Rudy Hodor, the now deceased and former leader of the Three Village Taxpayers' Association, had a dry sense of humor and a hearty, guttural laugh. He especially enjoyed irony. And we can't help but believe that he would now be taking special delight in watching the facade of perfection being pulled from the flimsily constructed walls of the education system. He would find in the vast number of federal, state and local announcements of recent weeks great cause to roar with laughter.

Not only have we seen media attention levels beyond anything in recent memory being given to the conjuncted subjects of education-and-taxes but legislators across the country have come to acknowledge light [and heat] heretofore ignored. We witness: a President elected with National Education Association support; the Governor and legislature of the nation's largest of bastion of liberalism; the New York Times, Newsday, the Three Village Herald and, by-God and amazingly, even the seemingly ever flattering of all things educational Village Times are now finding something wrong with "Sesame Street." For example:

• * The unreasonable costs of providing junior college environments, curriculums and tables of organization for delusional local school district bureaucrats;
• * Instructional concepts and methodologies such as:
  • + whole language versus phonics,
  • + teach the child and not the subject,
  • + self-esteem versus knowledge,
  • + constructionism,
  • + multiple-intelligence and its effectiveness in the learning environment;
• * Tenure and, in particular, the tenure of convicted felons;
• * A need for a more realistic competitive classroom environment;
• * Meaningful report cards vs. 25 page portfolios of subjectively determined trivia suggesting that little Jason is a "darling child," which means, of course, that the boy has the intellect of play-doh but gets along with other children.

ALL these things and more are only now being widely discussed.

Over a year ago, the staff of The Waking Bear© reviewed combined federal census and state educational data for Long Island school districts. Our less than scientific observations - after removing several extraordinarily clear district anomalies from the listing - suggested a very strong positive correlation between the level of educational attainment of a community's adult population and the numbers of children in that school district scoring high on Regents' exams and subsequently attending two and four year colleges. No similar connection was observed between cost per student, student-teacher ratios, the average academic achievement level of a school district's teaching staff OR their salaries and that of student performance. Not on Long Island or in our own Three Village Central School District. An analysis of the State Education Department's school report by the New York Times published on January 3rd drew the same conclusions statewide.

It seems the teachers' unions will have to come up with a new public relations tactic. The old ones are falling by the wayside.

The parents of children in the Three Village Central School District have themselves, above all others, to thank for their children's success. It is they who have provided the EXAMPLE, not just the cash. It is they who recognized the advantage of raising a child in a community where the question "What are you going to do when you finish school?" assumes the finishing comes sometime after college and not high school. It is they, in great numbers, who as children saw and sought education's values for themselves and who now pass that fervor onto their own children. It is they who enrich their children's lives in ways unimagined, both deliberate and accidental, because they ARE educated and live within a community vastly populated with well educated people. They've done well for themselves and their children.

The State's district by district, school by school scholastic report was deservedly flattering of our children and, indirectly, the efforts of their parents. Then we learned that the district had eleven of the three hundred semi-finalists in the Westinghouse Science competition. Outstanding! "How much praise can one stand," we asked ourselves.

"Wee's done been doin' good," said one of our writers, formerly of Oakland.

But the revelry was short lived for the few, proud and chosen of the district. On January 14th, we that vote and attend Board of Education meetings were confronted with a sea of pin-wearing "solidarity" dullards. They were represented at the podium by a Three Village Teachers' Association contract negotiator, who spoke of teacher sacrifices and of allegedly unreimbursed sums of money they spend to enrich the classroom environment. She then made the only real point for her appearance, with entourage, as she decried the failure of the district to resolve pending contract negotiation differences.

Well, the already-got-5%-seniority-raises-without-a-contract-perpetual-ninth-graders of the Three Village Teachers Association can cry if they want to but they'll not dampen our fire.
THE RESIDENTS OF THREE VILLAGE DID IT !!!!!


If the teachers' reading of the New York Times didn't smarten them up a little, it's really no surprise. We'll just consider the source of the difficulty and remind their underpaid selves that:

"Those who can...do.
Those that cannot...teach.
Those that cannot teach...administrate."