My subject on this Independence Day morning is the schools, our public schools. The history of the 233 years and more of the United States of America can be seen in many critical ways in the history of our public schools.
In the beginning, not surprisingly, Thomas Jefferson had a grand plan. It was for a comprehensive American school system. It was to guarantee mass literacy for all citizens—although admittedly only white citizens. Second, also it was to guarantee that all children, whatever their background, could get higher education so as to ascend to leadership for the new country.
Well, Jefferson’s plans, to put it politely, failed. They foundered partly on opposition from well to do leading citizens who were not going to see their offspring compete with God knows whom. But more basically it foundered because the plan was too grand and too large. And this was the young United States and it wanted local control. The colonies going back to the beginning preferred the district school, possibly the model for the one room school house. Most of all the schools were local, and locally controlled, a tradition to this day.
Alas it was not a great school. It had flaws in the building, in itinerant teachers. It did not teach all the kids—poor kids didn’t attend because their parents kept them home to work for wages or in the fields. And especially it had no standards for what was a good education.
Except one standard. The schools taught spelling. Yes spelling. Spelling bees became the favorite entertainment of a young America. Why the spelling bee? Because the district school and the idea of spelling and using language correctly reflected progress. Noah Webster of dictionary fame was a major figure. It reflected the American people’s belief that we were morally and politically superior to Europe and other nations because we were free of class differences, because we were the American dream of a unified and classless nation.
It was written after all in the original declaration of 233 years ago today: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
But the district schools were not adequate to a growing nation. And so we come to the real beginnings of our school system in the common school movement of the 1830s. It was a reform movement. Each state took it up. It was to improve education and to offer free elementary education for every child.
It promulgated professional teaching for teachers. It raised standards. From 1840 to 1860 expenditures on education in the young nation quadrupled while the population only doubled. It was a commitment. Why was the commitment made? Because education was seen as necessary for economic growth.
That marked a change. Before the era of the Common School, the vision of the American economy was based on wealth and resources—the fertility of the soil, the riches of the minerals and the resources of the forests. But now brains were seen as furthering the growth of our economy. Education made its entrance upon the stage of the American economy. It has never left that stage. And when, not if, we come out of this great recession, it will be through discoveries and technologies coming out of our research universities and ideas and drive of our school children, like those who read prize winning essays here today.
Well in the 19th century, the country grew and the cities grew. The population in 1840 was 17 million people in the United States. By 1860 it was 31 million and by 1880, 50 million. Waves of immigrants came, the first large waves from Germany after unrest and religious fighting in Europe and from Ireland from the famine. Morality became something to teach in the school because urban masses were growing and the teaching role became a job mostly for women.
Why? Well, I said that the schools reflect the warp and woof of our history—in more ways than one. One reason for the rise of the school Marm was that women were thought to be more nurturing. Also, there were an abundance of unmarried women in the eastern cities. But there’s no denying that women were paid less. And so there was more teaching jobs for the legendary school Marm because they could be paid less than men.
Changes came also because we had that influx of immigrants suspicions arose between groups. The Catholics suspected the Public Schools would turn their kids Protestant so they founded their own school system. And a variety of educational types grew up, all with the intention of improving American society. Horace Mann prescribed vocal music in the schools and art. The role of the schools was to civilize and Americanize.
In the South, reconstruction hopes were based on education. But they did not achieve much due to opposition. However from 1890 to 1915 education caught on in the South and it had tremendous growth in schools, the recovering South seeing in the school room a path to a prospering future.
And in the Progressive era—late 19th-early 20th century– the idea of education and social work became one with Jane Addams and Hull House in Chicago. The idea was to reduce urban squalor and to educate the community. New kinds of immigrants were coming to America, from Italy and Eastern Europe. The aim of the civilizing schools was to infuse a community spirit, a belief that all could live and work together to build the good society, the society of all people created equal and living and working together to build this America, this shining city on the hill. And the principal implement in that building was the school.
