The column "Failed premise" (Jan. 10 and TribLIVE.com) surprised me. Pittsburgh Promise scholarships are very generous and require hardly more than a yawn to obtain. They would have been unheard of back in the '60s when I was in public school and would have been gobbled up like popcorn.
Seems to me that there are other issues involved than what the column's authors, Drs. Haulk and Gamrat, discuss, and one only need read the Trib for a while to get a good sense of them.
Kids are coasting in neutral toward a stop in school because it works for them and for everyone else involved. Less is expected of them, and less can be done about that where it should be done -- at home. They know that if they don't do well, graduation is eventually going to be handed to them on a platter because they know that's how teachers keep their jobs.
They also know that they only need to "put up with" so much parenting before they can ally the school against their parents because they know that's what teachers and administrators want in order to grow the school system. In some American cities -- I don't know about Pittsburgh -- they know they don't have to study unless they get paid to study. They know they will get paid to not get pregnant and they know they will get paid to attend classes because they know that is how school administrations grow the school system with all the attendant services for their "needs."
They know that the more they fail, the more attention they will get and the more money will be thrown at them because they know that's how the public school administrative systems work, and they know all the wonderful things that people see and hear in the media about all the wonderful things being done for students really have nothing at all to do with motivation to learn or succeed. It's really all about growing the programs and the bureaucracy.
I don't see anywhere in this any incentive at all for them to try at anything.
Mike Sanderson
Penn Hills
