Re: [Phys-l] How Much Value is Added at Elite Institutions-Response to Haim #2

[Marty Weiss <martweiss@comcast.net>]

On Jan 29, 2011, at 9:18 PM, William Robertson wrote:

> Let me throw a grenade and then get out of the way. How about we get  
> the government out of the education business? They don't have a great  
> track record in much else that they do. And if you say that private  
> education organizations would just abandon the inner city, then you  
> have to explain how other businesses survive in the inner city,

they don't.    
	Inner cities have no supermarkets, no fresh food of any kind, no up-scale clothing stores except for a few shoe stores that sell Nikes, dvd copies, cell phone places, and small shops that sell "knock-offs" of Coach and other name brands;  they also have fast food joints, thrift shops, and liquor stores abound; there are many bodegas, Chinese take-out (with bars on the serving windows), pawn shops and check-cashing places; There are few factories left in the inner core cities.    
	You will find that many downtown areas are being rebuilt where the transportation hubs and "Gallerias" can draw from the high rise office buildings where professional people enter at 7 am and leave at 6 pm, leaving empty ghost towns.  The "gallerias" are vast malls built among shells of the former glorious Gothic department stores that we used to shop in before there were suburban malls and strip centers;  before the light rail and six lane highways zipped you from your home in the city out to the "sticks" where new housing projects turned corn fields into split-level developments and mega-mansions.  And where you and I live today and send our children to nice safe schools, which are not the source of the low test scores we have been writing about.   
	Back to the sociology lesson for the evening.    
	Just off the center city hubs are the gentrified areas with million dollar condos and apartments with the opera houses, music centers, restaurants, huge convention centers, gloriously appointed hotels, and museum areas.  These are populated by the upper-middle class and wealthy who for the most part have no children, or if they do have children they all go to private schools which spring up in the near suburbs and in walking distance of the high rises.  They work in the center city areas and have little to do with the what we call the "inner-city".   (Think "Bonfire of the Vanities")    These areas are spreading out in many of the major cities, as more and more areas are being gentrified, and the poor are squeezed out of homes they have occupied for many years because of high taxes, "eminent domain", and inability to keep up with tighter building codes.   The interest in the public school systems is less and less.  The major concern is for public police safety and fire safety.  The people are not in opposition to funding schools to a point, but they also don't have much of a stake in what happens there other than if they are safe (ie: keep the student body away from their protected condos).   
	I realize that much of this might seem strange to you who may be reading this from the safety of some university town somewhere far from Washington, Chicago, Philly, Cleveland, Detroit, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, etc.  (New York may be an exception with its diversity and mix of neighborhoods, but even there, where Tom Wolf wrote his book, cited above, they have an invisible divide reaching across racial and class lines.)   Maybe you travel here to attend the opera, or see a show, or visit a famous museum.  Probably you zip in and out via some freeway, or take the Metro or subway, do your business or attend your convention in relatively safety.  Most never, never venture off the track into the shadow areas where the concierge and AAA (or the GPS in your car) tells you not to go.   In some areas, going one or two blocks away from the hotel where you stay puts you in danger!  I got lost once in North Philly taking a detour from the Zoo and believe me... that was scary;  and I was brought up and taught in a similar city environment.
	These, then, are the neighborhoods with the schools I have been writing about.  The schools which are in danger of turning out illiterate kids with little hope and few skills for the job market of the 21st century.   These are the schools where many of us taught or are still teaching faithfully and professionally every day;  The neighborhoods where the private sector thinks they can come in as the knight in shining armour.  The neighborhoods where the private schools do a fantastic job, as long as they DO NOT have to deal with the numbers of teenagers we work with every day; as long as they can pick and choose who they take in and who they can expel.  We who teach in the public schools do not have that choice!  

MW.



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