Banner Graphic, Volume 12, Number 80, Greencastle, Putnam County, 10 December 1981 — Page 8
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The Putnam County Banner-Graphic, December 10,1981
By publicizing Libyan threat, U.S. must be ready for serious step
By WILLI AM SAFIRE c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON As every aggressor nation knows, the time and place to attack the United States is during the Army-Navy game at Philadelphia. Much of the top brass is there rather than minding the military store. It's almost like attacking Israel on Yom Kippur. This year, however, we were on guard. The president did not go to the game. The brass who went to Veterans’ Stadium to shout themselves hoarse, as underdog Army held Navy to a 3-to-3 tie, had extra protection and knew it. The increased security around the 50yard line was necessary because a member of one of the Libyan assassination squads, or someone in close contact with one of them, had been picked up in Canada the week before. The suspect had been asking about airline connections to Philadelphia or at least that is what some high-level administration officials were told. Some sort of evidence like that is undoubtedly behind the willingness of the
Drug, alcohol problems: Apathy, lack of responsibility by public limits schools' effort
Those who specialize in shifting blame to someone else have been working overtime in an effort to make schools in general the scapegoat for drug and alcohol related problems among young people. This is not to say the problem doesn’t exist in schools. Any honest administrator would be first to admit that it does. But to say that schools are hotbeds for these evils and that educators give passive permission by doing nothing about the problem is not only unfair but almost altogether untrue. COMMON SENSE tells one that young people spend only a third of their 24-hour day under direct school supervision. The other 16 hours are spent at home where parents are supposedly in control or out in the community where they are exposed to both desirable or undesirable associations. In a recent public meeting designed to make the community aware of its responsibilities in helping to control drug and alcohol abuse, panelists from various sec-
Budget cuts, tax policies are illusory
The Intellectual springboard of this administration is Hollywood
By JOHN B. OAKES c. 1981 N.Y. Times News Service NEW YORK the state of the Reagan administration and of the Republican Party when the president’s principal ball-carrier in the House of Representatives decides to turn a routine Republican fund-raising luncheon this Saturday in Peoria, his hometown, into an “appreciation” of David A. Stockman. Who could miss the irony of minority leader Robert M. Michel’s thus anointing the man who has done more than any other American to expose the Reagan economic program for the fraud that it is? Or the further irony that Stockman, fresh from his confessions, is still considered so indispensable to selling that program to Congress and the public that the president insists on his remaining in office to do so? Or the final irony that Stockman is willing even eager to argue for a construct that, clearly, he can no longer believe in? The implications of the episode go far beyond the current and continuing battle of the budget. What the incident illustrates is the aura of unreality of deliberate, calculated, illusion that characterizes the Reagan Presidency. The intellectual springboard of this administration isn’t academia, not even supply-side academia. It isn’t Wall Street. It isn’t Middle America, the Pacific Coast or the Sun Belt. It is Hollywood. Reagan is starred as the champion of budget cuts and tax reductions. But the kinds of budget cuts and tax reductions that he stands for are in fact something quite different from their public billing. Coupled with administrative changes already under way, they represent a
'Brightest, most motivated children products of one-room school'
WOODEN VALLEY, Calif. (AP) A dozen children peer out the door of their one-room schoolhouse at a sick animal nosing through trash in the yard. Cows low nervously on the other side of the fence, but Arlene Samuels remains calm. “A coyote. Could be rabid,” says the teacher’s aide, fetching her .22-caliber rifle. A shot rings out. ‘‘Good thing I got him,” she says. “That was my last bullet.” It’s a sunny fall day and the children at Capell Valley school have just had a lesson that wasn’t on the agenda, one they would have missed at the schools in Napa where the school board plans to bus them. “In the country, you don’t call for help,” Mrs. Samuels says. “You learn to take care of yourself.” They’ve been taking care of themselves for more than 50 years at Capell Valley, Wooden Valley and Soda Canyon schools, the one-and tworoom schoolhouses that the Napa Unified School
