School Without Thought

Fear of Federally controlled schools has cut a devastating swath through efforts to provide adequate support for education. Every real issue has bowed before a resurrection of the emotion-laden mythos of local independence.

Conservatives have produced no critical examination of local control's proper role in education; liberals, who protested the NDEA affidavit so vigorously, have denied that Federal control is a danger. And nobody has discussed ways to avoid Federal control with a measure of intelligence.

If the discussion were taken seriously, there are quite enough sanctimonious advocates of local sovereignty and local virtue to ratify a Constitutional amendment forbidding any conditions on grants to schools. But most legislators seem to enjoy attaching puerile riders to appropriations, whether conservatives demanding a voucher of immaculate political conception, do-gooders trying to promote social justice by turning every classroom into a racial checkerboard, or liberals in terror of the establishment of a City of God on earth.

In simple fact, as some critics of the status quo have explained, primary and secondary education will only be substantially improved by some kind of Federal standards. Certainly, most school districts are in debt to their necks. Aiding them in construction will only free bond issues and do nothing to case pressures on the current operating funds from which teachers are paid. But equally certain, if aid is given for teachers' salaries, Congress will follow its eternal habit and add provisos explaining what intellectual allegiances are permissible for teachers, students, and subject matter.

The problem, obviously, is whether the benefits are worth the penalty. Those who claim that every day in every way our school's grow worse and worse, seem inclined to accept almost any kind of Federal leadership (leadership, in their eyes, is different from control; the record in other fields makes this a remarkable faith).

Some leadership could, of course, be exercised through construction bills: limits on money spent for auditoriums and athletic facilities would create more classrooms and might transform the proportion of attention devoted to the scholastic curriculum.

And spending present funds on mathematics and languages rather than egg-beating and driver training would improve things vastly without any new money (indeed, driver education costs a good deal more than English literature). Selection of tests by men employed for expertise rather than appeal to local benevolent legions would improve the lot of the most overcrowded school.

But intelligent decisions and relevant expertise are not going to be forthcoming unless control is removed from the workings of democracy on the idiot level. At the moment, schools are the favorite theatre for self-important boobs who want to do something, not only because they keep seeing defects in their children's education, but also because those in control are so very accessible.

Nevertheless, arguing out these issues on the local level may serve a purpose, even though many of the problems are completely artificial. Public politicking produces a consensus and often a belief that the public will is answered (a result usually taken to be more important than being right, except by Mr. Nixon who seems to think that the popular mandate is right). Politics is often the only way to resolve and release the tensions of economic, social, and ethnic conflicts.

Some kind of Federal aid will come, because America now recognizes that it must improve education to keep up with the Soviets. Of course, such rationalization makes Federal control more justifiable, even in Constitutional terms, since education becomes part of the national defense. Americans are not likely to recognize that they need or deserve better schools for themselves.

In any case, it won't come tomorrow, and we can relax. It's only our children, not us.