353

EDUCATION

Many years ago, upon finding out the basics of how public education is funded in
the United States, I can remember asking myself if this were fair. Perhaps a quarter
century has gone by since postulating that question to myself, and I have continually
wondered why this issue has not received more attention. That is why, when I stumbled
upon an NBC news special devoting a full hour to the question, I put down the zapper
and paid attention.

Public education, unlike health care, is considered a right rather than a privilege
in the world's only "super power". But it is delivered with such a high degree of inequal-
ity that it can almost be said that one must buy a decent public education, in much the
same barbaric way decent health care is bought (see essay "Health Care").

The NBC special compared two public high schools within a few miles of each
other: one in an affluent suburb of Milwaukee and another inside the city's limits in the
kind of neighborhood where good prize fighters are produced. The suburban school was
an effervescent locale, a digital marvel of 21St century technology set into a beautifully
groomed landscape of well-cared grounds and surgical cleanliness. In stark contrast to
this was the Dickens-like scenario of dingy halls, caged windows and graffiti walls in the
"Mike Tyson" high school. In the latter, there was a shortage of such primordial school
supplies as textbooks and chalk, let alone a P.C. for every student, as in the suburban
school. Needless to say, the amount of money spent per student in the "soccer mom"
school was substantially higher than in the inner city.

The reason for this disparity is quite simple: a great part of funding for public
education is taken from local property taxes. In the SUV suburb, there are a lot of peo-
ple paying these taxes while in the city, where only a few absentee slumlords are doing
such, there isn't much money for schools.

Is this fair? Should some students be educated in optimistic, cutting edge learn-
ing centers, while others are sent to depressing fortresses equipped for failure only be-
cause someone's parents are rich or poor?

The program showed us the suburban-ghetto educational dichotomies --- the self
confident, dimple-cheeked success of one, compared to the belligerent, hip-hop snarl of
defeat in the other (in spite of the heroic efforts of some of its staff). In the one, all the
students seemed to ride happily off into the sunset, while in the other, they drifted aim-
lessly back into the night.

The "moment of truth" arrived when the commentator interviewed a group of par-
ents and administrators at the affluent school. Like a teenager gingerly asking dad for
the family car, he wondered if perhaps any of them thought, through some change in
tributary distribution, that some of the money so lavishly spent on their school could
perhaps (c'mon dad, please ...) be diverted to school districts so terribly lacking in fund-
ing?

The tension created by this question defined the whole program in this one issue.
Nobody wants to be perceived as selfish or cold hearted, but when the hemming and
hawing, the squirming and dodging, the "yes~we- care-buts" had run their course, the
general consensus was no; we earned our success, we made it, we deserve our better
schools.

What exactly is the "social contract" between citizens of a single nation? What do
they owe to each other and what is left for the individual to accomplish for him or her-
self?

Certainly, even in the United States, where the idea of a national social contract
has always been somewhat underfed, it does extend to the provision of a military appa-
ratus that can not only defend the nation, but aggressively propagate the enhancement
of its riches. We are perhaps the only modern state (and maybe even unmodern state)
that does not include the physical well being of its citizens as a part of the social con-
tract, and the aforementioned inequalities with which public education is dispensed
makes its inclusion under this umbrella more a public relations stunt than a hard core
fact.

Perhaps there is an intrinsic selfishness in all life forms, a survival mechanism
that focuses only on oneself that leads to the attitude of the E-traders in Milwaukee's
well-heeled suburbs. I'd like to think that human beings have evolved beyond such ani-
mal instinct and can understand that a certain degree of collective well being is in each
individual's interest. Any nation claiming to be civilized has an obligation to fund public
education so that it can be dispensed with some facsimile of equality. If, due to the af-
fluence of their situation, the E-traders contribute more than the people in the "hood" to
the general health (not just local) of our public schools, I see nothing unfair about this.
These "American dream" families certainly contribute more to the maintenance of our
military apparatus; why should something as vital as public education not be treated the
same way?

This attitude is not based on charity or "bleeding heart" compassion. The people
in these poor areas earn their right to better schools. In spite of their less than sterling
accomplishments in the global-economy-success-game, they are no less citizens of this
country than their high fiber compatriots who have played the game well. But let's not
focus on such romantic notions as "citizenship". Let's get real" by recognizing that the
vast majority of the people in the places where schools are anemically funded, perform
essential tasks in providing for the life styles of the suburbanites, tasks that are mind
numbing, boring, and distasteful. These are the people that lay black top in sweltering
summer sun, who work monotonously on loading docks and scrub toilets in public
places. They wallow in the most onerous aspects of preparing what eventually becomes
the food on our tables. They take away the garbage, mop floors in hospitals, and are
most likely to take a bullet in defense of our "standard of living" in some oil war or "po-
lice action". And, in a punch somewhat below the belt, due to the fact that they are not
defended by a phalanx of lawyers, accountants and financial advisors, a bigger per-
centage of their earnings are whisked away through various and sundry taxes than the
investment-professional earnings of the suburbanites.

This is not to say that the "soccer moms" have not earned their overflowing clos-
ets of dot com consumption. They've played the game well and triumphed. In the con-
text of American society, nobody is denying them their right to a palatial home, to mem-
bership in a patrician country club, a spacious garage crammed with late model auto-
mobiles or their Scandinavian dining room set. They can wear designer clothes, buy
broken and forgotten toys for the kids, book vacations to Bali on the Web, and hire a
personal trainer to fight the war on cholesterol. This is the payoff for their success and
nobody is trying to take it away from them. But the social contract of any nation should
also demand a certain obligation from such affluence, enough so that every child has
the chance to attend a properly maintained, adequately supplied school with a well-
trained staff. If this means that a bit more of the suburbanite's booty is diverted in this
direction ...

... It's a good investment. Somewhere in the future we might save some money
on jails, police, judges, lawyers, and the whole cottage industry of crime and incarcera-
tion.

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