's I come home a basket case.

Frankly, it's a heroically complicated task just keeping track of all the orders, tracking

down lost gloves and boots, keeping mustard off the floor—and none of this relates to

mastering the ABCs or cramming for the SATs.

Teachers in the early grades have the most challenging work I know. I'm

convinced that if this country would give as much status to kindergarten and first

grade teachers as we give to full professors, that one act alone would revitalize the

nation's schools. And speaking of a restructured school, perhaps the time has come to

convert school boards into children's boards, to focus our priorities not just on

buildings and on budgets, but most especially on the full needs of students.

III.

This leads me to say a word about older students. Early education matters

most, but during our study of the American high school, I also became convinced that

we have not just a school problem but a youth problem, in this country. Far too many

teenagers feel unneeded, unwanted, and unconnected to the larger world. Even in the

school itself, there is a climate of anonymity and disconnection. In many high schools,

only the very good and very bad students are known by name. And I'm convinced that

a host of students drop out because no one noticed that they had, in fact, dropped in.

The poet Vachel Lindsay wrote "It is the world's one crime its babes grow

dull/Not that they sow, but that they seldom reap/Not that they serve, but have no

gods to serve/Not that they die but that they die like sheep." The tragedy is not death.

The tragedy is to die with commitments undefined, convictions undeclared, and

service unfulfilled.

Frankly, if I had just one wish for school reform, I'd break up every large school

into units of no more than five hundred students each, and I'd assign every student to

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a small support group of twenty students that would meet with a mentor at the

beginning of each day, to receive guidance and support, to know that somebody truly

cares, to feel part of a community of caring.

I'd also like to see every high school student complete a community service

project, spending time in a retirement village, day care center, city park, or tutoring

other kids at schools, to help them see a connection between what they leam and how

they live. Martin Luther King, Jr., said everyone can be great, because everyone can

serve. And I'm convinced the young people of this country are ready to be inspired by

a larger vision.

IV.

This leads to one final observation.

When all is said and done, excellence in education means excellence in

teaching. To strengthen the nation's schools, we simply must give more dignity and

more status to the teacher. When I was United States Commissioner of Education, I

walked unannounced into a sixth-grade classroom in New Haven. I was startled to

discover that all thirty students were crowded around the teacher's desk, and I almost

ran to the office. But then I discovered that they weren't there in anger, but in

celebration. The students had just finished reading Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist and

were debating whether little Oliver could survive in New Haven. They concluded that

while he'd made it in far off London, he'd never survive successfully in New Haven, a

much tougher city. This was teaching and learning at its best.

The simple truth is that almost all of us are here today because of the

inspiration of a dedicated teacher. It's in the classrooms of the nation where the battle

for excellence in education will be won or lost. And to achieve excellence in education,

we don't need more rules and regulations, we need more teacher recognition. Further,

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I'm convinced that most school critics could not survive one week in the classrooms

they condemn.

For more than a decade this nation has been engaged in an aggressive push for

school renewal, and while some progress has been made, the harsh truth is that the

effort has been only modestly successful. In the search for excellence, the time has

come for a new beginning, and for the decade of the nineties, the focus must be on

early education, on purposefulness for youth, and most especially on giving more

recognition to our teachers, who are the unsung heroes of the nation.

CGSC-T3.DOC. (SPC.ELB.JH/dmo). June 13. 1994

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