write a response???

146 * Education

Benjamin R. Barber is the Gershon and Carrol Kekst Professor of Civil Society at the University of Maryland. He has written numerous schol­ arly and popular books which consistently explore the issues ofpolitics, education, democracy, community, and citizenship. He regularly con­ tributes to the Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, and Harper s, where the following argument appeared in 1993. An educational and political progressive, in the traditional sense of the term, Barber’s main concern is with .sustaining a healthy democracy. His best known hook is An Aristocracy of Even'one, in which he argues for fundamental changes in the ways Americans view the role of education in sustaining political and social life.

Benjamiti R. Barber

America Skips School On September 8, the day most of the nation’s children were scheduled to return to school, the Department of Education Statistics issued a re­ port, commissioned hy Congress, on adult literacy and numeracy in the United States. The results? More than 90 million adult Americans lacked simple literacy. Fewer than 20 percent of those surveyed cordd compare two metaphors in a poem; not 4 percent could calculate the cost of carpeting at a given price for a room of a given size, using a cal­ culator. As the DOE report was being issued, as if to echo its findings, two of the nation’s largest school systems had delayed their openings; in New York, to remove asbestos from aging buildings; in Chicago, be­ cause of a battle over the budget.

Inspired by the report and the delays, pundits once again began chanting the familiar litany of the education crisis. We’ve heard it all many times before: 130,000 children bring guns along with their pen­ cils and books to school each morning; juvenile arrests for murder in­ creased by 85 percent from 1987 to 1991; more than 3,000 youngsters will drop out today and every day for the rest of the school year, until about 600.000 are lost by June—in many urban schools, perhaps half the enrollment. A lot of the dropouts will end up in prison, which is a surer bet for young black males tlian college; one in four will pass through the correctional system, and at least two out of three of those wall be dropouts.

R. Barbek America Skip.s School • 147

In quiet counterpoint to those staggering facts is another set of statistics: teachers make less than accountants, architects, doctors, lawyers, engineers, judges, health professionals, auditors, and survev- ors. They can cam higher salaries teaching in Berlin, Tokyo. Ottawa, or Amsterdam than in New York or Chicago. American children are in school only about 180 days a year, as against 240 days or more for children in Europe or Japan. The richest school districts (school fi­ nancing is local, not federal) spend twice as much per student as poorer ones do. The poorer ones seem almost beyond help; children with venereal disease or AIDS (2.5 million adolescents annuallv con­ tract a sexually transmitted disease), gangs in die schoolyard, dmgs ìti the classroom, children doing babies instead of homew'ork. playground firefights featuring Uzis and Clocks.

Clearly, the social contract that obliges adults to pay taxes so that children can be educated is in imminent danger of collapse. Yet for all the astonishing statistics, more astonishing stiU is that no one seems to be listening. The education crisis is kind of like violence on television: the worse it gets the more inert we become, and the more of it we re­ quire to rekindle om attention. We’ve had a “crisis” every dozen years or so at least since the launch of Sputnik, in 1957, when American schools were accused of falling behind the world standard in science education. Just ten years ago, the National Commission on Excellence in Education warned that America’s pedagogical inattention was put­ ting America “at risk.” What the commission called “a rising tide of mediocrity” was imperiling “om very future as a Nation and a peo­ ple.” What was happening to education was an “act of war.”

Since then, countless reports have been issued decrying the condi­ tion of om educational system, the DOE report being only the most recent. They have come from every side, Republican as well as Democrat, from the private sector as well as the public. Yet for all the talk, little happens. At times, the schools look more like they are being dismantled than rebuilt. How can this be? If Americans over a broad political spectrum regard education as vital, why has nothing been done?

1 have spent thirty years as a scholar examining the nature of democracy, and even more as a citizen optimistically celebrating its possibilities, but today I am increasingly persuaded that the reason for the country’s inaction is that Americans do not really care about edu­ cation—the country has grown comfortable with the game of “let’s pretend we care.”

