School Reforms in Need of Reforming

Cambridge, unlike other New England cities is not a battleground for Democrats and Republicans. It is a watering-hole for two feuding machines: the "independents" and the "reformers." But then, Cambridge is not your every-day run-of-the-mill cities. It is a diverse, and sometimes bizarre mixture of working class and intelligentsia, of black and white, of ethnics of rooted and rootless, and Yankees, and of separate communities that lack any common link but their unification into a single suburban city.

The independents, products of strong neighborhood clubs, rely heavily on the trust theme: Elect me and I'll do right by you. The reformers suggest they are cleaner than the older pols, if not less bureaucratic, promising an undefined openness and community participation in policy-making.

The seven CCA/Common Slate candidates for School Committee can be characterized as budding young pols--walking the streets, talking to "the people." But how do these young pols differ from their older opponents? The reformers like the independents derive support from a political machine.

Mary Ellen Pruesser, a representative example of this group, stands a fair chance of winning a place on the School Committee. She maintains that "every dog has his day." Like other liberals, she urges that alternatives are necessary.

But Eric Davin, the most vocally radical of the seven, differs with his running mates on this question. "Citizen evaluations should be given highest priority," Davin says.

"Eric Davin will work for schools which produce ethical children who believe in themselves--children who will make history rather than be content in merely reading history," his campaign literature promises. He will work for education which liberates rather than domesticates. For this to happen, "there must be a change in both method and content of Cambridge education," the literature warns. "changes in method alone--such as the 'open classroom'--are insufficient. 'Innovative' and 'individualized' racism is still racism."

But Davin probably won't win. And to a large extent, that's because he is the only CCA Common Slate candidate who openly admits that educational change does not end where structural innovation begins. In this way he is the only candidate who differs--at least in verbalizations and on paper--from his independent opponents.

Ironically, it is in this way that he may well be closer to the ideology of the independents. They claim the "openness" prescribed by the reformers is insignificant. Davin would probably agree. In essence, most of the reformers are content to apply superficial structural innovations throughout education and the political process. And it is in this sense they are not reformers at all, but parrots of the same old system trying to palm off the same old ideology merely by renaming the structure.