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WORD COUNT
629
APRIL 2, 2008
SCHOOLS: TIME TO GET
COERCIVE – by William A. Collins
Public schools,
Make plain their
lack;
Will cost a lot,
To bring them back.
Americans mostly want
their schools to look like Norman Rockwell’s. And in a steadily
diminishing number of places they still do. Elsewhere however, in a
spreading stain, they’re closer to the blackboard jungle. And in
between, many formerly sparkling institutions find more and more
students needing special help. It shows up inexorably in their test
scores.
The causes of this
decay are no mystery. Our fabled economic system, momentarily
indisposed, is carefully designed to steer the fruits of human labor to
the top dogs, not to the bottom fish, thus leaving the poor less and
less able to prepare their kids to move up. Plus, with the white birth
rate in decline, we treat our national borders with benign neglect so
that regiments of immigrants can slip in to do our dirty work for us.
Their kids naturally often struggle with that strange new language,
culture, and permissiveness.
In response to this
deterioration, hordes of white families who can afford it move to purer
places, or else sequester their kids in private school. And now there’s
competition even to do that. In New York City you often have to enroll
your child while it’s still in utero.
Most states have
diligently sought cures. Formulas abound to give more public money to
poor rather than to rich school districts. In our state lawmakers have
been searching 30 years for that elusive recipe. Additionally some
districts utilize busing to lessen the impact of disparity. Magnet
schools are also popular, as are charter schools and public
“academies.” Meanwhile in the South a few states perversely use
“academies” to sustain segregation. What a country!
But very few
jurisdictions are ready either to spend the necessary cash or to reorder
society enough to make a serious dent in the disparity problem. No
Child Left Behind is good for a lot of column inches in the newspaper,
but turned out to be mainly snake oil. Every state also has its own
testing regimen, designed to codify for us the bad news about education
that we already know in our hearts. These exams embarrass educators and
spur them on to even greater futile efforts with their totally
inadequate resources.
Unfortunately the
true alternatives to our present decay are both expensive and
intrusive. For starters they would mean state intervention with mothers
from pregnancy test onward. The poor would be offered healthy food and
counseling, with a cash bonus for giving up smoking, drinking, and
drugs. From birth there would be special daily care for those families
that needed it. Pre-school would begin at six months and medical care
pre-natally. The family would be awash with help to maximize healthy
cultural influence.
On the school
districting front, those states whose school borders follow town borders
would have to give them up. Districts would need to be re-gerrymandered
to include both wealthy and poor neighborhoods to the extent possible.
And uniforms would be everywhere.
All this is
definitely not Norman Rockwell, but maybe it’s time for a new artist as
well as a new system. The world has changed. If, unlike most European
nations, we purport to treat our legal immigrants fairly, we have work
to do. But even if we insist on maintaining our growing unhealthy
economic disparity, there are still penalties to pay. Free pre-school
and universal health care are a couple big ones.
So far there seems
little political enthusiasm for this or any other sort of fundamental
education reform. We remain powerfully wedded to neighborhood schools
and to low taxes. Consequently other nations are passing us by. The
likely result will be that education turns out to be a hefty chapter in
“The Decline and Fall of the American Empire.”
--
Columnist William A.
Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk,
Connecticut. A photo of Bill Collins is available
CLICK HERE
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