Ì4S • Education

As America’s educational system crumbles, the pundits, instead of looking for solutions, search busily for scapegoats. Some assail the teachers—those “Profscam” pedagogues trained in the licentious Sixties who, as aging hippies, are supposedly still si^vertmg the schools—for producing a dire ilhteracy. Others turn on the kids them­ selves, so that at the same moment as we are transferring our responsi­ bilities to the shoulders of the next generation, we are blaming them for our generation’s most conspicuous failures. Allan Bloom was typi­ cal of the many recent critics who have condemned the young as vapid, lazy, selfish, complacent, self-seeking, materialistic, sm^- minded, apathetic, greedy, and, of course, Üliterate. E. D. Hirsch m his Cultural Literacy and Diane Ravitch and Chester E. hinn Jr. m their What Do Our Seventeen-Year-Olds Know? have lambasted tlie schoo s, the teachers, and the children for betraying the adult generation from which they were to inherit, the critics seemed confident, a precious culmral legacy. . , t ,

How this captious literature reeks of hypocrisy! How sanctimo­ nious all the hand-wringing over stÜl another “education crisis seems. Are we ourselves really so literate? Are our kids stupid or sniart for ignoring what we preach and copying what we practice Ihe yoimg, with their keen noses for hypocrisy, are in fact adept readers but not of books. They are society-smart rather than school-smart, and what they read so acutely are the social signals emanating Irom the world m which they will have to make a living. Their teachers m that world, the nation’s true pedagogues, are television, adyertismg, movies, pohtics, and the celebrity domains they define. We prattle about deficient schools and the gullible youngsters tiiey mm out, so vulnerable to the siren song of drugs, but think nothing of letting t e advertisers into the classroom to fashion what sm Advertising Age essay calls “brand and product loyalties through classroom-centered, peer- powered Hfestyle patterning.” . ,

Our kids spend 900 hours a year in school (the ones who go to school) and from 1,200 to 1,800 hours a year in front of the television set. From which are they likely to learn more? Critics such as Hirsch and Ravitch want to find out what our seventeen-year-olds know, but it’s really pretty simple; they know exactly what our forty-seven-year- olds know and teach them by example—on television, in the hoard- room, around Washington, on Madison Avenue, in Hollywood. Ihe very first lesson smart kids learn is that it is much more important to heed what society teaches implicitly by its deeds and reward stmetures than what school teaches explicitly in its lesson plans and civic ser-

Benjamin R. BaRBEK America Skips School • 149

mons. Here is a test for adults that may help reveal what the kids see when they look at our world. Real- World Cultural Literacy

1. According to television, having fun in America means a. going blond b. drinking Pepsi c. playing Nintendo d. wearing Air Jordans e. reading Mark Twain

2. A good way to prepare for a liigh-income career and to acquire status in our society is to a. win a slam-dunk contest b. take over a company and sell off its assets c. start a successful rock band d. earn a professional degree e. become a kindergarten teacher

3. Book publishers are financially rewarded today for publishing a. mega-cookbooks b. mega-cat books c. megabooks by Michael Crichton d. megabooks by John Grisham e. mini-books by Voltaire

4. A major California bank that advertised “no previous credit history required” in inviting Berkeley students to apply for Visa cards nonetheless turned down one group of applicants because a. their parents had poor credit histories b. they had never held jobs c. they had outstanding student loans d. they were “humanities majors”

5. Colleges and universities are financially rewarded today for a. supporting bowl-quality football games b. forging research relationships with large corporations c. sustaining professional programs in law and business d. stroking wealthy alumni e. fostering outstanding philosophy departments

6. Familiarity with Henry, IVPart II is likely to be of vital impor­ tance in a. planning a corporate takeover b. evaluating budget cuts in the Department of Education c. initiating a medical-malpractice lawsuit

150 • Education

d. writing an impressive job résumé e. taking a test on what our seventeen-year-olds know

7. To help the young learn that “history is a living thing,” Scholastic, Inc., a publisher of magazines and paper-backs, re­ cently distributed to 40,000 junior and senior high school classrooms ■ rp, a. a complimentary video of the award-winmng series The

Civil War b. free copies of Plato’s Dialogues c. an abridgment of Alexis Tocqueville’s Democracy in

America d. a wall-size Periodic Table of the Elements e. gratis copies of Billy Joel’s hit single We Didn t Start the