American government to contradict publicly the televised denial of any plotting from Moammar Khadafy in Tripoli. No responsible administration would go that far out on a limb without proof that will be persuasive when revealed later. The question, then, is not “Is there a plot?” If the terrorists do not surface, the United States government will soon be forced to lay out its evidence in chapter and verse. Rather the question now should be, “Was going public with our knowledge of
opinion
LARRY GIBBS Publisher
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Opinion By DAVID BARR Civic Affairs Editor
tors gave parents a low score. Addressing the twin problems of drugs and alcohol at a service club meeting, Mrs. Janett Boling, director of curriculum for
massive transfer of resources from public into private hands. They also represent (as Rep. Henry S. Reuss, respected chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, has noted) a redistribution of income from the lower two-thirds of the economic spectrum to the upper 10 percent. The budget cuts themselves were made
Board has voted twice to close. A successful lawsuit brought by angry parents calling themselves the Save Our Schools Committee forced the board to vote a second time on the matter. Now two board members face a spring recall vote that could oust them a year and a half before the end of their terms. In rural Napa Valley north of San Francisco, where tangles of grape vines flourish and the grass turns yellow and brittle under the summer sun, they produce most of the state’s finest wines. And some of its brightest, most motivated children, parents and teachers here say. That’s the reason many of them came here, and that’s the way they want to keep it, say Mary and Len Colson, who formed Save Our Schools with their Napa neighbors. After the board’s vote, the parents activated a petition that will keep Capell Valley, enrollment 30 students, and Wooden Valley, 18 students, open for another three years. But even that has failed to defuse an emotionally explosive situation.
the plot a good idea ? ” A fascinating discussion of that question must have taken place at high levels late last month. With no other inside information, and speculating purely on the basis of institutional responses in the past, here are some of the players and their likely positions: The FBI must have been torn. Some agents like the publicity of a manhunt, which turns up unexpected leads from unlikely informants and reflects well on
ERIC BERNSEE Managing Editor
Greencastle Community Schools, observed that schools are not always aware of specific problems since students involved are not likely to come to school drunk or obviously reacting to drugs. Such conditions are chargeable to sources beyond school control. MRS. BOLING pointed out, however, that there are exceptions and stated that the school has an inflexible policy in dealing firmly with offenders when the offense is school related. Over the last few years, there have been relatively few cases serious enough to turn over to law authorities, she said. Asserting that no single unit of society has all responsibility for drug and alcohol abuse control, Mrs. Boling said that the burden to do something about it is shared by all facets of community life--the law, counselors, the home and the school, to name a few. Concerned about the growing problem and its effect on young people, Dr. John
on a selective, highly politicized basis as Stockman in his moment of candor testified. In squeezing down (or out) the social and human services, Reagan made little if any serious effort to eliminate from the budget billions of dollars in subsidies for large-scale nuclear industry, for largescale exporters, for large-scale construction interests.
“Two of the schools they voted to close, to save money, are staying open for another three years,” Mrs. Colson said. “Where’s the money being saved? It would be laughable, if it weren’t so sad.” Part of their discontent can be traced to a 16-year-old promise made by the Napa Valley Unified School District. Back then, parents say, the board struck a deal with the area’s rural residents: join the district and the tiny schools will never be closed. Donna Heine, one of the board members facing recall, said none of the old board members remembers that pledge. Today’s board, facing declining enrollments and limited funds, couldn’t honor it anyway, she said. “I didn’t become a school board member to say no to people. I became a member because I wanted to become involved in the process that would allow students to maximize their potential,” she said. “The dollars realized from closure would allow us to distribute the money more equitably to all the schools.”