And so we come through most of the 20th century and we find that finally education is defined as an unalienable right to all Americans, regardless of their race. Brown vs. Board of Education, the great Supreme Court decision of 1954 said that African American children too were endowed by their creator with the right to attend the common school, the teacher of our liberties and our ideals.
And now for our situation today. We are at a crisis in the public schools, not only here but in New York and Chicago and every large urban area. Here, the drop out rates in the LA Unified School District, which has 700,000 students, is 21.8% for Latino Students and 24% for African American students. In Orange County it is about 11% for both and in San Diego County is it 20% to 25%. That’s intolerable for a society that no longer has jobs for the unschooled—fewer heavy lifting jobs but many jobs in which you must know computing and use personal digital assistants and other forms of technology. Our economy depends on an educated workforce.
What is the answer? Charter schools. Charter schools are public schools, financed by taxes just like all public schools but governed by a different, local management. They are a throwback to the original ida of local schools, district and common schools. They are backed by philanthropic organizations so they can afford to lease buildings an hve some amenities. An example is the New Schools Venture Fund dot com which was put together by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. .The New School fund gave $4.8 million to the Inner City Education Foundation which runs the View Park schools at Crenshaw and Slauson in Los Angeles and other locations. View Park has the highest math scores for African American students in all of California.
The school is non union but the teachers make the same pay as union teachers. As the system reforms, the unions must reform. But they will do so because reform is in the air. Locke High School in Compton, once violent, is now successful as Green Dot Schools run by entrepreneur Steve Barr. Birmingham High School in the Valley wants to go charter.
A great example is Judith Ivey Burton of College Ready Preparatory Schools, in South Los Angeles. She taught for 30 years in the LA Unified School District. Now she heads College Ready schools, which are successful. The secret? They work harder. “We do 190 days a year of school, the LAUSD, does 163 days…” She doesn’t have to add that you can learn more going to school 190 days than 163,
Once again, we are returning to what worked, the common school, smaller bureaucracy and local. Reform is spreading in simple recognition that our economy and the future of our great nation depends today as it always has on education. And we all have a stake in that. Just as the Colonists and the early Americans strove for the classless and the society of merit, so must we. We must be involved.
And we are here in Palos Verdes, where we just passed a parcel tax to support the schools with 68.8 percent of the vote. We have a great school system here. That is why people want to live here. And that is why your home sustains the value that it has.
What else must we do? We must regain and restore the high respect for teaching and teachers. The teachers in the PV School district are excellent. But we must work for broad excellence throughout our country. Teachers are unsung heroes. Who was Abraham Lincoln’s teacher? Everyone knows Lincoln did his lessons on a coal shovel, but who taught him those lessons?
Everyone in this audience remembers a teacher who changed his or her life, sometimes a single person or two or three over time who influenced you, helped to make you what you are today.
In my personal case among others I remember Brother Charles who taught 6th grade in Sacred Heart School in the Bronx New York. “You write good compositions” he said to me one day. It stuck with me and helped me through a long life and career. And something else helped.
My mother and father came to this country from Ireland they had 6 years of education. That is all. They worked incredibly hard. Domestic service and truck loading in warehouses. But they knew there was some thing better. My father once said to me “if I had an education I could have been a cabinet maker.” A humble hard working man can have vision even if he doesn’t have the wherewithal to pursue it. All people have hopes and dreams. But I got an education and have worked at something I love all these years. It’s the opportunity that this country offers.
What this country offers has always been opportunity. It is in the nation’s DNA, a chance to work, to grow, to help your family.
And what is that in the aggregate but the mission of this country, to build the good society, to build the shining city on the hill as Ronald Reagan put it. It is the belief founded on the principle that all men are created equal, with the unalienable right to life, liberty and… brotherhood. You know the song…”crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea, …confirm thy soul in self control, thy liberty in law.” That’s what the schools teach us, that is why we celebrate today in the shining city on this hill and every other hill in this country. God Bless America!!!
Thank you.
