Our California Schools

 

Money waits for the bus to school,

climbs into the front seat, tells the driver

     where to turn,

eats the other kids' lunches and gives a little

     boy a black eye.

cash is peripheral, just out of sight,

and Math is taught with a proper sense of irony:

     just enough to get by,

without a sense for original thought.

money gets an A in subtraction, but fails to learn

     how to make change.

 

         Last week I flew to Northern California where I'd been invited to give a lecture entitled "Man and Microbes" at my grandson Andrew's private Catholic all boys high school, Serra High. Although I'd given many talks to University audiences, I'd seldom addressed high school students, and consequently I looked forward to this experience with some trepidation.

         My son, Hans, and his youngest child, Scott, picked me up at the Oakland airport, and we drove to their home in Redwood City. On the way, we got into a conversation about the California school system. Although my brother, sister and I had attended public schools, my son and his wife chose to put their kids into private schools, a rather expensive decision. I questioned the wisdom of this decision, believing in the benefits of exposure to a heterogeneous student body. He pointed out that when I was in school, prior to the passage of Proposition 13, which robbed our schools of the needed financial support, the California public school system had ranked third in the nation. Following the passage of Prop. 13, which prevented the state from increasing property taxes appreciably, California gradually sank to its present position, third from the bottom with only Mississippi and Alabama below us, all because Californians are too cheap to pay the taxes necessary to maintain a quality public education system. This is especially deplorable when one considers that the California economy ranks much higher than that of Alabama or Mississippi.

          Given these facts, I had to concede that Hans was justified in paying to send his kids to private schools. I found it sad, however, that the wealthy in American society prefer to pay exorbitant fees to have their own kids attend private schools rather than pay the taxes that would allow everyone's kids to get a quality education.

         The lecture at Serra High was held in the auditorium, and all students taking a science class attended. There were over 100 kids, all in the back of the room with the first six rows empty. After the science teacher, Dr. Smiley, provided an introduction, I started out saying that a scientist poses a question and then attempts to answer it, always being suspicious of the answer unless confirmed from multiple sources. I then asked the boys if they'd ever asked a question and then tried to answer it using multiple resources. Almost unanimously they said they had.

         "Good" I said, "then you're all scientists. We should be able to communicate." I proceeded to show 80 slides in 50 minutes, a rapid-fire "show and tell" presentation about bacteria and people.

         Dr. Smiley and I were both relieved and delighted when this unpracticed talk concluded just three minutes before the bell rang. I took the last 3 minutes to discuss the biosphere and the problems the human race is likely to have to face over the next few decades. Having already provided a brief summary of life on Earth over the 4.5 billion years of the planet's existence, I pointed out that while we think of the Earth as being extremely old, there is presently a living person on Earth for every year that has passed since the birth of our planet with fifteen hundred million people left over! Although we think of 4.5 billion years as a very long period of time, we've grown so accustomed to the idea of a human population of 6 billion that this huge number doesn't register alarm. I argued that the Earth is destructible, and science can not and will not be able to solve the problems that we humans are creating.

To my utter surprise, these notions were familiar to the boys! Dr. Smiley, who was well informed about the issues, had been discussing the environmental consequences of our activities with his students from realistic viewpoints! I was delighted to learn that with the full support of the school administration, he had confronted his pupils with accepted scientific views about evolution, our excessive human population, and many critical environmental issues. I became convinced that he was providing the boys with a valid education that reflected the scientific view of Nature and the World. These kids were apparently exposed both to the views of a traditional religious institution and to current scientific concepts. I was pleased that my son had so wisely chosen this school to impart an education to my Andrew.

The discussions with Hans and the experience at Serra High that day permanently altered my view of the California school system. Regarding our public schools, it was clear that money talks. Why can private schools hire the best teachers and keep their class sizes down while public schools are unable to compete? The answer is just MONEY, plain and simple. If you were a schoolteacher and you were offered two positions, one to teach in a public school with larger classes and a lower salary, the other in a private school with smaller classes and a better salary, which would you accept? It would take a lot of idealism, more than most of us have, to opt for the former possibility, particularly if you have a family to support.

In recent conversations with a wealthy real estate agent, the topic of our schools came up. I mentioned the view that proposition 13 was substantially responsible for the plight of our public schools, but he disputed the claim. His view was that there was plenty of money, but that it was being wasted unwisely. School officials were, in his opinion, pocketing the money or using it foolishly so it wasn't available for the essentials. I pointed out that a certain amount of waste and even corruption is inevitable in any free enterprise society due in part to mistakes that are made, and in part to the greedy side of human nature. If we want a quality educational system we have to pay more for it, expecting that a fraction of the funds will not be used for what later proves to be the best possible purposes. Certainly, I claimed, the amount of corruption in our public schools did not begin to approach that which had been documented in enterprises such as Enron!

His further complaint dealt with the unnecessary and nearly useless subjects taught now-a-days in the classrooms. What did he consider to be unnecessary? Why, literature, the arts, music, social studies, sex education; in short, everything except reading, writing and arithmetic although he believed "shop" classes had value. In short, he felt the purpose of an education was to train students so they could go out in the world and get a good job. Period! The rest was peripheral and superfluous. I countered saying that I didn't think that a person with just these basics alone was educated at all.

In my travels in Europe, I've heard the persuasive argument that without an appreciation for the finer things in life, a person going into business or a profession can't recognize quality and is therefore less likely to succeed. A good education should also provide our young people with social skills that allow them to function effectively in society. It should allow them to appreciate the needs of others so they don't merely focus on their own egocentric worlds. It should train them to think logically so they don't go through life, blindly blundering, making mistake after mistake, without carefully evaluating their needs and means before pondering life's important questions. And finally, but most importantly, it must teach them environmental responsibility so they won't destroy the world we've come to inherit.

My words were largely wasted, as he disagreed with virtually every one of these points. Social skills and values were best learned at home and in church, not in the schools. Why waste the taxpayer's money? I tried to reason that home and church promoted conventionality, teaching traditional attitudes without valuing original thought. We parted without coming to a satisfactory agreement, and I'm sure neither of us felt much of a desire to renew these conversations.

I believe that the greatest financial investment we can make is not in property, stocks or bonds, but in education. Humans are still dominated by animal-like instincts and selfish desires. Our numbers have created problems that none of us can afford to ignore. We need to take into account the current world predicament that has resulted from our success as a reproductive species. For this purpose we need to develop our powers of rationality. We must overcome the dark forces of our irrational, self-serving, ego-satisfying psyches. We need to think how we can preserve the Earth for future generations rather than maximize our momentary pleasure. If we can accomplish this goal, there is hope for the world. But success will depend above all on a sound system of public education!

 

 

Reference Source:

Gaffney, Mason, Professor of Economics, University of California: www.earthsharing.org.au/ gaffney.html.