THE MARCH OF EDUCATION

The New York Sun is reporting that admissions officers are no longer encouraging so-called "first-choice letters," in which students guarantee that they'll attend a particular school, if accepted.  They're also called "I love you letters."

Well, that is good news.  It will certainly help to take conniving out of the admissions process for colleges...  Oh wait.  Did I leave something out? This isn't for colleges.  It's for New York City private kindergartens.  You know, it's so hard to get kindergarten help these days, and with the political scheming that goes into admissions...what's an investment banker to do?

Maybe I shouldn't ridicule.  My wife and I went through the same process with our kids many years ago, when we lived in Manhattan.  It is not easy on the kids, or the parents.  It became necessary to pursue what was politely called "alternative educational choices" because of the condition of the New York City public schools.  You simply had to factor the expense into your budget, while still paying taxes for failing public schools.  Nice.

The sadness is that the New York City public school system had once been, quite possibly, the finest urban school network in the country.  It was not faultless.  There was a huge bureaucracy, and classes were often too big.  But it had a certain spark, a discipline, and a commitment to quality.  I went through that system as a young child.  We had teachers who could diagram an English sentence.  Today, some kids are lucky to have a teacher who can write one.  When you addressed a teacher, you stood up at your desk.  The teachers themselves were proud to teach in New York.  They'd tell you how hard it was to get a license, the exams and interviews they had to pass.  Vandalism?  Are you serious?  Yes, of course, there were problem schools, but most schools didn't require security guards, and we never heard of metal detectors.

Each week we had a scheduled assembly with required dress.  Boys wore white shirts and red ties.  We sang patriotic songs, and no one complained that dissent was being crushed under the jackboot of nationalism.  If Christmas was mentioned, there was no visit by the ACLU.

Then, in the sixties, it all seemed to vanish in a flash, in an orgy of "new educational ideas."  The city that had educated generations of immigrant kids by demanding high standards suddenly decided that newer arrivals, many of them Americans, couldn't quite cut it, so standards had to be adjusted.  It was a crime, committed in school after school.   The system is being rebuilt now, and maybe it can be returned to its former glory.  But I recall, after my family moved to the suburbs, meeting up with kids from New York City schools.  How vibrant they were.  How alive.  They may not have gone to "elite" schools with shining names, but they had an elite attitude.  But when "educators" looked at our schools, they never seemed to understand how important that attitude was.

I'll return to this theme in later posts.  Our educational system is failing too many children, and there was a time when we did it better.  Maybe we should learn why.

Posted on January 15, 2008.