By the time of last fall's presidential election, the myriad talking points of the campaign season had boiled down to three vital issues: the economy, the economy, and the economy. Iraq, Afghanistan? Still there, yes. Education? End of the line. Once again.

How ironic that lawmakers fail to see the direct connection - and then act on it. Almost nine years ago, Business Week had listed Ireland as "the economic champion of the European Union." Why? Ireland's "commitment to a world-class education system" has resulted in a "well-educated workforce (that) today offers multinational businesses perhaps Europe's best ratio of skills to wages." American companies flocked to set up factories in Ireland.

Here at home? The National Right to Read Foundation reports that 42 million American adults cannot read - at all, at any level. That's 42 million. And an additional 2.25 million functionally illiterate people join those ranks each year, many of them victims of weak schools' lax promotion standards.

For more than 20 years, U.S. industries have spent $25 billion annually to retrain workers with poor English and math skills. Product prices consequently rise, making U.S. exports less competitive in the global market. Meanwhile, our national K-12 education system continues in dire straits, derided by the rest of the industrialized world. In Pennsylvania, for example, test scores for 2002 indicated that in one out of three schools, reading proficiency was unattainable for the majority of students - students comprising tomorrow's workforce. The response of that state's education secretary? "We know we have work to do."

Right. And so do we - as parents.

It's now 2009. What are we - in New York City, New York state and the North Country - going to do about it?

First, realize that our children spend 45 minutes per day in English class (for a total of only 1,620 hours between first and 12th grades) - but they will watch, on average, about 18,000 hours of television before graduation. That's 11 times as much television as classroom English. What's the toll on young imaginations when LCD and cathode ray screens, not children's minds, present the pictures? On verbal skills when reading for pleasure falls off the radar screen?

Then consider the impact on college applicants when verbal scores count double the math in the selection index for National Merit Semifinalist ratings in those dreaded SAT tests.

Clearly, if schools can't do it all, parents must help. What to do? Enrich the home verbal environment.

Parents with children in lower school could consider:

reading aloud to them - even for a while after they can read on their own: favorite childhood fairy tales ("Cinderella") and stories (from the Dr. Seuss series); later, novels like "Sounder," "Charlotte's Web" and "Smoky the Cowhorse"

homemade puppet and shadow plays - with child-supplied dialogue

mealtime conversation with even the youngest

gift subscriptions to Ranger Rick, Cricket, Children's Digest, Highlights (kids love getting their own magazines through the mail)

word games like Candyland, Spill-and-Spell

Monthly trips to the Saranac Lake Free Library - after getting them their own official library cards.

For middle schoolers, parents can weigh such possibilities as:

holiday and birthday gifts of diaries, magazine subscriptions (Cricket, Stone Soup, Popular Science and Seventeen, for example) and such books as "The Phantom Tollbooth," "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe," the Harry Potter series and Jumanji

family reading time: Family members gather in one room, each with his favorite book.

playing Hangman, Spill-and-Spell, Scrabble

group dramatic reading (using multiple copies from the library or in paperback) of plays like "Our Town" or "You Can't Take it With You"

refrigerator bulletin boards featuring spelling and grammar errors from newspapers and magazines

reading aloud of scary short stories - try Edgar Allan Poe's - or fantasy/science fiction (a favorite at this age) by such masters as Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov.

Some home verbal enhancement options at the high school level:

magazine subscriptions ranging from Motor Trend, National Geographic and Discover to Sports Illustrated and Scientific American - and holiday gift books in their interest areas

word and general knowledge games like Facts-in-Five and Trivial Pursuit; Geography and Ghost - delightful oral games for passing time before a movie or on a long car trip; newspaper crossword puzzles as a family effort

weekend museum, library and theater excursions - followed by discussion that develops skills of analysis and abstraction

watching and then talking about special programs on television - from "NOVA" and History Channel selections to reruns of classic films

parents' reading one book on their teenager's English or history reading list each semester, followed by both sharing their candid likes and dislikes about the ideas or particular passages.

Since "No Child Left Behind" has clearly left millions behind, perhaps it's now up to Mom and Dad to help reinforce their children's sagging verbal skills. Small adjustments, huge rewards. But there's little time to lose.

---

A resident of Saranac Lake, Lee Gaillard spent more than 30 years in education in Greece and the United States as a European history and English teacher, English department chair, head of upper school and academic dean. His articles on topics in literature, history and education have appeared in Education Week, Independent School, Twentieth-Century Literature and other professional journals and newspapers.