September and school
McCarthy, Abigail
replace these organizations other than it should be, one more would you act as though X were true, or false? time, "just, participatory and sustainable." The vote, with 2. If the...
...The memories come rush- There was one, for example, in the tion...
...schools can be, have been, and, in most Europe poured into the hitherto.sparsely For most Americans it is the true be- cases, still are, keep coming in...
...An orphan in THE TRUE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR dire poverty, he had been given the prospect and possibility of limitless upward mobility by his schools...
...I heard it vicariously," said a AN OLD QUARREL has been revived, There were, for example, ugly refergraduate in English from Haverford to and it's about time...
...The vote could be ful) for you, but the bishops ruled it wrong, would you try it, or said to be an uncertain vote either for socialism or an interna- abstain...
...Of several minds: John Garvey For a variety of reasons teachers have lost status and there seem to be many incompetent among them...
...A teacher had been that for him...
...On the other, influenced by such study, "Fifteen Thousand Hours," and expected success, and teachers who educators as Christopher Jencks and proves that good teachers in good schools planned with and supported each other...
...Vati- past in a Chicago Tribune review of The planning to be a writer, when asked what can II and Kennedy's election were Vast Majority: A Journey to the World's contemporary writers he read or ad- thought to have done it in...
...An unusually wise tax law ginning of the year, the month when reports filter through the general gloom...
...He them used to reminisce, grew up in "Oh, oh, oh," said the checker in the would have liked, he said, to have been a earthen-floored huts, were out of high supermarket making conversation with teacher...
...Certainly some graduates from even the best schools do them little credit...
...The boy's face lit up...
...Roy, an Episcopalian, thought the U.S...
...Roy cees, science and religion...
...Michener takes the arguable stance that many of the THE UGLY LITTLE SECRET unfit came into the profession to avoid ANTI-CATHOLICISM, WITH QUALIFICATIONS the draft...
...If bad breath Yet on the lower level there are stuffy assumption, so reminiscent of the isn't sin enough-and what could be teachers who keep trying and caring and Prohibition era, that opposition to abor- worse in our era?-this "diabolical making a difference...
...the Mesabi Iron Range was opened at the is just a touch of scarlet at the top of the Despite the mounting evidence of the turn of the century, a veritable flood of maples and an occasional yellow leaf failure of our schools, reports of what the immigrants from Southern and Eastern drifting from the locust trees...
...Moreover, a heartening British began on time, teachers who gave praise ills...
...Roy was once chairman of such a group for the "Let's face it, in the postwar era the separation between National Council of Churches, but notes, not exactly enchurch and science-technology has been so great it could be couragingly, "It has not met for a dozen years...
...His first And I was reminded of the fact that the weather is crisp and pleasant...
...Jencks on their effectiveness as social organiza- lieved possible-especially in Sepis frequently quoted: "Variations in what tions...
...For most of us it was asked what he would like to be, if he dren of men and women who, as some of was the center of community...
...28 September 1979: 519 Bad schools and bad teachers have, best college preparatory schools- kind of poor children with behavior probnevertheless, done great harm, as "triumphs," he felt for an inner city lems as School B reduced the behavior Jonathan Kozol's horrifying Death At An school...
...squirming seminarian" whose columns ;r--)enviousness to information that may As if this weren't favor enough, along are "reminiscent of Jesuit schoolmasters ay,ply in the latter case as well...
...There was James Michener in an interview, testifying to the power of the SEPTEMBER AND SCHOOL schools to change lives...
...When Lace still line the sides of the road...
...reserved the taxes on the mines for educaschool starts...
...The vote, with 2. If the scientific community clearly agreed that suchmany delegates departed, was 83 for, 15 against, and 45 and-such pleasurable behavior was good (or at least not harmabstaining...
...lovely month...
...Until rather ences to Michael Harrington's inability me recently, meaning, I suppose, indi- recently you'd have thought that to unshackle himself from his Catholic rectly...
...mistaken for divorce...
...School A drawing from the same tember...
...In Hispanics said to a Boston reporter...
...We feel a that Barbara Walters summer special plants, libraries and good salaries with lifting of the heart, a sense of new begin- which caught many of us, mindless and which they attracted some of the best nings...
...You'll have to go been the agent of mobility for countless over, has a lovely sound...
...James Coleman, those who are con- can make great differences in children's Contrary to the pessimistic scholarly cerned with education have come to be- lives...
...A teacher had the possibility of school, on to college and into the profesthe little boy in line just ahead of me, being the single greatest influence in any sions...
...there friends had also been good...
...came the abortion controversy and the with intolerable breath...
...On the one hand, by such to a better life beyond the classroom...
