The General's President (53 page)

Therefore, every child will be examined at the end of every semester to find out how well he or she has mastered the material and skills taught that semester. The child who doesn't do well enough will have to restudy the material in either the next semester or in summer session, until he or she has mastered it.

And teachers, and schools, and school districts, will be rated according to the performance of their pupils.
If a teacher or school or district has been shortchanging pupils, they can be required to upgrade their competency in the areas of weakness.

Now, none of what I have said so far has dealt
directly
with the problem of children who do not learn in school, or who do not learn much. Some of this problem grows out of poor situations at home. And an important factor has been a seriously flawed education system.

Another important part of it has been a society, and many families, that don't respect and encourage learning.

So far, school psychologists and school counselors have not proven effective in handling learning problems. I'm sure that many counselors and psychologists can point to successes in upgrading student performance. But the sheer volume of student problems in our schools, and the sources of many of those problems, are far beyond what we can expect school counselors to handle, even assuming they have the tools.

On an optimistic note, it seems to me that as a people, we have changed, these last months, that we are getting our priorities turned around.

Now, back to the pupils who fail a semester exam. Let me repeat: They will restudy
the subject they did not understand
until they've mastered it. They will
not
have to redo the entire grade. To redo the entire grade wastes time and humiliates the pupil. They shouldn't even have to restudy the parts of the subject they already know. The pupil will be allowed to move up in the subjects he or she passes.

Pupils who are a continuing behavior problem will not be allowed to degrade the classroom for other pupils. The school will be required—
not allowed but required
—to remove troublemakers from the general classroom. Just what will be done with them then will depend on the problem and the causes. We don't want to simply abandon them, and some good and experienced people are working on developing a practical pupil-salvage system. But meanwhile, as an unsatisfactory coping action, incorrigible pupils can be assigned to disciplinary groups where the principal subject drilled will be self-control.

Finally there is a very basic change that will be tested in fifty schools beginning with the next school year. We expect it to help a great deal in starting kindergartners and first graders on the right foot.

I refer to spelling reform—the use of spellings which approximate the way the words are pronounced. The present irrational system of spelling American words is a major barrier to children's learning to read and their ability to study.

Let me give you some family and personal background on this. My parents each learned to read before they came to America—my father in Norway, my mother in Finland. They learned at home. It wasn't difficult; in Norwegian to a large extent and in Finnish especially, the words are spelled the way they're pronounced, which makes reading much easier to learn.

Thus my mother had read much of the New Testament in Finnish, aloud to her parents, before she began school at age six. You can imagine what this did for her vocabulary.

My own experience was similar. Before I started school, I'd learned to read both Norwegian and Finnish. When I started in our little one-room school, I learned to read English very quickly
because I had a working sense of how reading was done.
And unlike some children who started school already knowing how to read Norwegian or Swedish or Finnish, I was not indignant at the English spellings. I thought they were hilarious—dumb but hilarious. They no longer amuse me.

By the end of the first grade, I was well into the Fourth Reader, and later I, and others, were allowed to learn as rapidly as we wanted. For that, thanks are due to the willingness of two very able teachers: Miss Shogren and later Miss Knaizel, who were not constrained by idiotic rulings from a district office denying us the right to forge ahead. When some of us, in grades three or four or five, had finished the eighth grade reading and history and geography books, these beautiful young ladies loaned us their personal books, and borrowed by mail for us, wholesale, from the county and state libraries.

That is called helping pupils learn. Shameful to say, in many schools it's not allowed now; not standard, you know.

But spelling reform! Some of you may be thinking,
Good grief! If this spreads, I'll have to learn to read all over again!
Or,
My children won't be able to read any of the books we have.

No, that's not the way it works. If you already read fairly well, you could pick up a book with the new spellings right now and start reading it. In a few minutes you'd be reading it easily. And if you're an English-speaking adult with a severe reading problem, you'd probably be able to read a book in the new system with a half-hour's coaching.

The letters themselves are those you're already used to. The main difference is that words will be spelled very much the way you hear them. And once grooved into reading, your children will easily pick up reading other books.

Incidentally, we're going to have some adult-level books published in the new system so that people can see what it's like. They should be out in time for Christmas.

How did we come up with this new system?

English and American spelling reforms have been talked about for centuries. They've been resisted in the past by publishers and educators who were unwilling to adjust, while hair-splitters have feuded over what kind of alphabet to use.

We've been practical and kept it simple. Three specialists in language have worked together to compile a new spelling book, starting with a vocabulary for first readers. They used only the twenty-six familiar letters of the English alphabet, with marks over two of the letters in order to fit the alphabet to American vowel sounds. And they've kept the spellings as simple as possible—much simpler than the system we're used to.

One of these three persons is from Chicago by way of Logan, Utah; one is a Yankee from Keene, New Hampshire; and the third is a lifelong resident of South Carolina. They represent the three principal varieties of spoken American: middle American, yankee, and southern. Mostly, they've agreed on the spelling for each word. Where they didn't agree, they've followed middle American pronunciations because that's what most Americans speak.

These are practical people who recognize that no system will be perfect—
that what we are after is simply something that will make it much much easier for American children to learn to read!
We've had too much of this idiocy of making learning far more difficult than necessary for our six-year-olds. A difficulty that often seriously hampers their education from then on, and plagues many of them through the rest of their lives!

A lot of our other troubles and frustrations in education will be greatly reduced, over the years, by this simple spelling reform.

If your school is interested in getting into the program and hasn't been included in the selection of fifty, get in touch with your school district. We'll try to include it.

