The Bully Pulpit

Every once in a while, Jerry Murphy says, he tries to give himself "kind of a shot of public schools."

This fall, the new dean of the Graduate School of Education visited a New York City school whose students were specially selected: They were all 17 1/2 years old and had all done poorly in the public school system.

Murphy sat in on a journalism class where the students interviewed each other, sharing stories of violence in their neighborhoods, of experiences with pregnancy and childbirth. The class, he says, was a success.

"There's such a gap between the publicity...about the schools and what's really going on in some of the schools," Murphy says.

In this election year, as politicians and private citizens loudly lament the state of American education, Murphy is hopeful, even optimistic.

And as presidential candidates debated the future of the nation's education system on television last night, Murphy may have been thinking about his own bully pulpit.

"I think it's appropriate for me and for members of the faculty to speak out on issues of educational reform," Murphy says.

On that subject the 53-year-old scholar of education has no shortage of opinions. He spends a lot of time thinking about such topical educational issues as the Edison Project, the experimental, for-profit school system for which Benno Schmidt abandoned the Yale presidency last year.

"The concern that I have is that these schools need to make a profit in order for the whole system to work," Murphy says.

For that reason, Murphy says, the project may lack the capacity to handle some of society's toughest--and therefore most costly--problems.

Murphy also thinks about election results in general. The November 3 vote will shape American education for the next four years, he says, and will partly determine programs and priorities at the Education School.

If Clinton wins, Murphy predicts, Americans can expect "more governmental support for some of the things that we really care about." A Bush win, he says, would bring less monetary support from the government, and a push toward vouchers to improve private and public schools.

"Independent of who's elected, in American public education, we're...in this very turbulent time," Murphy says. "One role [the Education School] can play is to help push the debate along."

The school, he explains, should "try to help frame the debate and also to be a venue for kind of reasoned discourse."

Toward this end, Murphy plans to hold a "Forum for Schooling and Children," modeled after the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics Forum. He hopes to invite prominent players from the educational policy field to Harvard, for four to six major events over the course of the year. The visitors will "focus on an area of public policy and debate it," he says.

Another of Murphy's main goals is to increase diversity within his school, bringing it to mirror the nation's population distribution more closely.

The Education School is already off to a good start, since its faculty is Harvard's most diverse. Its student body--about one quarter minorities--is also among the University's most diverse.

But continued faculty diversity is important to Murphy. He hopes to bring "young, perhaps really promising minority scholars" in as visiting faculty members for one to two years.

"If you worry just about getting people at the top," Murphy says, "you don't end up diversifying your faculty."

Plans like these, of course, call for money, a perennial need at the Education School. In his few months as dean, Murphy, who was previously an associate dean at the school, has already been on the road fundraising, collecting resources for the programs he hopes to implement.

"I don't think about fundraising as fundraising," he says. "I think of trying to get people to invest in the dreams...of people here at the school."

The task is central to a deanship, essential if goals are ever to be reached. And finding funds is more important--and more difficult--for the Education School than for almost any other Harvard faculty.

Former President Derek C. Bok used to compare the University's ten schools to free-standing tubs--each with its own endowment, its own expenses and its own fundraising efforts. The Education School is one of the smaller tubs, lacking a strong base of substantial alumni donations.

"The difficulty we face in raising money is that our alumni don't have it," Murphy says. Education School graduates are primarily teachers, and therefore notoriously low-paid.

Harvard, for many years, has been a tub-eat-tub world. Now, as President Neil L. Rudenstine prepares for a massive capital campaign, Harvard's schools are once again preparing to compete for University resources.

Rudenstine's academic planning process--in which deans meet to discuss their budgets and their goals--brings that competition to the forefront but is also intended to diffuse it somewhat.

Murphy is confident that his school will fare will among Harvard's other faculties. "[Rudenstine] is committed to the Ed School," he says. "That should help with internal allocation."

"I sense that people even in the well-off tubs recognize that `every tub on its own bottom' had been taken to a dysfunctional extreme," Murphy says. "There's a more cooperative spirit [now]."

To Murphy, cooperation within Harvard means sharing intellectual resources as well. A joint master's program in educational policy with the Kennedy School is in the formative stages. With the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Murphy hopes to explore joint activities in curriculum development and teacher training for math and science classes.

Murphy is also contemplating joint programs with the Medical School and the School of Public Health.

All of these projects would help put Harvard's theoretical work on education into practice. Because while a bully pulpit can be a good place to start, major educational problems will require more than mere talking to solve.

"A place like Harvard ought to take on the hard problems," Murphy says. "It's not only what we say, but what we do."

Efforts to improve education begin with inspired, committed and able teachers.

Murphy admits that though the country clearly needs more such teachers, it will have trouble finding them without a national ethic that includes "treating teachers with more respect."

Higher salaries will be needed, for a start: "Economists have said for years that there's a direct relationship between salary and longevity in the teaching profession."

In light of the challenges that lie ahead for the education profession, Murphy says he is especially pleased with this year's enthusiastic Education School class. He says he has noticed a changing view of education among college graduates.

"The trend is more young people doing something that benefits society," Murphy says.

Murphy says he sees a new era beginning, noting that people who wouldn't have even considered a teaching program five years ago are now enrolling in the Education School.

The school provides "a good, intellectually stimulating, relatively short program," Murphy says. Education School students can earn teaching certificates in one year.

Most of the students today, he says, are experienced practitioners. As such, they bridge the gap between Harvard and the real world.

"We're reminded every day by our students: If we're not connected to practice, we're in trouble."

`Not a Stepping Stone'

If Harvard is a step away from the real world, then Murphy has occupied that step for most of his career. A 1972 graduate of the Education School, Murphy joined the faculty in 1974 and has worked there as a teacher and administrator ever since.

"I really love this place," Murphy says. "I've spent a great part of my professional career here. I don't see myself going anywhere. This is not a stepping stone."

Murphy's commitment is apparent, his colleagues say, and his enthusiasm is unflagging.

"He brings a dedication to the job that is infections to others," says Administrative Dean Joel C. Monell. "That characteristic is particularly important."

Professor of Education Carol H. Weiss says Murphy's many years at the school put him in a good position to run operations efficiently.

The new dean already has extensive management experience, Weiss says, because he played a large role in directing the school's internal affairs as associate dean.

"He is well versed in the issues and has a great deal of talent," Weiss says.

Murphy spends most of his time at the school. He spends a much smaller amount of time playing an increasingly disappointing game of squash: "The older I get, the more I seem to lose."

And he does his best to spend some time in public schools like the one he visited in New York.

"It would be very easy for me not to visit schools or school systems at all," Murphy says. "I do it partly because it's so easy to get removed."

"It just affects me much more powerfully than it does by reading about it," he says. "I force it onto my calendar because it keeps my passion."

Erick P. Chan contributed to the reporting of this article.