OCR Text |
Show and fV Horn J by tU Dr. Doryl J. McCarty Executive Secretary Utah Education Association Homes changing In case you think that with the exception ex-ception of collecting your taxes the federal government has forgotten you, perish the thought. On March 28 every household in Utah will receive a questionnaire from the United States Bureau of Census. About 90 percent of Utahns will be asked to mail the completed forms . to the bureau. The other 10 percent mainly those in sparsely settled areas will be asked to hang onto the questionnaires until census-takers pick them up. Nobody knows for certain what next year's census will show, but a lot of the information will have a bearing on education. For instance, the census is expected to show that the number of husbandless women who are heading families has soared nearly 50 percent since 1970, to more than eight million. The traditional family household of mother, father, and one or more children now accounts for less than a third of the nation's households. That's the lowest percentage ever. Both husband and wife are income-earners income-earners in about half of the 48 million husband-wife families in the United States. This is also a new high. What all this adds up to is that young people, many of them students, are not seeing as much of their mothers and fathers as they did a generation ago. This can have some serious effects on a child's progress in school. Make no mistake about it: Home is where character is largely formed in young people. It is in the home under the tutelege of parents, that children learn their first great lessons in honesty, care for others, manners, self-respect, the value of work, a desire to learn and hundreds of other virtues. If Mom or Dad isn't there, maybe those lessons don't get learned. The moral of this story is that kids especially young kids desperately need to spend as much time with their parents as possible. |