the too-often-twisted arm of the law. But others in counterespionage must have argued for secrecy, hoping the suspected assassins would be lulled into complacency and into taking chances that would compromise their mission. Publicity would make them far more careful and hard to catch. Someone in intelligence must have supported that hope for secrecy, holding that publication of our knowledge of the plot would blow sources and methods. (I can just hear the ClA’s deputy director insisting that the Libyans don’t suspect that we listen to their telephones.) The Secret Service, in such a spot, would probably choose public disclosure. Psychologists believe that many would-be killers are discouraged by a show of force and public expectation. Since increased security around the president and other officials would be noticed and reported upon by the press, Secret Service officials would argue that the secret would soon be out anyway. In addition, public knowledge of
Coomer, former superintendent of Greencastle Community Schools, initiated a program to make the community aware of the extent of the problem and what might be done about it. Current superintendent James Peck is carrying through on this program. THE APPROACH was given to Mrs. Boling to coordinate and she scheduled a public meeting in which the problem was aired by a panel of community leaders. This was followed by parent meetings in individual schools where law enforcement people provided information designed to help parents recognize a potentially dangerous situation before it becomes a reality. Sad to say, community apathy has limited the full effectiveness of these planned meetings. Only 45, including panelists, attended the public meeting, and as few as four have attended parents’ sessions. Perhaps apathy, coupled with desire for a scapegoat, is why schools are suspect in
Behind the scenes, he yielded with hardly a struggle to the sugar subsidies, the tobacco subsidies, the synthetic-fuel subsidies, multi-billion-dollar dams and waterways, the Clinch River fast breeder reactor all pet projects of congressional puppets to whom the president readily bowed. Meanwhile, the classical scenario of free market, fair competition and the
the need for precaution helps curtail the president’s schedule, always a Secret Service aim. The input from the Haig junta on the Seventh Floor of the State Department, I assume, would be to use this provocation to escalate the war of nerves with Libya. From our diplomatic point of view, publicity about the export of terrorism is desirable. It lays the groundwork for economic and diplomatic ostracism of an enemy, and if some overt terrorist act is actually carried out, public opinion is prepared for a military response. The dovecote called the Joint Chiefs cannot be happy about the publicity. The Pen- # tagon understands that a military strike might be called for after sustained psychological warfare on Libya, and our military men are willing to shoot only if fired upon (as in the Gulf of Sidra incident) or if the Congress records a vote on their side. No unpopular, unwinnable little wars for them. Finally, the view from the White House: despite protestations that the leaks about
the minds of all too many people. Those who find this concept an easy way out need to be told that Greencastle Community Schools, and no doubt others I haven’t heard about, are attacking drug and alcohol abuse in a positive manner. WHILE THE SCHOOL doesn’t offer a specific credit course on drug and alcohol abuse, the dangers are emphasized throughout the curriculum from kindergarten through high school. Through their studies, those in lower grades are taught respect for their bodies as a part of total health education. The major educational emphasis comes at junior high level, an age when young people are most impressionable, according to Mrs. Boling. Through pamphlets, films and resource persons, students are continually being made aware of the damaging effect drugs and alcohol have on their bodies and minds. Realizing that unscrupulous persons often prey on those outside the classrooms, a
war against bureaucratic waste dissolves into an “insubstantial pageant” on the White House stage. Like the budget cuts, the Reagan taxreduction policy represents a great deal less than meets the eye. It too is illusory. Reagan made no serious attempt to diminish even the most obvious tax ripoffs for the affluent. What Stockman cynically called the “equity ornaments” proposals to close congressionally protected loopholes were rejected by the president out of hand. Reagan proclaims his devotion to human rights, to democracy, to nuclear controls, to arms limitation. But reality is something different. It is a tendency toward closed government, a disrkvlcivil liberties, a disdain for the poor. It is support for murderously repressive regimes if they are tinted white instead of Red. It is policy directly mirroring the Kremlin’s of nuclear confrontation, nuclear superiority and gunboat diplomacy. It is a profligate buildup of military hardware at home and a priority for arms shipments to solve social, economic or political problems abroad. Foreign and military policy may be fit subjects for drama; nothing could be less so than regulatory reform. Yet here too Reagan is engaging in an elaborate masquerade. Under the guise of promoting efficiency but in reality to cut business costs, the Reagan administration is turning “regulatory reform” into a major effort in Congress to eviscerate the lifeprotecting clean-air, clean-water, food, drug, safety and health statutes that Congress has built up over the last half century.
