The Nation's Pulse/Public Teachers, Private Schools
Doyle, Denis P.
demonstrate whether, indeed, its presmt policies are stable and worthy of :onfidence. For the burden of proof is an the Chinese Communist system, not an the system in Hong Kong, which has...
...Thanks to the Chicago Reporter study we can now see how Chicago i ~5~151i~ n i~66"1 ~aqc]~il~ ( respond...
...Walter Mondale and 46 percent of Chicago public school teachers send their own children to private schools...
...He steals some of her silver as he goes, and is returned a day later by the police...
...Already in this first scene we can tell that we are not about to see the typical race-relations hysteria Hollywood always foists upon us...
...She has no money, and has never done anything other than being a wife and a mother...
...Similarly, when the unhappy murderer is dragged through the streets of Waxahachie, Texas tied to a pickup John Podhoretz is critic-at-large and Capital Life editor of the Washington Times...
...Just as the racial tensions are depicted here in a quiet and detached way, so are the racial harmonies...
...But it is still something of a surprise to learn that the rank and file are not buying their own product...
...They simply try to get by...
...Access to Energy 0-306-41425-2/310pp.li11./19831516.95 PLENUM PUBLISltlNG CORPORATION 233 Spring Street, New York, N.Y...
...These incidents are allowed to speak for themselves...
...Topics with Major Impact BEAM WEAPONS The Next Arms Race by Jeff Hecht "Hecht, who has written extensively on laser technology, presents the issues in a sober and evenhanded fashion . . . - The New York Times Book Review "In the aftermath of President Reagan's Star Wars speech, Beam Weapons is a welcome and eye-opening book...
...A new era of SinoBritish cooperation will begin, which will include ensuring the return of a "complete, stable, and prosperous Hong Kong" to China--the ripe plum to be dropped into the expectantly open mouth...
...When teachers see themselves as workers, administrators as management, the superintendent the CEO, the school committee the Board of Trustees, and the students the product, it is only a short step to unionization...
...The black man calls the sheriff "Mistah Royce," the sheriff deals with him as he would with a tiresome child...
...The more dramatic news was released this spring by the Chicago Reporter, a monthly information service that reports on racial issues in metropolitan Chicago...
...Dick Teresi, Executive Editor, OmniMagazine 0-306-41546-1/376pp./i11./19841517.95 BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE A Scientist's Case FOR Nudear Energy by Bernard L. Cohen "A most comprehensive analysis of the facts and fantasies about nuclear power...
...Moze, the vagrant black, stops by Edna's house looking for some work...
...Markets rbveal preferences in ways that monopolies cannot...
...They believe in teachers Denis P. Doyle is director of Education Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute...
...Limousine liberals, as they used to be called, are by now old stuff...
...Based on a sample of 872 teachers in 35 districts throughout Michigan, it is believed to be accurate to within three and a half percentage points...
...We are being taught no lessons here...
...They share one other trait that few people know about, however...
...10013 unions...
...Even more revealing is the comment by noted University of Chicago political analyst and proponent of school busing Gary Orfield: "This shows that the people who know the city's schools best know they are not functioning...
...But surely this is the biggest pipe dream of all...
...As University of Illinois professor Herbert Walberg commented: "Teachers are like auto workers who wisely buy Japanese cars...
...she just does not like them very much...
...It is a job in precisely the same way that being a policeman, motorman, clerk, or other public employee is...
...So much for common knowledge...
...An example is the private Ancona Montessori School that numbers so many public school teachers among its parents that the principal reports that she "schedules parent-teacher conferences on public school holidays...
...The sample of Chicago teachers, for example, have a family income of more than $35,000 per year...
...Set in Texas in 1935, the movie tells the sto~yxff~Edna Spa~lding:(Sally Field), the wife of Royce Spaulding, the town sheriff...
...Deng Xiaoping will beam his Cheshire-cat smile and turn his attention optimistically to Taiwan...
...For the reality is that the very nations who should be most concerned about securing Hong Kong against the vagaries of Chinese Communism are themselves blindly scrambling to attach financial fortunes and geopolitical schemes to the swirling uncertainties of China's future...
...They're opposed to tuition tax credits...
...He has told the police that Edna has hired him on as a hand...
...Its principal purposes are the production of income and job security-if you enjoy the work, so much the better...
