To the Editor:

Many parents reading all the letters supporting their candidates may wonder which explanations make sense as they plan to vote. There is one candidate who challenges the current system and articulates what others are avoiding to consider, “student issues.”

We have often heard students ask the basic question — Why do I have to study this?

Students enter the upper grades with this new focus on content after spending years expressing their creative thinking in all kinds of enjoyable scientific/artistic/imaginative projects.

Students continue to challenge this new content focus because now it is all about learning to pass continuous testing, which tests a regurgitation of information most of which will be forgotten in the future. But this kind of mental development has little to do with the original meaning behind the concept of education which focused on the need to develop mental processing, not solely content consumption. Instead, teachers are obliged to teach for the tests. But parents are questioning what is taught because they fear their children’s minds are being neglected.

The previous interest in developing creative mental processing in education has gone. Creative thinking in the curriculum and instruction has declined nationally according to a recent Newsweek report. Yet we continue to choose candidates for the Board of Education that have a set of priorities that ignore the aspirations of students to nurture higher level mental development which require training in developing creative thinking abilities.

Have the candidates forgotten that their priority is to ensure that students achieve their highest level of cognitive development? There is no mention by of this new critical student need. And parents are unaware that we live and operate in a new creative paradigm where creativity is in great demand. Parents may not know that in a national Gallup Poll that listed desired graduate skills, that the ability to think was as important as literacy and numeracy (math). But this “unique mental process” never gets implemented by boards of education nor by school administrators. But to defend their jobs they will insist they do implement thinking skills.

I proposed a pilot program to teach thinking skills in the Newtown schools as well as the New York City school system. These attempts were ignored and never given the serious consideration because the school bureaucracy system is controlled by teacher and administrator associations that are intimidated by anyone who challenges the established curriculum. Consequently, parents are the only group that can stand up for their children by demanding that a revised curriculum to include skill training that nurtures student higher cognitive development. When this needed change happens, the lost meaning of education will return.

Dr Rudy A. Magnan

Sandy Hook