Fire” (which recounts history via a vaguely chronological hst of warbled celebrity names)

10 My sample of forty-seven-year-olds scored very well on the test. Not surprisingly, so did their seventeen-year-old children. (For each question, either the last entry is correct or all responses are correct ex­ cept the last one.) The results of the test reveal again the deep hypocrisy that runs through our lamentations about education. The il­ literacy of the young turns out to be our own reflected back to us with embarrassing force. We honor ambition, we reward ped, we cele­ brate materialism, we worship acquisitiveness, we cherish success, and we commercialize the classroom—and then we bark at the young about the gentle arts of the spirit. We recommend history to the kids but rarely consult it ourselves. We make a fuss about ethics but are satisfied to see it taught as an “add-on,” as in “ethics in medicine” or “ethics in business”—as if Sunday morning in church could compen­ sate for uninterrupted sinning from Monday to Saturday.

The children are onto this game. They know that if we really val­ ued schooling, we’d pay teachers what we pay stockbrokers; if we val­ ued books, we’d spend a little something on the libraries so that adults could read, too; if we valued citizenship, we’d give national service and civic education more than pilot status; if we valued children, we woiddn’t let them be abused, manipulated, impoverished, and killed in their beds by gang-war cross fire and stray buUets. Schools can and should lead, but when they confront a society that in every instance tells a story exactly opposite to the one they are supposed to be teach­ ing, their job becomes impossible. When the society undoes each wokday what the school tries to do each day, schoohng can’t make much of a difference.

Benja.ML\ R. Barber America Skips School • 151

Inner-city children are not the only ones who are learning the wrong lessons. TV sends the same messages to everyone, and the success of Donald Trump, Pete Rose, Henry Kravis, or George Steinbrenner makes them potent role models, whatever their values. Teen dropouts are not blind; teen drug sellers are not deaf; teen col­ lege students who avoid the humanities in favor of pre-business or pre-law are not stupid. Being apt pupils of reality, they learn their lessons well. If they see a man with a rubber arm and an empty head who can throw a ball at 95 miles per hour pulling down millions of dollars a year while a dedicated primary-school teacher is getting crumbs, they will avoid careers in teaching even if they can’t make the major leagues. If they observe their government spending up to $35,000 a year to keep a young black behind bars but a fraction of that to keep him in school, they will write off school (and probably write off blacks as well).

Our children’s illiteracy is merely om own, which they assume with commendtible prowess. They know what we have taught them all too well; there is nothing in Homer or Virginia Woolf, in Shakespeare or Toni Morrison, that will advantage them in climbing to the top of the American heap. Academic credentials may stiU count, but school­ ing in and of itself is for losers. Bookworms. Nerds. Inner-city rappers and fraternity-house wise guys are in full agreement about that. The point is to start pulling down the big bucks. Some kids just go into business earlier than others. Dropping out is the national pastime, if by dropping out we mean giving up the precious things of the mind and the spirit in which America shows so little interest and for which it offers so little payback. While the professors argue about whether to teach the ancient Iiistory of a putatively white Athens or the ancient history of a putatively black Egypt, the kids are watching televised po­ litical campaigns driven by mindless image-mongering and inflamma­ tory polemics that ignore history altogether. Why, then, are we so sur­ prised when oiu students dismiss the debate over the origins of civUization, whether Eurocentric or Afrocentric, and concentrate on cash-and-carry careers? Isn’t the choice a tribute not to their igno­ rance but to their adaptive intelhgence? Although we can hardly be proud of ourselves for what we are teaching them, we should at least be proud of them for how well they’ve learned our lessons.

Not all Americans have stopped caring about the schools, how­ ever. In the final irony of the educational endgame, cynictd entrepre­ neurs like Chris Whittle are insinuating television into the classroom itself, bribing impoverished school boards by offering free TV sets on which they can show advertising for children—sold to sponsors at

752 • Education

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Benjamin R. Bakber America Skips School • 153

communities, and nations, we must learn to be free. We may be natu­ ral consumers and born narcissists, but citizens have to be made. Liberal-arts education actually means education in the arts of liberty; the “servile arts” were the trades learned by unfree men in the Middle Ages, the vocational education of their day. Perhaps this is why Thomas Jefferson preferred to memorialize his founding of the University of Virginia on his tombstone rather than his two terms as president; it is certainly why he -viewed his Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge in Virginia as a centerpiece of his career (al­ though it failed passage as legislation—^times were perhaps not so dif­ ferent). John Adams, too, boasted regularly about Massachusetts’s high literacy rates and publicly funded education.