...At one level it means just what it appears to--it is the education analogue of the chef who refuses to eat at his own restaurant or the doctor who won't be treated at his own hospital...
...Another teacher, a union delegate, is quoted as saying: "Teachers know what is going on with the curriculum...
...The plot of Places in the Heart deals with Edna's great difficulties after her husband's death...
...The quality by Denis P. Doyle conscious consumer abandons one institution and patronizes another--if the first institution does not respond...
...In all fairness to my child, I don't think I would have a choice but to pull him out of public school...
...The results were striking--the poll found that 20 percent of Michigan public school teachers send their children to private schools while only 10 percent of Michiganders do...
...Because it is so important it bears stating: What's good for the children of teachers is good for children generally...
...For the burden of proof is an the Chinese Communist system, not an the system in Hong Kong, which has already brilliantly proved itself...
...The residents of Waxahachie, both black and white, are bound by a set of standards and rules that they simply live by...
...THE TALKIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SOWING SALLY'S FIELD What is most impressive about the very impressive new movie, Places in the Heart, is its cool, understated evocation of a time in this country when blacks were second-class citizens...
...whose last film was Kramer vs...
...The THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 33...
...She is more concerned with her failing beauty salon and the philandering of her handb y John Podhoretz some, ne'er-do-well husband...
...The joint declaration will be generally acclaimed as the best possible document in the circumstances...
...When the Chicago Reporter interviewed a random sample of teachers, these teachers sounded like any other parents concerned about their children--they select private schools because they are academically more demanding, physically safer, have higher expectations for their students, and maintain an orderly learning environment...
...At another level, one can cite the simple and elegant theory developed by A.E...
...The town's sanctimonious bank vicepresident advises herto sell her house, send her children away to relatives, and eke by dh a small living...
...No good modern liberal grafted from later decades appears here to preach integration, or to offer maudlin, selfrighteous appeals to the natural brotherhood of man...
...If the last election is any guide about 42 percent will vote for Reagan...
...One reason Chicago public school teachers are able to send their children to private schools is that they can afford to...
...Forty-six percent as compared to 22 percent of Chicagoans at large...
...People can be racists, like Margaret who speaks to blacks only in a clipped, officious tone, and yet have their own troubles as well...
...Edna's sister Margaret curtly tells the men in the pickup truck to drive away from Edna's house...
...He says that her land would make a good cotton farm: He has been picking cotton since his childhood, he knows...
...Second, it reveals one thing teachers' professional associations are loath to admit--public school teachers do know the difference between good and bad schools...
...The black man has a gun, and in his stupor mistakenly fires it at the sheriff, killing him...
...Hirschman more than a decade ago in a slender volume, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty...
...The phenomenon described by Hirschman is the political and social counterpart of the economic market and works precisely for that reason...
...Such an alternative would be con:eNable only if the reigning "emperor" were less adamant and international pressure upon Peking con:erted and unrelenting...
...Everything about nuclear power, including costs, bombs and oysters glowing in the dark...
...We are not pounded over the head with the great injustices being perpetrated on the black people in general and the young murderer in particu!ar...
...But their behavior reveals two themes that help explain our current education "troubles," First, in most large school districts teaching is no longer an avocation--it is a job...
...Although the Reporter's sample was not large enough to be statistically accurate for racial categories, the paper reported that "some educators feel black teachers are a particularly discriminating group...
...They are used to these things, to the random acts of violence and the retaliatory lynchings...
...The numbers the Reporter uncovered are extraordinary...
...They do not rebel, they do not question...
...They'll vote against Reagan...
...by Cohen at his Cohenest...
...For starters, they're Democrats...
...Choice, diversity, and quality outside the public school monopoly is not simply an ideological posture assumed by market-oriented economists...
...When the avocational tie is broken, institutional loyalty is diminished or destroyed...
...The murder is a freak accident, not retribution for an unpleasant, criminal mistreatment of an entire race...
...Premier Zhao Ziyang will go, as planned, to London and Queen Elizabeth will dine in Peking...
...Although some observers of American education have long suspected that public school teachers send their children to private schools in disproportionately high numbers, until recently there were no good statistics to support the anecdotes...
...Unfortunately, the logic of this position is too often lost on the teachers themselves...
...This may be a racist community, but its racism is only one characteristic among many, and hardly the most important...
