By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
We are told it is bad form to be smug, to gloat, to “rub it in” when someone who has been critical of us is proven wrong. It can also be counterproductive, especially when we are dealing with political adversaries. Gloating too openly can lead them to dig in their heels. Our goal should not be that. It should be to use the moment when we have been proven right to get our opponents to change their minds, perhaps even vote our way in the future.
So maybe we should not crow too openly at the progressives in New York City whose double-standard has been pointed out in a column by Reihan Salam in the September 24 edition of National Review Online (nationalreview.com). Maybe we can open the progressives’ minds on the issue of school choice if we are tactful.
Salam writes of the parents of schoolchildren in Public School 8 in the DUMBO (an acronym for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) section of Brooklyn. Salam describes it as “a neighborhood that is essentially a forest of condominiums catering to financiers, techies, and ‘creative professionals’,” complete with doormen and “retail establishments catering to affluent professionals.”
But not everything in DUMBO is chichi. A section of DUMBO includes the Farragut Houses, which Salam describes as a “sprawling public housing complex that borders the Brooklyn Navy Yard.” Therein lies the problem. P.S. 8 serves the neighborhood where the upscale yuppies live. P.S. 307 is the neighborhood school for the kids from the Farragut Houses. P.S. 8 is filled to the brim, while P.S. 307 is “undersubscribed.”
Hence New York City officials are proposing that children from the upscale section of DUMBO be shifted to P.S. 307. As you can imagine, writes Salam, “not all of Brooklyn’s bourgeois parents are thrilled about this fact.” Indeed, many are organizing petitions to stop the transfer of their children to P.S. 307.
Salam writes of how his “first instinct” was to speculate in print about “how the DUMBO parents who see themselves as committed progressives might have reacted had this story unfolded in Atlanta or Birmingham” and how they would “surely chalk up the resistance to the rezoning to racism.”
But Salam holds back from gloating, taking note that it is not the presence of minority children in and of itself that motivates the DUMBO parents. He quotes from a New York Times report: “90 percent of P.S. 307’s population receives some form of public assistance. Only 20 percent of the school’s students passed the statewide math tests this past year, and only 12 percent passed the reading tests.” At P.S. 8, in contrast, “Almost two-thirds of its students passed each test.” A lack of discipline is also reported to be a major concern at P.S. 307.
It was this state of affairs that led one parent to tell the Times reporter that the DUMBO parents “are different from other people who fight against integration,” insisting that they have no objection to integrated schools as long as they are safe and academically sound. One parent went so far as to admit: “It’s more complicated when it’s about your own children.”
Exactly. But what needs to be highlighted for the progressive parents in DUMBO is that parents in Alabama or South Boston who oppose integration schemes devised by government bureaucrats would likely say the same thing.
It is true that there was a time in the past when whites opposed the presence of even one or two bright and well-behaved black children in their children’s schools. But that is not the case today. White parents pay high tuition to enroll their children in integrated urban Catholic schools in Boston, Manhattan, and Chicago, also in parts of the South where Christian academies are numerous. They welcome the presence of minority children in these schools, as long as they are held to standards that permit these schools to be safe and productive schools for their own children.
The DUMBO parents are saying the same thing. They would not mind a number of children from P.S. 307 being transferred into their children’s school. What they don’t want is their children being switched into a dangerous and disorderly, academically unsound school. What must be emphasized is that a parent can simultaneously want his government to do all that it can to lift the standards in minority schools to help the children in those schools achieve their full potential in life, while at the same time refusing to permit his or her own child to be sent into a school that is dangerous, disorderly, and failing academically.
There is nothing ignoble about not wanting one’s own child to be sacrificed to a social experiment carried out by the academic establishment, especially when there are few examples of that establishment’s successes to point to. Liberal politicians and celebrities make this decision all the time. Look at where the Obamas send their children to school.
On another topic. A correspondent named C.S. has asked if any readers of First Teachers have information about a program in effect at the Johnson Ferry Christian Academy in Marietta, Ga.: specifically, whether the program is sound and whether there are other schools around the country doing the same thing.
A story by Kyle Winfield in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution described what is happening at this Georgia school. Writes Winfield, “There are schools that prepare students for college. Then there are schools that treat students as if they’re already in college.” In fact, “if your high schoolers are at JFCA, there’s a good chance they’re already in college. Forty-six of the school’s students are enrolled in online college courses; about 90 are dual-enrolled in college via Georgia’s Move on When Ready program. Many of the school’s teachers are also adjunct professors at nearby colleges. Altogether, graduates often leave with 20 to 30 hours of college credit.”
Students come to the JFCA campus only two or three days a week. They spend the other days in a “satellite classroom” — that is, somewhere besides the school’s facilities. That might be, writes Winfield, “the library, home, or elsewhere studying, reading, or doing homework” related to their online college courses. “But it’s not home-schooling. Teachers, not parents, set the curriculum and give grades.”
One last thing: Earlier, we published a letter from a reader who recommended the Federation of North American Explorers as an alternative for parents unhappy with the direction the Boy Scouts are taking of late, especially in regard to homosexuals serving as scout leaders.
We received a letter from David Smith, a leader of the Federation of North American Explorers who wanted to add some information about the organization. He writes that the “FNE has 24 groups total in Canada and the United States; five in Canada and 19 in the US. Our national website is http://www.fneexplorers.com, which provides a lot of information about our movement.”
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Readers are invited to submit comments and questions about this and other educational issues. The e-mail address for First Teachers is fitzpatrijames@sbcglobal.net, and the mailing address is P.O. Box 15, Wallingford CT 06492.
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