April 3, 2007

The Honorable James R. Roebuck Jr.
Education Committee Chair
Pennsylvania House of Representatives

Dear Representative Roebuck:

As Publisher and Editor in Chief of TWINS™ Magazine, I am intimately familiar with the issues surrounding the forced separation of twins and triplets in elementary schools around the country and abroad. I would like to respectfully urge you to support and pass House Bill 65, sponsored by Representative Jess Stairs. These bills deserve to be brought to a vote, and they deserve to pass.

It is crucial that there be a statewide policy in each state allowing for flexibility in the placement of multiples in the classroom. TWINS™ Magazine is strongly in favor of such statewide standards, to redress the irreparable damage that has been done and is being done when district officials arbitrarily-and wrongly-force twins and triplets to be separated into different classrooms at virtually any age, but particularly when they are young. Many children are left with lifelong emotional scars resulting from these separations, most of which make no sense at all and are highly unnecessary and unwarranted.

Above all, the decision to keep twins and triplets together in school should rest primarily with the parents of the children, working when necessary jointly with the classroom teacher and the school principal.

The issue of forced separation of twins and triplets in elementary school has parents of multiples incensed nationwide, and rightly so. The arbitrary and uninformed rules put in place by schools and school districts represent the worst kind of discrimination based on the simple fact of a life-event over which the children have no control-that they are born in a set. If this type of discrimination were racially-based, or based on any other type of physical or mental attribute, it would have been outlawed long ago, considered intolerable and intolerant.

Yet, many school districts across the U.S. (thankfully, a shrinking number of them, due to our efforts and those of many enlightened parents!) continue to enforce baseless rules governing twins and triplets-"multiples" as we call them-formulated in the post-WW II years. The rules have no legitimate foundation in science or research of any kind. These senseless rules cause twins and their families to suffer emotional trauma, sometimes affecting twin children for their entire lifetimes.

Forced separation of twins and triplets in elementary school is based on "thin air." It is cruel to the children and reflects age-old biases and stereotypes about multiples long ago discredited and disproved. A number of national experts and our magazine, which is internationally renowned, have called for broad-based changes in these ignorant requirements.

A national effort among parents of multiples is working to change these senseless and arbitrary school rules, following the decade-long efforts of TWINS™ Magazine. Our efforts have been redoubled following the passage in 2005 of a Minnesota law mandating that schools honor the decisions of parents and their children on this issue. This was the first state law to be passed that says school principals must take each family's situation into account, on a case-by-case basis. Oklahoma already had such a guideline statewide.

Pennsylvania and its enlightened legislators have an opportunity to strengthen this important effort with passage of HB-65. Nearly a dozen other states also are considering legislation similar to Minnesota's, and have petition drives are underway to promote the protection of twin and higher-multiple children.

Please permit me to explain why this is so important, so you will understand how your passage of this legislation impacts the mental health of young children. First and foremost, it's unfair to make emotionally immature 4- to 10-year-olds suffer because of the arbitrary notions of a few educators back in the 1940s and 1950s about what was "best" for twins.

Parents know what is best for their children. Parents must be given the primary voice in placement decisions regarding their multiple children within school classrooms. To that end, your legislation is critically important.

Across the United States, twins, triplets and higher-order multiples are routinely subjected to arbitrary, mandated separation in early elementary grades. (In rarer instances, they are forced to be together a single classroom, regardless of their personalities, needs or preferences, which in some instances might be equally damaging to the children.)

School districts typically promulgate "the rule" governing this separation, enforced without question by individual school principals. These "across the board" polices are difficult to deal with, since many schools doggedly refuse to take parental requests into account or acknowledge the weak foundation on which the rules were based originally.

Educators originally instituted these rules forcing separation of twins in school because they thought this would promote proper "individuality" and foster the development of "identity" in each child. Their rules were not based on any sound psychological or social research that we have ever been able to find, but were apparently pulled out of thin air.

Forced separation and any notion that it helps twin children have long since been discredited as unsupportable and fatuous.

In fact, forced separation traumatizes many twins. There are countless stories of twins and triplets who cannot study, cannot learn, who cry and grieve for months and even years because they are thoughtlessly wrenched apart at vulnerable ages by well-meaning educators who have no basis in fact for what they're doing.

No medical, psychological or academic evidence supports school policies of forced separation of multiples. Elimination of these policies is supported by TWINS™ Magazine, which began 10 years ago to renounce the practice.

Also strongly supporting the elimination of forced separation of multiples in school are renowned twin researcher and author, Nancy Segal, Ph.D.; John Mascazine, Ph.D., a leading academic expert on twins; the National Organization of Mothers of Twins Clubs (NOMOTC) and countless other multiple-birth organizations.

All recommend flexible placement policies so that each individual child's needs are best served. Multiples are guilty of nothing more than sharing a birthday, yet are continuously discriminated against and treated as a group, as if each child is not entitled to be treated as a separate person with his and her own emotional makeup.

What has been far too little understood is the close bond formed by twins and triplets before and after their births. This bond is a very healthy one. It helps these children survive the slings and arrows of life, offering them a valuable "mirror" that helps them develop extremely healthy egos and self-image. The notion of forcing these children apart in kindergarten and early elementary school, in fact, appears to have emerged based on some "singleton" person's warped notion that the twin bond is inherently unhealthy. We can only wonder at the underlying thinking of some individual long ago who wanted to see the twin relationship forcibly unwoven early in life, depriving twins of their "reinforcing double."

Think about it: Twins were left together in classrooms for centuries, and it did them no harm—one-room schoolhouses and small communities of the past never had enough different schools or classrooms to accommodate separated twins. Many twins when left together, in fact, become tutors and mentors for each other, often turning out to be our best and brightest for having been left together in school. Their performance is actually enhanced by their bond and their joint activities.

Several years ago, a set of twins who were in the same classrooms together all through elementary, middle, and high school scored perfect 650's on their SAT tests. And somehow educators who set the unbendable rules for their districts think it is "better" for twins to be yanked apart at age 5? On the face of it, this simply makes no sense.

Why is legislation necessary at all to redress this issue? Because widespread, wholesale discrimination against twins and higher multiples is fraught with politics, emotion and controversy. The "status quo" is damaging many, many children. Educators often dig in their heels and are unyielding in the face of challenges to their power and authority. Yet even they cannot say where the "rules" came from, or justify their basis.

Children are suffering. Many more twins and triplets have been born in the last 15 to 20 years, and more are arriving each day. Parents are frantic. Teachers will tell you, "There's no problem!" with having twins and triplets in the same classroom. Individual classroom teachers learn to deal with each child quite quickly, and do so very comfortably. Yet teachers feel helpless to change the rules of their school or their district. School principals and district officials are often the ones who are intransigent.

We've heard from many parents who have removed their twins from the formal school system to homeschool them, faced with the frustrations and repercussions of trying to keep their children together in the same classroom. Others have been forced to spend hard-earned dollars to send their twins to private schools where they are usually given a choice about being together or being apart. Still other families despair and give up after hard-fought, lengthy battles with principals and district officials, frustrated and sad for their children that "nothing could be done to sway the people at the top."

You have an opportunity to make a huge difference in the lives of thousands of children from this day forward. Please take this opportunity and vote to pass Representative Stairs's legislation.



Susan J. Alt
Publisher, Editor in Chief
TWINS™ Magazine