And basically, ladies and gentlemen, school administrators, that's the picture on education reform. I consider it as vital as legal reform to the future of a democratic America. The material that will be handed out to you contains the details. Personnel from the Department of Education will meet with you tomorrow to answer questions. You'll have read the material by then.

Now—What I have to say next is directed mainly at the millions of Americans watching on television or listening on the radio. One of the most urgent things we have to do in this country is provide an education system that our children will enjoy, not dislike—a system that will interest them and actually educate them. We need to educate our children decently so they can function in the twenty-first century, so this country can compete with nations like Japan and Germany, where education has been truly respected. And so they can make tomorrow's world better than today's.

Most teachers and most school administrators will take hold and make this new system work. Many of them became education professionals because they feel strongly about education.

Inevitably though, some will drag their feet, and a few will try to sabotage the new system by screwing things up and bad-mouthing it. Eventually they'll be culled out for poor job performance. But meanwhile it's a new system, and at first there'll also be some honest misunderstandings and difficulties in operating it. There'll be some honest confusion, and at times it may be hard to tell the saboteurs from people who just haven't gotten used to operating in a new way, or have just gotten their toes stepped on and are blowing off honest steam.

So don't be surprised at some stumbling around at first, or at some noise and complaints. This new system will work quite decently if enough of you—teachers, administrators, parents, pupils—just drive on through the initial confusion. Things will settle out soon enough.

And that's all I have to say for now. Thank you all for listening to me. I wish you well.

***

The applause fell far short of thunderous. Quite a lot of it was mechanical; quite a lot was more than that. Scattered through it were singlets and small pockets of enthusiastic clapping and even a few cheers, but these did not spread.

The president was willing to settle for that. He left the podium and went out through a door at the rear of the room. Secret Service people closed in behind him, two others preceding. Lester Okada had been waiting, listening out of the way beside the door, while in the corridor with more agents, an army physician stood; there was always a doctor with the president while away from the White House. Then, surrounded by Secret Service men, the president, Okada, and the doctor were escorted down the hall to a small room. There they would wait briefly until departure security was fully in place—the entrance area cleared, the armored limo and other vehicles situated and ready, and route security notified that the president was on his way.

There were assorted hot rolls and coffee in the room, with butter, honey, jam, sugar, and cream. Okada and the president had black coffee and ignored the rest; the Secret Service people were too intent to take any of it.

"You sounded very convincing, Mr. President," Okada said.

Haugen sipped coffee, then looked up, his expression uncharacteristically dour. "I hope so. I probably made as many enemies today as I did with legal reform. But it'll be worth it in the long run."

Okada didn't try to make more conversation. After a couple of minutes, the SAIC, the special agent in charge, looked into the room. "Everything's ready, Mr. President. We should leave now."

Unsmiling, Haugen nodded and stood, and they left the room, walking briskly down the hall to the VIP exit. The limo's open door was perhaps eight feet from the end of the entry canopy. The usual crowd was waiting behind ropes about eighty feet away, some of them calling or cheering when they caught sight of the president. Television and press cameras were aimed from media groups about twenty feet away on either side.

From one of the camera groups, someone shouted to the president in Finnish, poorly pronounced but recognizable—"Hyvää paivää, Herra Presidenti!"—and for a moment Haugen, surprised, stopped to wave.

That's when the shooting started, and the president went down under Secret Service bodies. There were screams, shouts, oaths. After no more than three or four seconds, he felt people get off him, felt hands half lift, half drag him into the limo. The door slammed, the heavy vehicle surged forward, sirens began to ululate.

Gil saw a large smear of blood on the president's left cheek and temple, but no apparent wound. "Pete," he snapped to the driver, "the George Washington Medical Center, fast." That was standard when there'd been shooting, with or without evidence of injury: Head for the nearest major hospital, just in case. The driver, also Secret Service, radioed rapid orders, first to the escort vehicles, then to the hospital.

Gil's face was tight, grim. While throwing the president to the pavement, he'd glimpsed the physician's face bursting crimson; it could be his blood on the president's cheek. "Are you all right, Mr. President?" he asked.

"Damned if I know." The voice was weak, the words blurry. "No. I'm not. I'm hit. Left arm..." His voice cleared then, though it was still weak. "Jesus Christ! Something's wrong with me!"

Something was! The president's breathing, the agent realized, was shallow and weak, and the smell reminded him of gutting a deer.
It's more than the fucking arm!
Gil told himself.
Jesus Christ, don't let him die on me.
He clamped his teeth.
Why in hell did the doctor have to get it?

There was a medkit in the limousine. Gil opened it, removed heavy shears designed for the purpose, and began rapidly to cut free the president's jacket and shirt, enough that the medics could easily strip the garments away. Blood was soaking the left sleeve now, and as Gil exposed the hairy torso, he found more than just the sleeve bloody. The hole in the chest moved and bubbled with every breath.

The president looked at him, and for a moment the vagueness cleared somewhat from his eyes. "Gil," he said. "And you. Listen up." He gestured weakly with his head at a second agent sitting gun in hand on the other end of the seat, watching intently out the window for possible further attack.

"Larry!" Gil snapped, "listen up!" Then: "We're listening, Mr. President."

Haugen gathered himself, then enunciated slowly, clearly. "I appoint Valenzuela vice president. Got that? Valenzuela vice president. Otherwise Cromwell would never forgive me. Tell Milstead."

An awful chill flowed over Gil Rogers. "Yes, Mr. President. You appoint Valenzuela vice president. I'll tell Mr. Milstead."