EDUCATION

Especially those of us who have recently left the public schools or who have children who are still there recognize the serious problems in our country's educational system. "No Child Left Behind" appears to many of us to have done more damage than good, making school an extraordinarily stressful environment for many students; promoting attempts to make everyone fit into a standard pattern (very damaging for many students, including the most gifted ones); promoting the demented idea that standardized tests are the best measure of real education; and requiring teachers to "teach to the test" and thereby diminishing individual attention and educational inspiration and creativity and using up valuable time (especially at the end of school years) that could be used more productively. Extraordinary efforts need to be made to improve education in this country since education nurtures our most valuable resources--our human resources. But those efforts must be much wiser and more effective than what has been attempted over the past decade. My biggest concerns are class size; addressing students' individual needs; providing salaries and other motivation that will get us the best teachers; and then allowing those teachers to do their thing, which is, above all, to nurture and inspire their students.