Jefferson and Adams both understood that the Bill of Rights of­ fered little protection in a nation -without informed citizens. Once edu­ cated, however, a people was safe from even the subtlest tyrannies. Jefferson’s democratic proclmties rested on his conviction that educa­ tion could turn a people into a safe refuge—indeed “the only safe de­ pository” for the ultimate powers of society. “Cherish therefore the spirit of our people,” he wrote to Edward Carrington in 1787, “and keep alive their attention. Do not be severe upon their errors, but re­ claim them by enhghtening them. If once they become inattentive to pubhc affairs, you and I and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors, shall all become wolves.”

The logic of democracy begins with public education, proceeds to informed citizenship, and comes to fruition in the securing of rights and liberties. We have been nominally democratic for so long that we presume it is our natural condition rather than the product of persist­ ent effort and tenacious responsibility. We have decoupled rights from civic responsibihties and severed citizenship from education on the false assumption that citizens just happen. We have forgotten that the “public”'in public schools means not just paid for by the public but procreative of the very idea of a public. Public schools are how a pub­ lic—a citizenry—-is forged and how young, selfish individuals turn into conscientious, community-minded citizens.

Among the several Hteracies that have attracted the anxious atten­ tion of commentators, civic literacy has been the least -visible. Yet this is the frmdamental literacy by which we live in a ci-vil society. It en­ compasses the competence to participate in democratic commimities, the ability to think critically and act -with deliberation in a pluralistic world, and the empathy to identify sufficiently with others to live with them despite conflicts of interest and differences in character. At the

154 • Education

most elementary level, what our children suffer from most, whether thcv’re hurhng racial epithets from fraternity porches or shooting one another down in schoolyards, is the absence of civility. Security guards and metal detectors are poor surrogates for civility, and they make our schools look increasinglv like prisons (though they may be less sale than prisons). Jefferson thought schools would produce free men: we prove him right by putting dropouts in jail. , , . •

Civility is a work of the imagination, for it is through the imagina­ tion that we render others sufficiently like ourselves for them to be­ come subjects of tolerance and respect, if not always affection. Democracy is anvthing but a “natural” form of association. It is an ex­ traordinary and'rare contrivance of cultivated imagination. Give the uneducated the right to participate in making collective decisions, and what results is not democracy but, as best, mob rule; the government of private prejudice once known as the tjTanny of opinion, for Jefferson, the difference between the democratic temperance he ad­ mired in agrarian America and the rule of the rabble he condemned when viewing the social unrest of Europe’s teeming cities was quite simply education. Madison had hoped to “filter” out popular passion through the device of representation. Jeferson saw m education a filter that could be installed within each individual, giving to each the ca­ pacity to rule prudently. Education creates a ruling aristocracy con­ strained by temperance and wisdom; when that education is pub ic and universal, it is an aristocracy to which all can belong. At its best, the American dream of a free and equal society governed by judicious citizens has been this dream of an aristocracy of everyone.

To dream this dream of freedom is easy, but to secure it is diflicult as weU as expensive. Notwithstanding their lamentations, Americans do not appear ready to pay the price. There is no magic bullet for edu­ cation. But I no longer can accept that the problem lies m the lack ot consensus about remedies—in a dearth of solutions. There is no short­ age of debate over how to repair our educational infrastructure. National standards or more local control? Vouchers or better pub ic schools? More parental involvement or more teacher autonomy.? A greater federal presence (only 5 or 6 percent of the nation’s education budget is federally funded) or fairer local school taxes? More multicul­ tural diversity or more emphasis on what Americans share in com­ mon? These are honest disputes. But I am convinced that the problem is simpler and more fundamental. Twenty years ago, writer and ac­ tivist Frances Moore Lappé captured the essence of the world food cri­ sis when she argued that starvation was caused not by a scarcity ot

R. Barber America Skips School • 155

food but by a global scarcity in democracy. The education crisis has the same genealogy. It stems from a dearth of democracy; an absence of democratic will and a consequent refusal to take our children, our schools, and our future seriously.

