Justice issues are common ground for Catholic, public school
alliance
By STAN KARP
For 20 years Ive been a classroom teacher in Paterson, N.J.,
one of my states poorest and least successful school districts. Im
used to seeing reforms wash over my district like waves on the Jersey shore,
occasionally carrying in a fresh breeze, though more often erasing past efforts
and only making room for more short-lived footprints.
But it is only recently that I can remember hearing so much talk
of abandoning public schools altogether. Politicians call for their replacement
by charter schools, vouchers and other market mechanisms. Poor parents seek
alternatives for their children in communities where school failure has reached
desperate proportions, and a me-first, dollar-driven culture resists the
collective obligations that a system of public education implies. In a word,
the common ground of support on which public schools depend seems to be
eroding.
One of the constituencies that has been especially receptive to
arguments for choice is the religious community. In fact, the
rhetoric and political maneuvering around choice have frequently found Catholic
and other church groups in a de facto alliance with the fundamentalist
Christian right. Though these religious voices come from very different places,
they have sometimes merged together in a chorus of complaint about public
education that has included demands for everything from vouchers to full
privatization of the public schools.
The tacit coalition that has united voucher advocates on one side
against supporters of public education on the other is alarming for several
reasons:
* Despite their high profile and divisive impact as a
wedge issue, vouchers remain a marginal matter, diverting attention and funds
from the central issue of how to provide quality education for all our
children.
* The far rights crusade against public education
is at odds with -- indeed, is ultimately a threat to -- the vision of religious
communities committed to social justice.
* The survival and renewal of public education is vital
to the prospects of nourishing a multiracial democracy in the next century, and
public schools desperately need the moral, material, political and community
support that churches and religious groups can provide.
A response to problems
It is easy to understand why many Catholic educators see in
vouchers a legitimate response to real problems. Changing demographics and the
crushing costs of sustaining good schools in poor areas are overwhelming what
Leonard DeFiore, the president of the National Catholic Educational
Association, has called the historic mission of the church to give
priority to the poor.
Given these pressures, Catholic educators are quite naturally
attracted to the influx of funds and students that vouchers could bring. But
if, in the best traditions of the churchs teachings on social justice,
they rise above considerations of narrow self-interest, they will find
compelling reasons to seek common ground with public schools and the
communities they serve as both fight for renewal.
The 2.6 million students who attend Catholic schools account for
roughly half of the 10 percent of all school-age children who are enrolled in
private schools. By 2006, the National Center of Education Statistics projects
that just over 6 percent of the nations 54 million school-age children
will be in private schools.
This means that the great majority of children, including
Catholic children, poor children and children of color are and will continue to
be in public schools. Neither vouchers, nor charter schools nor other choice
reforms will change this (though they may seriously undermine the public
schools left behind). For all the attention and rhetoric about vouchers over
the past decade, there are just two small experimental voucher plans operating
today, in Cleveland and Milwaukee. They involve small fractions of the school
population in those cities, and the results have been, at best, quite
mixed.
The limitations on voucher programs stem not just from the strong
opposition of those who fear their impact on public schools. They remain
largely a rhetorical matter of service to politicians because they hold no
practical answers to the current crisis of education. No voucher program
proposed anywhere can come close to making alternative placements available to
the majority of students now attending public schools. The schools and seats do
not exist, and the astronomical costs of creating them are not part of the
voucher package.
Typically, voucher plans involve the transfer of funds from
public to private schools rather than new, large investments in education
spending or school construction. Vouchers are about investing less in the
public education we make available to all children in order to provide a
government subsidy for the private education of some children, and they do so
in the interests of a much broader political and ideological agenda.
Even a synthetically created, government-subsidized market in
education will do for educational services in poor communities only what
markets have done in areas such as health care or housing. It may create
profitable opportunities for some well-financed investors and allow a few more
fortunate education consumers to buy their way out of troubled schools. But it
will also reproduce the class and racial inequalities that various customers
bring to the market with them. Nor would vouchers give urban poor and working
parents effective power over the schools any more than food stamps
have given them power over the local supermarkets.
