HomeMy WebLinkAboutC.054.93009_0748describing --a society where you have two separate cultures and two
separate sets of values and principles, and that is not good for
any society. When you look over the course of history where that
has transpired, eventually the society itself has crumbled. That
is why education has to be looked at in more than terms of what it
costs for facilities. There is an underlying objective that
education has to meet if society is going to sustain itself.
Commissioner Boone said that was a real interesting point.
The integration that occurred in the last 19th and early 20th
century, we had a larger number of immigrants than we do now, and
a lot of these people were from Eastern Europe and spoke German or
Polish, but not English. At that time, New York City had a good
public school system. They said public schools took people from
different cultures, they all learned English, all learned our
conditions and values, learned to be Americans, did a whole lot to
make us one country. He thought that was a very powerful argument.
At least of the third of the original settlers in Iredell County
were German. They did not speak a word of English when they came.
In Pennsylvania, over one-half of the settlers spoke German. In a
county like Catawba, at least one-half were German. There were no
public schools whatsoever around it, yet within a generation all of
them had learned to speak English and had become homogenized
without any public schools. Today with this bilingual education
and that sort of thing, the public schools might be hurting
assimilation as much as they are helping.
Skip McCall said he did not know a better alternative than
what we have. Those were different circumstances and a different
set of motivations than we have today.
Commissioner Boone said they were very rural people in a very
different setting, and you would think it would take them longer to
assimilate under those circumstances than in a society where we
have instant communication.
Mr. Long said instant communication made it all the more
vital. As the communication system got better, the needs became
more and more to be able to communicate.
Commissioner Madison said he would like to respond to
something that was mentioned earlier by Skip and Jane, about the
system being elite. That's what we have today. The welfare
recipients can't go to private schools. There was a case in
Milwaukee in the late 80's where a welfare mother sued the City of
Milwaukee because they could not give her son an adequate
education. They won the law suit and that school system came under
court order---. They had a mass exodus for the first year. The
second year it bottomed out; the third year people started coming
back. Not because they were tired ----, but because the public
schools had reached the same level and the private schools, and it
was the competition that brought them up. It was that search of
excellence that required them to get out and find out what the
other guys are doing so that they would get their clientele back.
It worked there; it didn't stratify the systems. It raised all of
them to a new level.
Bill Long asked if the decrease in number in a classroom did
not have something to do with it. He thought this was something
that none of us have control over it. Commissioner Madison said
there might be more control now than two months ago.
Skip McCall said competition is a factor in improvement --
whatever it is. He thought there were pros and cons with the
voucher system. He thinks there is tremendous competition right
now. He sees it in competing with the crime; competing with the
teen-age pregnancy; competing with illiteracy, all those factors
that result fromnot educating children. Those are competitive
factors as far as he is concerned. He thinks there are enough of
those that say we are not doing as efficient job as we ought to be
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