Most educators, even while they quarrel among themselves, will agree that a genuine commitment to any one of a number of different solutions could help enormously. Most agree that although monev can’t by itself solve problems, without money few problems can be solved. Money also can’t win wars or put men in space, but it is tlie crucial facilitator. It is also how America has traditionally announced. We are serious about this!

If we were serious, we would raise teachers’ salaries to levels that would attract the best young professionals in our society: starting lawyers get from $70,000 to $80,000—why don’t starting kinder­ garten teachers get the same? Is their role in vouchsafing our future less significant? And although there is evidence suggesting that an in­ crease in general educational expenditures doesn’t translate automati­ cally into better schools, there is also evidence that an increase aimed specifically at instructional service does. Can we really take in earnest the chattering devotion to excellence of a country so wedded in prac- tiee to mediocrity, a nation so ready to relegate teachers—conservators of our common future—to the professional backwaters?

If we were serious, we would upgrade physieal facilities so that every school met the minimum standards of our better suburban insti­ tutions. Good buildings do not equal good education, but can anv edu­ cation at all take place in leaky, broken-down habitats of the kind de­ scribed by Jonathan Kozol in his Savage Inequalities? If money is not a critical factor, why are our most suecessfid suburban school districts funded at nearly twice tlie level of our inner-citv schools? Bemg even at the starting line cannot guarantee that the runners will win or even finish the race, hut not being even prettv much assures failure. We would rectify the balance not by penalizing wealthier communities but by bringing poorer communities up to standard, perhaps by finding other sources of funding for our schools besides property taxes.

If we were serious, we’d extend the sehool year bv a month or two so that learning could take place throughout the year. We’d re­ duce class size (which means more teachers) and nurture more coop­ erative learning so that kids could become actively responsible for their own education and that of their classmates. Perhaps most im­ portant, we’d raise standards and make teachers and students re­ sponsible for them. There are two ways to breed suecess: to lower

156 • Education

Standards so that everybody “passes” in a way that loses all “waning in the real world; and to raise standards and then meet them, so that school success translates into success beyond the classroom, r Confucian China to Imperial England, great success in the world upon an education of in a democracy is to find a way to maintain excellence while extend

™ ^Meachers, and studen. wo^d

be the real players while administrators, politicians, an ®be “ary, a, bee, advieere whoee chief skill ought ,o be kuo™g when and h^f to facilitate the work of teachers and then get out of the war« the Democrats can clean up federal go.emment bureaucr.t^y (thi Gore plan), perhaps we can do the same for educationa^ ** ^de

L n'^w up Í half of the cty’s ç«chers

company headquarters? Half the cops at »««of »““ f “ * working force in the assistant manager s office? Once the teachers m back in the classroom, they will need to be S™ “>ore aiuouomy, m professional responsibihty for the success or 'f ““ »'f And oarents will have to be drawn in not just because they have rig m th^are poMcaUy potent but because they have respoust- Uhïrànd tSir chhdreu are unlikely to learn without parental en­ gagement. How to define the parental role in the classroom would be-

come serious business for educators. Timps are tough Some Americans will say this is unrea istic ^ am to §

money’s short and the public is fed up with almost aU of its puhhc m stitutfons: the schools are just one more frustratmg With aU the goodwill in the world, it is still hard to know ow sc Z l that stem from the failme of »» Y tions Saving we want education to come first won t put it tost.

, aLLI, however, has historically been able to sets its mind to. When we wish it and wiU it, what we wish and will has hanoened Our successes are willed; our failures seem to happen whe Sriient. There are.nf course, dtose who benefit from th.^ runtcv of pubUc education and the failure of democracy. But the blLe is n? greater than our own: in a world where domg nothmg has such dire consequences, complacency has become a greater sm

““ÏÏme, whenever we have known why we were fighting and

believed in the cause, we have f its, we are consummate salespersons and efficacious entrepreneurs.

