Illiteracy

WASHINGTON -- President Clinton needs the Supreme Court ruling that Paula Jones can proceed with her sexual-harassment suit against him while he is in office like, as Jack Benny used to say, a moose needs a hat rack.With the Whitewater case still being investigated by independent counsel Kenneth Starr and with Senate and House committees delving into the excesses of his 1996 re-election campaign fund-raising, Mr. Clinton already has enough personal distractions.What makes this court decision particularly troublesome for the president is that it keeps before the American public his political soft underbelly -- the nagging suspicion that he was, or even still is, a man of weak character and untrustworthiness with a lack of respect for women.

Berkeley, California.--Gov. Bill Clinton should not discount the effects that cynicism in the electorate will have on his mandate to govern. For without a change in the prevailing ''anti-government'' climate, electoral victories will be undermined by ever-mounting support for negative measures (such as spending caps and term limits) that further restrict public authority.An understanding of this seemed to be behind Mr. Clinton's campaign theme of a ''new covenant'' between citizen and government.

WHICH INVESTMENT has the greatest risk of losing its value due to inflation? A) money market funds? B) stocks? C) putting cash in your mattress? Not too long ago, more than 5,000 American adults and high-school students were asked this and 23 other economics and personal-finance questions by a leading national pollster. The bad news: Only 28 percent of all students and 52 percent of all adults identified the riskiest investment, putting cash in your mattress. The really bad news: 60 percent of the high-school students and almost one in three in adults earned an overall "F" on the fairly simple multiple-choice quiz.

If you believe the inability of 27 million Americans to read, write and do simple arithmetic is not your problem, think again. It is costing you, a taxpayer, billions of dollars a year, and that means you are footing the bill out of your own pocket.The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 1990 International Literacy Year and a conference is scheduled early next month at U.N. headquarters in New York to explore the issue. Illiteracy is not just a "foreign" or third-world problem.

Pasadena, California.--Most Americans are in awe of our Nobel laureates but hate science and math classes. We brag about having the world's largest scientific elite while we bemoan scientific illiteracy in our schools. With growing alarm, the aristocrats of American science warn that ''a leaky pipeline'' in education now threatens our global leadership.What we're seeing, in fact, is the end result of an educational ''mining and sorting'' operation designed to cast aside masses of human debris in the search for a few diamonds-in-the-rough who are capable of becoming scientists.

The Odenton Jaycees thank everyone who contributed to the food drive.Last Saturday, the Jaycees delivered a pickup truck full of food to the First Evangelical Lutheran Church to help needy families. Now that's what you call Christmas spirit!The Jaycees are selling tickets to the Jan. 14 hockey game between the Washington Capitals and the New Jersey Devils at USAir Arena.Tickets, which usually sell for $32, are available for $20. Proceeds will benefit the Friends of Literacy Program. For tickets or information, call 551-4439 or 621-9508.

Tracy Punte wanted to go to Annapolis yesterday to tell Project Independence leaders about her problems with the program. But to get there, she needed to hike 1 miles, carrying her 5-month-old son, to reach the nearest bus stop in Glen Burnie.The same trouble with transportation has prevented the 19-year-old high school dropout from participating in Project Independence, Maryland's welfare-to-work training effort.As a teen mother, Punte belongs to one of the program's main target groups. Project Independence is required by federal law to spend 55 percent of its $19 million state budget on teen parents and long-term welfare recipients.

Washington.--When I first reached the border of India, 25 years ago, I watched Muslim Pakistani guards wearing British-style uniforms -- save for the turbans -- tear apart the luggage of a couple of Hindu traders crossing to the East.They made the fat Hindu man sweat, turning his possessions into a pile of crumpled cloth and packages. The rest of us travelers weren't even asked to open our bags.When I reached the other side of the border, Indian Hindu border guards in identical British-style uniforms attacked the luggage of a couple of Muslim Pakistani travelers, giving them the third degree over their papers as they turned neatly packed personal effects into a dirty and wrinkled pile on the floor.

THE LITERACY RATE in Howard County public schools is not nearly as high as it should be. Only 68 percent of second-graders were able to read and understand grade-level material at the end of the 1994-95 school year. So a proposal to spend $75,000 on a new program to improve the reading skills of elementary-school students is a welcome part of Superintendent Michael E. Hickey's $252 million budget request for the next fiscal year.This small portion of Dr. Hickey's budget is in the spirit of President Clinton's campaign initiative to spend $2.75 billion to help every child learn to read by the third grade.

WASHINGTON -- Kenneth Silberman was in graduate school when he realized that he had to learn to read and write.Mr. Silberman, who is blind, discovered that the tape recorders and computers he had always used to get through school were of little help in the advanced studies required to earn a master's ++ degree.He ended up teaching himself Braille and received the degree, in aerospace engineering, from Cornell University. But he is still bitter that, as a child with limited vision, he was not taught Braille and thus found himself illiterate in his mid-20s.