Right and just
Ultimately our children will be educated not because there are
markets to exploit and profits to be made, but because collectively, we as a
society decide that it is right and just to do so. It is social justice that
insists on the communitys collective responsibility for educating all our
children, just as we should insist that they have health care, food and a safe
place to live.
For the great majority of children, and especially poor children,
this means that we must make public education succeed, or we will all suffer
the consequences (though the burdens will fall disproportionately on children
of color and poor communities.) The quality of schooling available to students
in our public schools must be the concern of everyone, including Catholic
educators and religious organizations.
The NCEA has said that it has a special concern for the
children of the poor. These children are our children, too. Should not
such a concern translate into a program of action on behalf of what is
virtually the last remaining public institution where the children of the poor,
the middle class and the affluent still come together to pursue a common
democratic vision of equality and justice for all? Doesnt it necessitate
at least as many special lobbying efforts on behalf of equity in school
funding, smaller class sizes, new school construction and expanded
school/community services as there have been on behalf of voucher programs
that, even supporters must recognize, represent a retreat from government
commitments to equalizing educational opportunity across our society?
In describing the struggle to keep Baltimores Catholic
schools open a few years ago, Cardinal William Keeler, the archbishop of
Baltimore, declared If we abandon the children in the city, I dont
know what other hope they would have. An educational agenda that gives
priority to vouchers is but a variation on this theme.
The single-minded pursuit of vouchers threatens to turn the
Catholic church, still by far the largest single private-school voice, into a
vehicle for the profoundly antisocial, antidemocratic, antipoor agenda of the
right. Much as the Republican Party has become a bridge to respectability for
far-right proposals from Star Wars to privatized prisons, the voucher movement
has been a bridge to respectability for an ideological crusade against public
education.
For the right, public education is the last bastion of
socialism, a government monopoly run by overpaid
unionis
Political rhetoric has done a good job of disguising the matter,
but the core issue we face in education is not choice, its
inequality. There are many thriving examples of public districts that provide
exemplary education for their students (and many Catholic families have moved
to such communities to provide these advantages for their children.) In New
Jersey, the children in Princeton can take courses in Russian and Chinese
during the day and play water polo and lacrosse after school. In Paterson,
where I teach, all children dont yet have full-day kindergarten.
When we tell some children that the community will provide the
education they need and others that they will have to look elsewhere, we are
fooling only ourselves.
As the late educator Ron Edmunds put it, We can, whenever
and wherever we choose, successfully teach all children whose schooling is of
interest to us. We already know more than we need in order to do this. Whether
we do it must finally depend on how we feel about the fact that we havent
so far.
ts that promotes atheism, sexual deviance and drug abuse. Like
taxation and fluoridated water, public schooling is opposed on ideological
grounds as an invasive extension of government authority. This opposition takes
various forms including dramatic increases in homeschooling and private
schooling. (While Catholic school enrollment has been dropping by nearly half,
the number of students in evangelical Christian schools has risen almost 800
percent). It also takes the form of promoting wedge issues to mobilize
supporters against the public system including: school prayer, creationism,
censorship, sex education, homosexuality and vouchers.
This is not a right-wing conspiracy. It is a social and political
movement, a well-financed, well-staffed, multisided campaign, with populist,
corporate, academic and media wings. It includes the Heritage Foundations
game plan for promoting school privatization on a state by state
basis, the Landmark Legal Foundations search for new test cases to break
down church/state separation, the Bradley Foundations campaign for
vouchers and similar organized efforts. And if the right has its way, and if
the progressive religious community is not heard from clearly and strongly
enough, this crusade will enlist the considerable weight of the Catholic church
and other religious groups in the service of private self-interest against
public commitments to justice, equality and democracy.
This is the danger that the religious community must face
squarely. It must balance not just the budgets of hard-pressed religious
schools, but also the scales of educational justice. It must weigh the dubious
benefits of government subsidy (with inevitable consequences many have not yet
thought through) against the democratic ideals of public education and the
welfare of the children that system must be made to serve.
