A Dream Does Not Die

When I Was Teaching In The 1960s In Boston, There Was A Great Deal Of Hope In The Air. Martin Luther King Jr. Was Alive, Malcolm X Was Alive; Great, Great Leaders Were Emerging From The Southern Freedom Movement.

But What Is Now Encompassed By The One Word (“school”) Are Two Very Different Kinds Of Institutions That, In Function, Finance And Intention, Serve Entirely Different Roles. Both Are Needed For Our Nation’s Governance. But Children In One Set Of Schools Are Educated To Be Governors; Children In The Other Set Of Schools Are Trained For Being Governed. The Former Are Given The Imaginative Range To Mobilize Ideas For Economic Growth; The Latter Are Provided With The Discipline To Do The Narrow Tasks The First Group Will Prescribe.

During The Decades After Brown V. Board Of Education There Was Terrific Progress. Tens Of Thousands Of Public Schools Were Integrated Racially. During That Time The Gap Between Black And White Achievement Narrowed.

I Emphasize Teachers Because They Are Largely Left Out Of The Debate. None Of The Bombastic Reports That Come From Washington And Think Tanks Telling Us What Needs To Be 'fixed' - I Hate Such A Mechanistic Word, As If Our Schools Were Automobile Engines - Ever Asks The Opinions Of Teachers.

Hypersegregated Inner-city Schools - In Which One Finds No More Than Five Or Ten White Children, At The Very Most, Within A Student Population Of As Many As 3,000 - Are The Norm, Not The Exception, In Most Northern Urban Areas Today.