Three Basic Questions
Reflect School Issues.
What Does Klein Think
And What Will He Do?

Henry J. Stern  
The first question he asks is: "Should children who fail one grade be permitted to go on to the next?" That is the issue I discussed last Friday in Antisocial Promotion. If you have lost, mislaid or erased your copy, you can replace it free through the miracle of internet hyperlink. The common-sense answer to question No.1 is No. If a pupil can't do the work of the third grade, how can he possibly succeed in the fourth grade?

Then the educrats come in. First, it's not the student's fault that he/she failed, it's the fault of the teachers, or the environment, or whatever the root causes may be, so why should the children (who are the victims) be left back and given the stigma of failure.  Second, if you "retain" these children, they will beat up the smaller kids just coming into the lower grade, or cause other disciplinary problems. Third, if we left back everybody who couldn't read or write up to standard, the school system would be overwhelmed. Fourth, if they don't learn the work the second time around, do we keep leaving them back until they age out of school? Fifth, failing to promote these kids will have a disparate effect on racial groups and therefore could violate civil rights laws, or require the approval of the Justice Department or other federal agencies.

The excuses for inaction, which means retaining the status quo of social promotion, are endless. The fact that children, who are smart enough to know that they are going to be promoted anyway, are less likely to work and study is ignored. The fact that, for a teacher, it is far more difficult to teach a class when a substantial number of the pupils are unable to do the work from the start, is not considered. The fact that, with each undeserved promotion, the child falls further and further behind the rest of the class is not relevant. What does seem to count is maintaining the illusion that everyone is moving forward, and concealing the reality that many children have just given up on school. The ultimate disservice to children is condemning them to a lifetime of ignorance simply because educrats are unable or unwilling to make them literate and to reveal their own failure.
 
Question No.2:  "Should violent kids be allowed to attend school with peaceable ones?" Again, reason says 'No". You have to protect the victims, usually smaller children, from physical aggression, intimidation, forced "loans", and mean-spirited bullying.  Children should not have to live in fear when they go to school. Not so fast. The old Board of Education, prodded by the Civil Liberties Union, imposed a variety of bully-protecting measures on the school system. The right to be represented by an advocate, probably paid for by the taxpayers, the right to cross-examine one's accuser (Imagine a towering teen-ager facing down the child he has tormented, and will see again the next day in the same school. That is a textbook case of intimidation.)  The bully's right to have these cases decided at a higher educratic level, the Board showing no confidence in their own principal's judgment. Turning every incident into a Federal case, so that the process is time consuming and expensive. The result is that victims lose their basic civil right to go to school in peace, and wrongdoers learn how to beat the system. Besides which, the bully is probably a victim of violence himself, so how can he blamed for acting out. You have to look for the root causes of school violence, rather than singling out the young people who strike out in what is essentially an unjust and exploitative society. Yada, yada, yada. The score in the schools as of today is Criminals 1, Victims 0.
 
Question No.3: "Should high achievers be placed in accelerated programs?" Should gifted and talented children have a chance to do more challenging work, the better to prepare themselves for college and life? For most of us, the answer is an easy Yes.  And if the public schools do not help young people develop to the fullest, more children will be driven out of the system to private schools, and more taxpaying families will be driven out of the city to the suburbs. But, wait, "progressive" educators have a different view. First, to divide children on the basis of ability is segregation. It takes the bright kids out of regular schools, and therefore lessens the quality of education for the remaining students. Second, we have no real standards of intelligence, just outmoded tests which measure certain abilities (reading, writing, arithmetic and language comprehension) but not others (art, music, dance, verbal expression, leadership, ability to relate). Why should children with one set of gifts be given preference over others who may have different talents? Third, why should additional resources be devoted to bright children who need them least, rather than the children who need them most who are in bilingual education, special education, etc.?  Fourth, how will children of different abilities get along in the world if they are separated during their formative years? Fifth, education of the children of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie is by definition elitist and intrinsically counter-revolutionary.
 
You may think those reasons are nonsensical, but there are true believers who would swear to them. Some of them have positions in our school system, and, one way or the other, often through bureaucratic machinations at which they, too, are gifted and talented, seek to undermine programs for students with high abilities. To the purists, such schools as Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech are suspect. If the clique had its way, those schools would be relegated to Trotsky's dustbin of history.

One school for the gifted, Townsend Harris, which prepared students for City College, was actually abolished by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia in 1942. It was one of the stupidest things LaGuardia ever did, along with his refusal to appeal a lower court decision forbidding Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher and mathematician, from teaching at City College. Russell was an advocate of "free love", which at the time was frowned upon. These actions show that even courageous and intelligent mayors who become iconic figures can do ridiculous things.  As LaGuardia himself said, "When I make a mistake, it's a beaut."
 
You may or may not recall the life of Townsend Harris (1804-1878). He is considered the father of the Free Academy, which was created after the voters of New York approved it in a referendum he proposed in 1847. It is now called the City University of New York. Harris played a major role in opening Japan to trade with Western countries. His distinguished name was revived in 1984 for a new high school which is affiliated with Queens College. In recent years, the colleges of the city university have increasingly sponsored campus high schools. The oldest and most prestigious is Hunter, at 94th Street and Park Avenue. Hunter also sponsors an elementary school on the site, which was formerly the Squadron A armory and polo field.  Admission is by competitive examination, which does not appear to upset the City University, not even its schools of education.

Decisions on these three questions will not be made by you or by me. Mayor Bloomberg, using the powers he received in 2002 from the State Legislature, appointed Joel I. Klein as Schools Chancellor, and the State of New York's education pooh-bahs  granted a waiver for him to serve without experience in school management. That lack of experience could be an asset, but only if he has the sound judgment not to believe much of what the educrats tell him. Klein is a brilliant man, J.D. 1971, m.c.l. at HLS, but intelligence does not always correspond with wisdom, although there is a significant if immeasurable correlation between the two gifts of God.
   
Unfortunately, the waiver that Klein received in 2002 was denied by State Education Commissioner Gordon Ambach when Mayor Koch sought one on behalf of Robert F. Wagner, Jr., who served as president of the Board of Education from 1986 to 1990. Perhaps the fact that Mayor Koch had previously called Mr. Ambach "pigheaded" had something to do with his decision, which confirmed Koch's view of Ambach who, since 1987, has been one of the nation's top educrats as executive director of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO).

Battles over public education in New York have gone on over the last two centuries. There have been issues of corruption in construction and hiring (the original Tweed ring), discrimination on the basis of race, religion, gender and more recently sexual orientation, political or sectarian control of the central board and local school boards, centralization or balkanization, community input or control, language of instruction, tenure, unionization and the all-powerful rule book, and powers of principals and teachers. You name it, New Yorkers have fought over it, and they will continue to do so.

To conclude: speech comes naturally to children, but not reading and writing, which generally must be taught. How best to teach, how to reach children with special needs, how most effectively to spend the $12.5 billion which go each year to New York City public schools? Answers to these questions are in dispute, with school managers, professionals, teachers and parents sometimes on different sides of many issues. But knowledge of history, differences of opinion, and nuances of style have never been in demand by true believers armed with accreditation. The wisest educators are often those men and women whose certitude is tempered by openness and pragmatism, and who fully understand that their true clientele is the children they are paid to enlighten.

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