This is what the past president of the Los Angeles school board,
Warren Furutani, meant when he said the fight over vouchers was a battle
for the fundamental soul of public education in a democratic society.
As rhetorical as that may sound, for supporters of public schools
-- especially those in poor communities -- it speaks to a devastating social
reality. Over the past 20 years, in cities like Paterson, the network of church
groups, neighborhood associations, cultural institutions, social service
organizations, civil rights and other community groups -- not to mention
families -- along with the schools, has faced a huge increase in human and
social need with a diminished capacity to respond. These groups have a more
crucial role to play than ever before, especially as government retreats from
previous commitments. But unless these institutions band together as rallying
points for struggling communities, they may well be overwhelmed, all the more
so if they allow themselves to become pawns in a polarizing debate.
Schools are desperately in need of constructive partnerships and
coalitions of community concern. Some school reforms, like the much-praised
Comer Project, are explicitly based on trying to step into the breach and
recreate the community and family support system that once helped schooling
work. There is good evidence that such approaches can succeed. But to pursue
models of civic reconstruction on a large scale will require a strong movement
focused on social justice that challenges existing social priorities and
structures of privilege and fights to secure the necessary investment of human
resources and money.
Black church support
It will also require the support and active participation of
religious groups, including new and creative relationships at the school and
local levels. What these possibilities might look like is suggested in some
seeds now being sown, especially by black churches that, despite scarce
resources, have responded actively to the crisis in their communities. More
than half of all black churches have at least one nonreligious educational
initiative, most often tutoring, extended child care or subsidized field trip
programs. Other black churches, with help from some foundations, have begun
parent support and education services. Still others have opened computer
centers, organized midnight basketball or provided
scholarships.
As important as this material support is, there are even greater
possibilities. Public schools need a new alliance with the communities they
serve, and churches could play an important role in shaping it. Just as parents
in many communities have organized to move beyond bake sales to take roles in
setting policy and helping to manage school life, so, too, could
representatives of religious groups move beyond ritual participation in
graduation and holiday ceremonies to more substantive involvement.
Catholic parents could turn out for local board meetings and join
school site committees to advocate for all the children in the school. Catholic
and public school educators could engage in joint staff development and
dialogue around common issues, like providing effective family supports for
student achievement, either in their districts or in appropriate professional
organizations. Churches might join parent and teacher groups to help convene
citywide education summits and mobilize communities to address
school issues, from safety to multicultural programs to parent education and
access. And Catholic and other religious educators can assume a position of
special credibility when they speak out on behalf of the whole community
against efforts to cut funding or withdraw support from public schools.
Educators have learned the hard way that we must teach the whole
child, and the whole village must be part of the process. Although
there are differences in settings and specifics, Catholic educators and public
school people can learn from each other about the importance of making all
children feel valued, about respecting the role families must play in school
life and about giving broader purpose and context to educational practice. If
an atmosphere of mutual respect for diversity and a democratic process of
dialogue for differences can be created, there are few reasons to fear and many
reasons to support a greater involvement of churches and religious groups in
the life of public schools. If we can put the wedge issues aside, and come
together on behalf of children, it would be a strong point of departure for a
historic effort.
Forging coalitions
Civil rights activist Bernice Regan once said, If
youre in a coalition and you feel comfortable, your coalition isnt
broad enough. Forging a coalition on behalf of public schools that
includes churches, religious groups, along with parents, community and
educators will not be easy. There are thorny issues and lots of history to
overcome. But if we keep in focus the democratic ideals of public schooling and
the vision that the civil rights movement first raised about the role public
schools could play in building a better, more just society, if we act in the
social justice traditions of religious movements that have spoken up in the
past for the poor, for workers, against war and for peace and justice, then
there is reason to believe we can find a common path.
If educators, parents and communities of faith make common cause
around a commitment to help public schools succeed, instead of emphasizing the
narrow issues that keep us apart, both our children and our society can only
grow stronger.
Stan Karp is a high school teacher, an editor of
Rethinking Schools (a progressive education journal) and cochair of the
National Coalition of Education Activists.
National Catholic Reporter, March 27,
1998
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