BenjAìVIIìN' R. Barber America Skips School • 157

Because we love sports, ours are the dream teams. Why can’t a Chicago junior high school be as good as the Chicago Bulls? Because we cherish individuality and mobility, we have created a magnificent (if costly) car culture and the world’s largest automotive consumer market. Even as our lower schools are among the worst in the Western world, our graduate institutions are among the very best be­ cause professional training in medicine, law, and technology is vital to our ambitions and because corporate America backs up state and fed­ eral priorities in this crucial domain. Look at the things we do well and observe how very well we do them: those are the things that as a nation we have willed.

Then observe what we do badly and ask yomself. Is it because the challenge is too great? Or is it because, finally, we aren’t really serious? Would we will an end to the carnage and do whatever it took—more cops, state militias, federal marshals, the Marines?—if the dying chil­ dren were white and middle class? Or is it a disdain for the young— white, brown, and black—that inures us to the pain? Why are we so sensitive to the retirees whose future (however foreshortened) we are quick to guarantee—don’t worry, no reduced cost-of-Uving allow­ ances, no taxes on social secmity except for the well-off—and so cal­ lous to the young? Have you noticed how health care is on every politi­ cian’s agenda and education on no one’s?

To me, the conclusion is inescapable: we are not serious. We have given up on the public schools because we have given up on the kids; and we have given up on the kids because we have given up on the fu­ ture—perhaps because it looks too multicolored or too dim or too hard. “Liberty,” said Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “is a food easy to eat but hard to digest.” America is suffering from a bad case of indigestion. Finally, in giving up on the future, we have given up on democracy. Certainly there wiU be no liberty, no equaUty, no social justice without democracy, and there will be no democracy without citizens and the schools that forge civic identity and democratic responsibility. If I am wrong (I’d like to be), my error will be easy to discern, for before the year is out we wiU put education first on the nation’s agenda. We will put it ahead of the deficit, for if the future is finished before it starts, the deficit doesn’t matter. Ahead of defense, for without democracy, what liberties wiU be left to defend? Ahead of all the other public is­ sues and public goods, for without public education there can be no public and hence no truly public issues or public goods to advance. When the polemics are spent and we are through hyperventilating about the crisis in education, there is only one question worth asking:

J 58 * Education

■ ? If WP are we can begin by honoring that old folk hom-

üy rdpmoi money wU for much too long our common Amencan mouth has been. Our kids, for once, might be gratef •

Questions for Discussion What does Barber’s title, "America Skips School,” mean, m light of

H!m you describe *e debate drat Barber is a par, ot? Wha. are dt.

Other positions in the debate?

Jehome Stern What They Learn in School • 159

Jerome Stern taught English and Creative Writing at Florida State University for many years until his death in 1996. He wrote about the craft of fiction writing ^Making Shapely Fiction^ and edited collections of short stories ('Micro Fiction: An Antliology of Really Short Storiesj. He was also a frequent contributor of commentary to National Public Radio; many of those pieces were collected in Radios: Short Takes on Life and Culture (1997). The following “monologue” aired March 17, 1989, on National Public Radios All Things Considered. It was later reprinted in Harper’s magazine.

Jerome Stern

What They Learn in School

In the schools now, they want them to know all about marijuana, crack, heroin, and amphetamines.

Because then they won’t be interested in marijuana, crack, heroin, and amphetamines.

But they don’t want to tell them anything about sex because if the schools tell them about sex, then they will be interested in sex.

But if the schools don’t tell them anything about sex. Then they will have high morals and no one wiU get pregnant, and

everything will be all right. And they do want them to know a lot about computers so they will

outcompete the Japanese, But they don’t want them to know anything about real science be­

cause then they will lose their faith and become secular humanists, And they do want them to know aU about this great land of ours

so they will be patriotic. But they don’t want them to learn about the tragedy and pain in

its real history because then they wiU be critical about this great land of ours and we wiU be passively taken over by a foreign power.

And they want them to learn how to think for themselves so they can get good jobs and be successful.

But they don’t want them to have books that confront them with re¿J ideas because that wUl confuse their values.

And they’d Uke them to be good parents.

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