But the parents speculate that the board wants to close the schools to sell the valuable real estate beneath them. They say the closures might also appease the parents of city school children who resent the tiny schools, particularly Soda Canyon. “They say we’re sipping off the cream, so to speak. But we’re not. These are the children of parents who like the smallness of the school and the fact that we keep the kids for four years,” said Maryellen Bess, who has taught seven year’s worth of Soda Canyon kindergarteners to read and write. After the first year, her kindergarteners are reading, writing and illustrating their own stories. Unfettered by the traditional restraints of bells and report cards, they are learning and having a good time doing it. In September, Soda Canyon became a school within a school, moving its 56 students into Vichy Elementary School five miles away. The parents,
the Libyan plot were unauthorized, the case for publicity rather than secrecy is overwhelming. If the would-be assailants are scared off, enough evidence presumably exists to overcome charges of alarmism or phony provocation. If a terrorist act were to occur, a lack of public warning beforehand would be heavily criticized. A terrorist attack after an administration warning, however, would set the stage for a wide-ranging response. The Reagan decision to let out part of the story was wise; the attempt to disclaim that decision to publicize is silly. The greatest danger is in showing the world how we are being made the victims of terrorism and then doing nothing about it. In the Caribbean, we have been foolishly whipping out our gun and putting it back in the holster. If Reagan has chosen to put the spotlight of pitiless publicity on a terrorist attack by a foreign power, he must then be prepared to take a serious next step or to have all his future implicit threats airily dismissed.
patrol is on duty at the junior high to report on suspicious activity, like a car that keeps circling the building, for example. MANY HIGH SCHOOL studies provide vehicles through which a positive approach to dangers involved through drugs and alcohol use is made. The message can be presented through courses in chemistry, driver education, social studies, citizenship, resource papers, etc. Complementing classroom activities is the role of counselors who play a vital part in helping young people solve potential problems before the problems overcome them. In my opinion, Greencastle Community Schools personnel have made a progressive worthwhile contribution toward current and long-range solutions of a distressing social problem, but their efforts can produce but limited success as long as community apathy and reluctance to assume responsibility continue at their present levels.
It is a strange sort of federal “constitutionalism” that, in the name of states’ rights, abjures federal responsibility for essential social programs that the states and cities cannot pay for. But states’ rights don’t seem to count when it comes to exploiting Federal lands (offshore and onshore) for private profit, over the economic and environmental objections of the states concerned. It is not only the “new federalism” that is “a sham,” as New York’s Mayor called it the other day. It is also economic policy, nuclear policy, military policy, environmental policy, and, indeed, much of foreign policy. There was a great antiwar film of 193? whose title well describes the first year of the Reagan Presidency. That film was called “The Grand Illusion.”
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tired of the fight, have decided to make the move work and at least keep the Soda Canyon spirit alive. That’s more than can be said for the almost 150,000 one-room schools that have closed since 1930. The government stopped keeping tabs on the schools at the end of the 1976-1977 school year At that time, there were 1,111 one-room schools across America, and California had 54. Len Colson’s two boys, particularly Frank, had problems at their school in San Jose. It was an open classroom situation, noisy, confusing, unfulfilling. At Capped Valley, the pair have thrived on the responsibility of helping the younger pupils. “Here you have schools that are working," Mrs. Colson said. “These kids are being educated. They are getting along with their teachers, they are getting along with kids of different ages. It’s all working, it’s productive. It’s a shame to take it all away.”