...He permissible once again to use their Mother Jones, at the end of a review of told of a student he had taught ten years Catholicism against writers and politi- Barbara Grizutti Harrison's fascinating ago now going to medical school and of cians who weren't quite in tune with Book, Visions of Glory: A History and a students selected by some of the nation's Right Thinking...
...Memory of Jehovah's Witnesses, the Commonweal: 520...
...Americans, he said...
...bishops should set up "a task force on Christians and scienceIn a post-mortem on the conference, Rustum Roy, a physi- technology...
...This Mitchell S. Ross, of Garry Wills's Conmatter if your heart is in the right place wasn't paranoia...
...The general tone of the place is the reports on this side of the water this is lieve that schools in poor neighborhoods deciding factor...
...Only that An Ugly Little Secret: Anti-Catholicism Wills as both a skillful artist and a they indicate a lack of curiosity and an in North American...
...Of several minds: Abigail McCarthy person's life...
...The argument of the reviewer was mired, could only think of Thomas B. settling into the general American bland, that any sense of shame which comes Costain...
...national sample of Catholics: JOHN C. CORT 1. If the scientific community clearly agreed that X was (John C. Cori is editor of the newsletter Religion and true, while the pope and the church ruled that it was false, Socialism...
...The schools had SEPTEMBER, if you say it over and "First grade this year...
...Schools were open back-of newly varnished desks, waxed during that muggy week which bridged night and day in order to help the adults corridors, stacks of new books, bulletin July and August this summer...
...I've enjoyed tion was a Romanist plot...
...Whether the dialectician" (still Wills) is also accused teaching," a man in a junior high school abortion issue was the main uncorking of raising "his Jesuitical horns...
...Science and technology have become At least the MIT conference reintroduced these aging divorthe functional deity for most of Western humanity...
...Clint of more than forty different nationalities boards with fresh displays, reunions with Eastwood, movie great, talked of this and as many languages and dialectsfriends and excited talk of the summer and that, as unclear of what his inter- many illiterate-learn to read and write past and the year to come...
...Except for Cardinal Medeiros, Catholic delecal chemist and chairman of the Science, Technology and gates at MIT, including Vatican officials, were pretty nonSociety Program at Pennsylvania State University, told me, participatory...
...This was a high for abstentions...
...What does on a lot of Catholics that Wasps still A more recent Tribune review by mastery of your language and literature wouldn't have us on our terms...
...picky to mention these things...
...Catholics, Poor...
...The memories come rushing too lethargic to do anything but watch, teachers in the state...
...But English and prepare for their citizenship both the comfort of the familiar and the his face lit up like the little boy's when he examinations...
...All over the country "I can hardly wait," he said...
...In one generation the chilpossibility of the new...
...Gol- experience had, obviously, been good, whole communities and populations denrod, Fireweed, and Queen Anne's and the reports of school from family and have been changed by the schools...
...A student from Ohio Wesleyan anti-Catholicism was a dead issue...
...The schools of the Mesabi Range ing back to those of us who liked going to otherwise dull and formless pastiche of became famous for the splendid physical school or who liked teaching...
...final examinations as did the top rank of means as forced busing, we have sought Such good teachers deserve good School B. School A had classes which to use them to remedy our worst social schools...
...And a graduate of a well-known began to cast an envious eye on blacks from comparing your own affluence to Pennsylvania college, now teaching writ- and Jews and then, deus ex machina (the the starvation of another is not a simple ing, talked to me of "the, you know, machina being the one rolled out by An- recognition of the facts, but must be the relationship between he and I." (And drew Greeley and Michael Novak), came result of education at the hands of how many there are who will think it the ethnic issue: the realization dawned nuns-all that guilt, you know...
...Catholic tional Clayton Anti-Trust Act that really works...
...had not become Clint Eastwood, star...
...Images where forty percent of the students are agent or not I don't know, but it became that just happen to leap to mind...
...A woman teacher thought that problems to 10 percent in four years, and Early Age forcibly reminded us...
...Bright settled region...
...The findings showed what we Americans really hope for from can do little for the students until the that the effects of the schools depended our schools and that we have always beneighborhoods are changed...
...ABIGAIL McCARTHY children learn at a school depend largely on variations in what they bring to school, not on variations in what schools offer them...
...School held viewer wanted as were the viewers...
...Greeley gives details in fessions of a Conservative, characterizes about, let us say, South Africa...
...It is a to school all day...
...The grounds for reconciliation were proposed that this notion be tested by trying two questions on a cleared, if not entirely smoothed...
...For the her seventh and eighth grade students at the same time, brought the children last ten years or more we have accepted welcomed challenge, and that teaching originally in the bottom rank in aptitude two contradictory views of what the had met her expectations of helping them tests to a point at which they did as well in schools can do...
Vol. 106 • September 1979 • No. 17
