There is no question that, as the cords of family have unraveled, the number of special education classes in elementary and secondary schools have increased exponentially. Even in the general education classes, teachers start training children for statewide tests almost at the beginning of the school year, instead of introducing them to the excitement of education for its own sake and saving the stress of performance for later in the year. IQ and performance scores are down. Children seem to have more difficulty in general wrapping their minds around academic matters.

Children's priorities have changed over time. Whereas home and community were the center of life twenty, even ten years ago, television has taken center stage in many children's lives, followed closely, depending on the child, by the mobile phone, the PC screen and any electronic component that begins with "i". While these plug-ins may entertain and amuse, they seldom educate, and they certainly do not comfort.

Learning requires an environment free of distraction and preoccupation. If a child does not feel secure in his home because of discord or dysfunction, he will find it difficult to learn at school or anywhere else, because he is too busy trying to find elemental stability.

'Home' has changed for the majority of children. Whereas their parents may well have lived in 'intact' homes with a father and a mother who were good-enough caretakers, today's children may live in single-parent homes with an unsupported caregiver, usually female. Finances may well suffer, and the caretaker's time may be focused on work and maintaining her own well-being. For the even less-fortunate child, family structure may have broken down altogether, so that even with both parents present, home is not a place one wants to be for long because of disharmony between the parents, physical or sexual abuse, substance use, or protracted parental absence. Alone and feeling unprotected, the child is hardly going to pick up his backpack and study algebra!

Recently this writer met with a group of elementary-aged students labeled 'educationally disabled'. They were all slated to repeat the grade, as they spent much of their time sleeping, acting out, or just sitting in the classroom, staring at every child who passed by. The sleeper confided that her mother worked the third shift and her older sister used that time to entertain her casual beaus at home - usually for a price. The child got no sleep, because she was

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