Watching the World Go By
Strengthen Education Strengthen Homes Too
By Ralph Lynn
Dr. Ralph Lynn is a retired professor of Modern European History at Baylor University. Three of his brief commentaries on some ethical dimensions of the passing scene were carried in the last issue of Christian Ethics Today. The three that follow in this issue were originally prepared for The Waco Tribune-Herald and are published here in somewhat revised form
The findings of the one state Education Association show clearly the chief reason for the high rate of student failure in the schools in danger of being closed. It is not the presence of significant percentages of minority students but the pervasiveness of poverty and the problems associated with poverty.
How is poverty likely to affect the academic records of children? What are some of the popular suggestions for correcting the academic problems in the endangered schools? What seldom suggested solution gives the most promise? And what is the penalty for our failure to deal effectively with the problem?
The child of poverty has likely lived all his life in a home without books, without newspapers, without magazines other than National Inquirer types, without good music, and without family conversation devoted to anything but sports, the weather, television, gossip, religion, bickering, and griping about hard times.
If the child of poverty is lucky, he has one caring parent or he lives with relatives who do what they can for him. He is likely to have to care for himself a good deal of the time since his parents or relatives must work as much as they possibly can in order not to get too far behind on the rent and the utility bills. If he is unlucky his parents or relatives will resent his presence as an additional burden.
He will be unable to take advantage of extracurricular activities partly because they usually cost something and partly because he has nobody to haul him around.
In all his life he will have had no place of peace and quiet to study, and his school books will probably be stained with food scraps and syrup.
A suggested solution both potentially helpful and harmful costs too much for poor people. This was a video which advertised itself-and the ignorance of its sponsors-with the slogan, "Where there`s a will there`s an A." If the conscientious but slow learner took this slogan seriously, it would have driven him into depression and it may have led the parents to try to browbeat-or even physically beat-their slow-learning children into becoming geniuses, an exercise not destined for success.
Another suggestion is that kids might be reshuffled to get fast and slow learners more equally divided among all of the schools in a given district. This would tend to result in universal mediocrity; it would certainly arouse anger among the people associated with the better schools.
Or perhaps gifted, industrious, imaginative, dynamic principals and teachers could be assigned to schools currently in danger of being closed-but with what results? The constituents of the good schools would raise such a howl over the loss of good principals and teachers that school boards would have to beat a fast retreat. Moreover, if the same students remained in the school to be rescued, the end results would be much the same. Only a handful of the brightest students would show really significant improvement. And the new, gifted staff would suffer early burnout.
Still another suggestion is that the work of teachers currently employed should be improved by additional "workshops." This is laudable but ludicrous for all practical purposes, most teachers are already doing the best they will ever be capable of. To enlist good teachers from the Junior League or the Chamber of Commerce would call for the firing of poor teachers; this is impossible. To raise the academic requirements for entry into public school teaching would necessitate significant increases in salaries. It would take many years before results would be visible-but a taxpayer revolt would be immediate.
One thing, theoretically, could be done immediately: mobilize intelligent, honest, thoughtful, public-spirited Christian people to pressure the state legislature to adopt an essentially fair system for the distribution of public funds. But this, too, is impossible since no imaginable leadership could overcome our built-in traditional selfishness and intense local loyalties.
An argument quite often made is that entrepreneurial competition among both public and private schools would solve the problem. Parental choice, so the claim goes, would be available since government-issued vouchers would be good at any public or private school of choice.
But experience indicates that many parents still wish to send their children to the closest school. And the dollar amounts available for vouchers typically cover only about half the cost of private schools; poor families could not afford their share of the cost. Also, the law of supply and demand would drive up the cost of private schools with the increase of applications. In addition, the good public schools would likely be swamped with applications and would probably reject the program. The private schools would almost certainly refuse the problem children, a pattern already well-established. Finally, parochial schools would want to accept government-issued vouchers but would face the constitutionally mandated church-state separation barrier.
Thoughtful readers will note that two assumptions underlie this line of reasoning. One is that interest in and ability to do academic work vary in the general population just as any and all other human characteristics vary. We have a few morons and a few geniuses with all the others ranged in between. The other is that none of these solutions touches the basic problems entailed by poverty.
Only one solution seems to make much sense. It is seldom mentioned but is essentially obvious: since good students come from good homes we must try to make a lot of good homes.
This solution enjoys little popular support; it would be expensive, it would call for radical changes in our social outlook, and it would take a generation for its results to be visible.
Good homes have parents who are ambitious for their children; they have a degree of economic security and dignity. They also offer books, magazines, good music, and civilized-even sophisticated-conversation.
To make good homes out of poor ones, we would have to begin with full employment at wages which would allow even a single parent home to enjoy a degree of economic security and dignity. We would have to educate our children to be good parents. We would have to begin to educate current parents to supply the books, newspapers, and magazines which characterize the homes from which good students come.
Such a program would meet Christian requirements and it would be effective in the course of a generation. But it would likely also produce some inflation, it would frighten the business and financial communities out of their wits, and it would be opposed by the pillars of the churches, the luncheon clubs, and the Chambers of Commerce.
It would be damned as utopian and as too idealistic by all the self-styled "realists" who dislike the status quo but oppose effective changes in it.
The penalty for failure to solve our current problem is that we will rob our nation of the brains and talents of literally millions of people presently ignored by our system. All we know about such matters indicates that brains and talents are equally divided among all human beings. As a nation, we cannot afford this continued waste.
Failure to come to grips with and then to solve this problem would also deepen and widen the current division of our society between the affluent and the poor. Those who oppose effective reforms in our present system should reflect that they may, one day, wish for a lot of healthy, well-educated soldiers from our presently submerged masses to defend their privileged positions.
We are right to be dissatisfied with the performance of our public schools. We are wrong to suppose that private schools are any better except that they take in only young people from "good" homes.
All educators, from the kindergartens to the Ivy League are well aware that to turn out good students they must take in good students. Aside from the wonderful fact that the human personality is sacred, educators would agree that schools are like computers: garbage in, garbage out; treasure in, treasure out.
We are also wrong to suppose that any quick fix is possible save for the handful of currently poor students who, given a chance, are so gifted that they can relatively easily overcome their handicaps stemming from poverty environments.
We are, moreover, wrong to suppose that we can solve this problem without significant social changes since the conditions guaranteeing academic failure have long been built into the social-economic structure of our society
