Education: The great divide

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

It's the first capitulation. Totally understandable. Maybe even warranted. But it's a surrender, nonetheless, of ideals and perhaps even goals.

President-elect Bill Clinton has decided to send his only child, Chelsea, to private school. Who can blame him? Who, in his position, wouldn't do the same? He is the president. She is his daughter. Why shouldn't she have the best?

Washington's public schools, like many inner city schools, are a mess. They exist in the middle of war zones, infested with drugs and violence and unease. Who would choose to send a child into a place that is notoriously unsafe? Certainly not the president of the United States. Certainly not anyone who has a choice.

But that's just it. Millions of people have no choice. Private schools are expensive. Chelsea's will cost $10,400 for tuition alone for 8th grade. Not many average parents can afford this. Not many so-called well-off parents can afford this, either. And so they take what they get.

What they get depends upon where they live. If they live in an affluent suburb, they get to send their kids to a school that is attractive and safe and has programs like art appreciation and creative writing. And if these best-of-the-public-schools aren't quite as progressive and challenging as private schools, few are complaining. The kids' SAT scores are good, the per

centage of graduates who go on to higher education is high. The schools in the rich suburbs are doing an adequate job.

If parents live in a less affluent suburb, they get to send their kids to a school that is a little less attractive, but still safe. The kids don't even know that they're missing art appreciation and creative writing, and if their SAT scores are lower and not as many attend college, the majority still do, so these schools, too, are deemed a success.

If parents live in a big city, however, they get to send their kids to a school that is, depending on the neighborhood, in varying states of disrepair. Some look better than others. But all suffer from having to be too many things to too diverse a group of students.

Many city schools are safe - once a student's inside. It's getting them there that's the problem. Kids walk along streets bloodstained the night before from gunshot wounds. Kids travel in buses through neighborhoods most adults avoid.

When they reach their destination, they continue to get shortchanged. They have to share classes with kids who think school's a joke, who occupy space to get out of the house or to fulfill a requirement, who do nothing all day except create problems.

Private schools can expel disinterested, disruptive students. Public schools often cannot - and many times will not.

And so the schools go down the tubes and the kids, too, the ones who want to learn along with the ones who don't.

Four short decades ago, a 9-year-old boy arrived in Worcester, not knowing a word of English. He was enrolled in a public school and mistakenly placed in a class for the mentally retarded. The mistake was corrected, and the boy moved into a regular class and worked hard. He spent Saturday afternoons at the movies listening to English, absorbing it, imitating it.

The boy excelled in school, got a scholarship to Boston University, graduated, became an investigative reporter for the New York Times, and wrote the best seller, "Eleni." Nick Gage, a product of a poor city's overcrowded public school system, is a success story.

He's also proof that the system used to work. Public education used to be the ticket out of poverty. You went to school. You respected the teacher. You paid attention, and you learned. Public schools were our most precious resource.

Now many are so bad that those who can - even Bill Clinton, who has publicly extolled and supported public education - turn their backs on it.

It is the great divide. It perpetuates "them" and "us." It keeps the downtrodden down, while the privileged write their checks and look the other way.