Tales Out of School, by Joseph A. Fernandez and John Underwood (Little, Brown, 278 pp., $24.95)
THE career ascent of New York City schools Chancellor Joseph Fernandez came to an abrupt halt in December when bits of this autobiography were leaked to the press as part of a campaign to land Fernandez a job with the Clinton Administration. The result was disastrous (the portions leaked included accounts of youthful heroin abuse, as well as grossly uncivil references to his own school board). Fernandez uses this self-serving book to settle various scores and muddy his record. For instance, he has in the past taken pride in having introduced “school-based management” to Dade County schools. But now that follow-up studies have revealed the program as a failure, he slaps the blame on others. More famously, once arrived in New York, Fernandez quickly got bogged down in political sideshows, like the recent dispute over the proper age to begin teaching about anal intercourse. The account of his adventures can’t even be called reasonably well written. I counted three incomplete sentences on page two alone. If the explanation is that co-author John Underwood was emulating Fernandez’s “voice,” parents of schoolchildren should not feel reassured. One of Fernandez’s bestknown superintendents, Colman Genn, has his name misspelled throughout, and there are assorted other inaccuracies. In the end Fernandez was dropped from consideration for Secretary of Education. That’s just as well, since he would have made a pathetic appointee even by Clinton standards.
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