Public School Blues

These are hard times for people who, like myself, believe in public schools. I live in the Bay Area, and I have just learned, for example, that in Walnut Creek, a relatively conservative upper-middle-class enclave, junior-high-schoolers are divided into stoners and non-stoners—the former being pupils who spend much of the school day hopped up on drugs. The teachers know what’s going on, but cannot or will not do anything about it. In an elementary school in a quiet town north of Berkeley, a gang of sixth-grade boys recently dragged a girl into the boys’ room and forcibly fondled her, presumably attempting to rape her. The boys were apprehended, but got mild punishments and were quickly readmitted to school.

In the May issue of the usually liberal Washington Monthly, editor Joseph Nocera writes on “Saving Our Schools from the Teachers’ Union”—an account of the recent teachers’ strike in Washington, D.C. According to Nocera, the teachers are inept, overpaid, underworked, and almost impossible to fire; they preside over one of the worst public school systems in the country as measured by standardized tests such as the SAT. The teachers seem to think the schools are run for their benefit, not the students’. They appear to be unwilling to make any sacrifice to improve the education of their charges and are arrogantly indifferent to the notion that their pay and benefits should have some relationship to their performance.

DV

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Dale Vree

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Public Schools

These are hard times for people who, like myself, believe in public schools. I live in the Bay Area, and I have just learned, for example, that in Walnut Creek, a relatively conservative upper-middle-class enclave, junior-high-schoolers are divided into stoners and non-stoners—the former being pupils who spend much of the school day hopped up on drugs. The teachers know what’s going on, but cannot or will not do anything about it. In an elementary school in a quiet town north of Berkeley, a gang of sixth-grade boys recently dragged a girl into the boys’ room and forcibly fondled her, presumably attempting to rape her. The boys were apprehended, but got mild punishments and were quickly readmitted to school.

In the May issue of the usually liberal Washington Monthly, editor Joseph Nocera writes on “Saving Our Schools from the Teachers’ Union”—an account of the recent teachers’ strike in Washington, D.C. According to Nocera, the teachers are inept, overpaid, underworked, and almost impossible to fire; they preside over one of the worst public school systems in the country as measured by standardized tests such as the SAT. The teachers seem to think the schools are run for their benefit, not the students’. They appear to be unwilling to make any sacrifice to improve the education of their charges and are arrogantly indifferent to the notion that their pay and benefits should have some relationship to their performance.