Reading program
not such a big hit

In response to widespread illiteracy in Rowan-Salisbury, the school system has decided to spend several hundred thousand dollars on the online reading program Achieve 3000. As a student, I think it is appropriate for the public to know that students have not “fallen in love” with the program as the Salisbury Post and school board would like to believe.

The program supposedly boosts students’ reading ability by giving articles on the same reading level as each student, if any student who needs it took the program seriously. The regular lesson on Achieve 3000 begins with a survey question that is ignored, gives an article that is skipped, asks eight multiple-choice questions that go as fast as the student can click, and ends with a written response, which is more often a series of random letters than any words at all.

Only students who care about school and their grades participate in the program, and none of those students are illiterate in the least bit, making Achieve 3000 a waste of limited class time.

Literacy begins at a young age with parent involvement and no strings attached (tests, essays, etc.). A love for reading is the only inspiration students need. If that can be instilled, then students will gladly read multiple books on their own time, but many students’ personal reading becomes limited by homework and unnecessary literacy programs.

Students would gain more from programs that help them to find books they are interested in and give them the time to enjoy those books. However, with the state of our textbooks and downsized libraries, the only book the school board seems interested in buying at the moment is “Furnishing the Wallace Educational Forum: For Dummies.”

— Daniel Troutman

Salisbury

Good faith columns

Your juxtaposition of the Carol Hallman and Henry Waiters columns in Saturday’s paper (“Blue Christmas” and “Church discipline”) was great. Each of the articles showed an aspect of a Christian life that can sometimes be overlooked. Rarely do we see the two addressed together.

Exercising compassion to the hurting can sometimes be used to shut out discipline. And exercising appropriate discipline can sometimes be used to exclude compassion to those who are hurting. We need to remember that both are important and are a critical part of any mature Christan life.

Russ Stevens

Salisbury