THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 2, 1995 TAG: 9503020585
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
Quick, without thinking, which among candidates for president impresses you as most urbane?
None other than Lamar Alexander, former governor, former president of the University of Tennessee, former head of the U.S. Department of Education, former everything, running as a rube who has never been out of Maryville.
One has no difficulty believing Jimmy Carter was once a peanut farmer who slopped the hogs.
Or that William Jefferson Clinton, when he takes mike in hand, might well begin calling them.
And they will come when he calls; they will come from the bottom lands, the barnyards, the sties; they will come running, squealing, wagging curlicue tails. Big Bill can be, put to it, the pied piper of pigs.
But when smooth, suave Alexander is talking, the mellifluous Lamar with long, bland, pale expounding face hanging out, we are listening to our ambassador to the Court of St. James.
Among interesting incongruities is his wish to abolish the Department of Education that he headed for George Bush. It was every bit as frustrating a maze then as it is now, and it should be wiped out. Alexander's years there may have opened his eyes to its excesses.
As governor, Alexander raised taxes to improve education - which took courage. And in announcing his candidacy he expatiated with nostalgia on the values he learned at home from his parents and at school from teachers.
But when many parents are no longer at home, a man of Alexander's experience must know that teachers are working harder than ever at instilling values.
In Alexander's youth, pupils were disciplined at home to obey the teacher. The great sins then were chewing gum and passing notes.
Now schools are beset with societal problems of drugs, AIDS, split households, poverty, guns instead of gum and billowing violence.
Along with reading, writing, 'rithmetic and reasoning, teachers are called upon to convey, by the time the child reaches the fifth grade, the ABCs of safe sex, a duty from which many parents flinch.
With many children, the only order and discipline they find in life is in the classroom.
The teacher is the parent without license, preacher without Bible, police officer without badge, psychiatrist without couch, social worker teaching parenting to parents.
The best of teachers, and there are many, blend love with discipline and save many a life.
And while dealing with crises thrust upon schools by adult society, underpaid, undermanned teachers are accused by politicians, who know better, and by parents, who ought to know better, of being the sources instead of the only cure for the scourges.
Just pay them more, increase their number, reduce the class sizes and let them teach. One day a candidate, maybe Alexander, will spell it out. ILLUSTRATION: Lamar Alexander
by CNB