Because You Never Asked

EDUCATION 

            Many years ago, upon finding out the basics of how public education is funded in the United States, I can remember asking myself if this were fair. Perhaps a quarter century has gone by since postulating that question to myself, and I have continually wondered why this issue has not received more attention. That is why, when I stumbled upon an NBC news special devoting a full hour to the question, I put down the zapper and paid attention.

             Public education, unlike health care, is considered a right rather than a privilege in the world's only "super power". But it is delivered with such a high degree of inequality that it can almost be said that one must buy a decent public education, in much the same barbaric way decent health care is bought (see essay "Health Care").

            The NBC special compared two public high schools within a few miles of each other: one in an affluent suburb of Milwaukee and another inside the city's limits in the kind of neighborhood where good prize fighters are produced. The suburban school was an effervescent locale, a digital marvel of 21^st century technology set into a beautifully groomed landscape of well-cared grounds and surgical cleanliness. In stark contrast to this was the Dickens-like scenario of dingy halls, caged windows and graffiti walls in the "Mike Tyson" high school. In the latter, there was a shortage of such primordial school supplies as textbooks and chalk, let alone a P.C. for every student, as in the suburban school. Needless to say, the amount of money spent per student in the "soccer mom" school was substantially higher than in the inner city.

            The reason for this disparity is quite simple: a great part of funding for public education is taken from local property taxes. In the SUV suburb, there are a lot of people paying these taxes while in the city, where only a few absentee slumlords are doing such, there isn't much money for schools.             Is this fair? Should some students be educated in optimistic, cutting edge learning centers, while others are sent to depressing fortresses equipped for failure only because someone's parents are rich or poor?

            The program showed us the suburban-ghetto educational dichotomies --- the self confident, dimple-cheeked success of one, compared to the belligerent, hip-hop snarl of defeat in the other (in spite of the heroic efforts of some of its staff). In the one, all the students seemed to ride happily off into the sunset, while in the other, they drifted aimlessly back into the night.

            The "moment of truth" arrived when the commentator interviewed a group of parents and administrators at the affluent school. Like a teenager gingerly asking dad for the family car, he wondered if perhaps any of them thought, through some change in tributary distribution, that some of the money so lavishly spent on their school could perhaps (c'mon dad, please .) be diverted to school districts so terribly lacking in funding?

            The tension created by this question defined the whole program in this one issue. Nobody wants to be perceived as selfish or cold hearted, but when the hemming and hawing, the squirming and dodging, the "yes-we- care-buts" had run their course, the general consensus was no; we earned our success, we made it, we deserve our better schools.

            What exactly is the "social contract" between citizens of a single nation? What do they owe to each other and what is left for the individual to accomplish for him or herself?

            Certainly, even in the United States, where the idea of a national social contract has always been somewhat underfed, it does extend to the provision of a military apparatus that can not only defend the nation, but aggressively propagate the enhancement of its riches. We are perhaps the only modern state (and maybe even unmodern state) that does not include the physical well being of its citizens as a part of the social contract, and the aforementioned inequalities with which public education is dispensed makes its inclusion under this umbrella more a public relations stunt than a hard core fact.

            Perhaps there is an intrinsic selfishness in all life forms, a survival mechanism that focuses only on oneself that leads to the attitude of the E-traders in Milwaukee's well-heeled suburbs. I'd like to think that human beings have evolved beyond such animal instinct and can understand that a certain degree of collective well being is in each individual's interest. Any nation claiming to be civilized has an obligation to fund public education so that it can be dispensed with some facsimile of equality. If, due to the affluence of their situation, the E-traders contribute more than the people in the "hood" to the general health (not just local) of our public schools, I see nothing unfair about this. These "American dream" families certainly contribute more to the maintenance of our military apparatus; why should something as vital as public education not be treated the same way?

            This attitude is not based on charity or "bleeding heart" compassion. The people in these poor areas earn their right to better schools. In spite of their less than sterling accomplishments in the global-economy-success-game, they are no less citizens of this country than their high fiber compatriots who have played the game well. But let's not focus on such romantic notions as "citizenship". Let's get "real" by recognizing that the vast majority of the people in the places where schools are anemically funded, perform essential tasks in providing for the life styles of the suburbanites, tasks that are mind numbing, boring, and distasteful. These are the people that lay black top in sweltering summer sun, who work monotonously on loading docks and scrub toilets in public places. They wallow in the most onerous aspects of preparing what eventually becomes the food on our tables. They take away the garbage, mop floors in hospitals, and are most likely to take a bullet in defense of our "standard of living" in some oil war or "police action". And, in a punch somewhat below the belt, due to the fact that they are not defended by a phalanx of lawyers, accountants and financial advisors, a bigger percentage of their earnings are whisked away through various and sundry taxes than the investment-professional earnings of the suburbanites.      

            This is not to say that the "soccer moms" have not earned their overflowing closets of dot com consumption. They've played the game well and triumphed. In the context of American society, nobody is denying them their right to a palatial home, to membership in a patrician country club, a spacious garage crammed with late model automobiles or their Scandinavian dining room set. They can wear designer clothes, buy broken and forgotten toys for the kids, book vacations to Bali on the Web, and hire a personal trainer to fight the war on cholesterol. This is the payoff for their success and nobody is trying to take it away from them. But the social contract of any nation should also demand a certain obligation from such affluence, enough so that every child has the chance to attend a properly maintained, adequately supplied school with a well-trained staff. If this means that a bit more of the suburbanite's booty is diverted in this direction .

            . It's a good investment. Somewhere in the future we might save some money on jails, police, judges, lawyers, and the whole cottage industry of crime and incarceration.     

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info