Teach Your Children

Every year, Washington, DC's public schools spend more per child than any state in the nation ($29,409, to be precise). Yet DC's students continue among the nation's poorest performers in math and reading, and only 60 percent finish high school.

We understand the reason, as  our forebears understood it a century ago, when the following appeared in Gustav Stickley's magazine The Craftsman:

"Before the home can be expected to do its share toward solving this problem of education that now besets the country and puzzles the wisest heads among us, there would have to be some change in the character of the home. But of this we do not despair. The present tendency toward trivial pursuits and artificial living is merely the reaction from the hard and burdensome drudgery of household and farm work a generation or two ago. When the burden was lifted by the introduction of machines and labor-saving devices it was only natural that the pendulum should swing in the opposite direction and that work and education alike should be delegated to the organizations of trained workers outside the home.

“But it is pretty nearly time for the pendulum to swing back, and even now we are beginning to realize that lighter burdens and added leisure mean that we now have time for real life and moral and mental growth on a broader scale than we have ever known before. When we grasp the opportunity and utilize it for the training of our children, there will be no more ground for complaint against the schools.”

You can't change the "character of the home" in DC. But you can help increase literacy. Donate now to DC LEARNS.