...truck, we do not see the cackling smiles of the evil posse, the vengeful glee of the dead sheriff's wife, or the unleashed fury of the young black's oppressed family...
...The White House (which forty years later perceives clearly the folly of Yalta) will place faith in Peking's promise to maintain a free and stable Hong Kong...
...If public'schOol teachers" who send their children to private schools were simply hypocrites there would not be much point to the story --what else is new...
...In the real world everything will happen quite differently...
...Kramer, wishes to show us what life was like in Depression-era Texas, with all its great flaws and strengths...
...As though they have full knowledge of the fact that the whites will exact this sort of price if any of their race steps out of bounds...
...Unfortunately, the survey results were not reported by race or place of residence: Had they been, the findings might have been even more striking, because urban parents are much more likely than suburban or rural parents to send their children to private schools...
...And the family of the young murderer quietly cuts him down from the tree on which he has been strung up, as though they have been through this sort of thing before...
...Edna gives him a meal and sends him away...
...What does it mean...
...Edna has had time to reconsider Moze's offer, and tells the police that he does, in fact, work for her...
...Despite teacher organization claims that teachers have low incomes, teacher family income places them squarely in the upper middle class...
...She does not express any moral disapproval of their action, but rather seems to think that stopping by Edna's place with body in tow is inappropriate, and that the sight of the dust-ridden corpse will only further upset the grieving widow...
...It also helps explain the emergence of teachers unions...
...People in Waxahachie are more concerned with mortgage foreclosure, marital indiscretions, and how to make ends meet...
...Robert Benton, the writer-director...
...Well regarded for its accuracy and fairness, in addition to its advocacy of more harmonious race relations, the Chicago Reporter has no private school axe to grind...
...She refuses to consider this possibility, and is saved by a traveling black man with a business proposition...
...It is a fine bit of irony that nearly half of those who know most about Chicago's public schools--the trained adults who teach in them--would reject them for their own children...
...They go to church, they say grace, they struggle, they grieve...
...Chicago school teachers who are residents of the city are more than twice as likely to send their children to private schools as the population in general...
...That they care enough to act on that knowledge--at least where their own interest is involved--is a very good sign...
...As one teacher said, "I wouldn't send my own kids to the place I teach...
...They "believe" in public education as the symbol and expression of American democracy...
...Rather, the hypocrisy is to be found in the professional teacher organizations that oppose tuition tax credits and education vouchers while a substantial number of their urban members refuse to patronize the schools in which they work...
...At the beginning of the movie Royce goes out on a routine call to pacify and bring in to the station a sweet-faced young black who has gone on a drunken tear down by the railroad tracks...
...Margaret never injures a black...
...The distinction between an avocation and a job is important, because for generations we took for granted the self-sacrifice and dedication of devoted 32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 1984 teachers who thought teaching was a calling...
...The lynch mob looks discontented and solemn, as though they have had to perform a necessary but unpleasant task...
...Hans Bethe, Nobel laureate "A book for anyone who still values truth in an age of hypocrisy, superstition, witch hunts and mendacity...
...The example of the market permits one to escape Baudelaire's admonition in Fleurs du Mai: "hypocrit, lecteur, mon frere...
...And it is a long way from teaching as an avocation...
...Education, no less than other activities, responds to market forces, but because of the virtual public monopoly at the elementary and secondary level education market forces operate only at the margins...
...In line with a foreign policy similarly resting on faith and hope in Chinese continuities, Japan will stand aside like a jackal, reassessing its opportunities for profit, which may include using investment in Hong Kong--in one analyst's words--"as a stepping stone into China...
...The first numbers to surface came from a Detroit Free Press survey reported in the October 5, 1983 issue of Education Week...
...Facing Edna, Moze is terrified and cowed, and does not look her in the eye...
...THE NATION'S PULSE PUBLIC TEACHERS, PRIVATE SCHOOLS What do Walter Mondale and 46 percent of Chicago teachers have in common...
...His theme is deceptively simple: If an institution does not serve one's needs--if one's voice is ignored --loyalty is exhausted and the discerning individual or family changes institutional affiliations...
...Any hypocrisy to be found in this tale, however, lies not in the decision to patronize the competition--that is, an affirmation of the importance of education and the idea that some schools are better than others...
Vol. 17 • November 1984 • No. 11
