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Are we buying our 'McStudent' lie?
Robert Freeman / San Francisco Chronicle
January 18, 2005



Freeman's commentary will bring thunderous cheers from educators. He must be preparing a run for political office.

When are we going to stop lying to ourselves about public education? When are we going to stop pretending we can get world-class results on second-world spending? When are we going to stop fooling ourselves that our neglect will never come home to roost?

You know this guy's in trouble when the pencil comes out on the first paragraph. When it comes to education spending The U.S. is second only to Switzerland. But when it comes to results on all kinds of tests, including international tests and most notably the recent math test, the U.S. does, indeed, turn in second-world results.

This graph shows that on secondary education (per student) the United States spends more than 17 other nations. These data are taken from Education at a Glance Indicators 2003, a publication of the National Center for Education Statistics. The data originate from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.



I spent 20 years in the computer industry before becoming a public-school teacher five years ago. I had risen to become vice president at one of the world's largest software companies. I know business. And I know something about education as well. Education is harder.

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Education is harder because cultivating human intelligence is one of the most difficult things in the world. It is far more complex and takes far longer than producing cheaper widgets or staging new ad campaigns. It takes millions of nuanced, exquisitely tailored stimuli, all reinforced at the right time, in the right context, and all delivered in a supportive emotional environment. Even then, it's not always predictable. But it is a certainty to fail without commitment.

And imbuing a child with what we call character is equally daunting. Perseverance, honesty, humility, courage, responsibility, compassion -- these are just as important as the intellectual gifts we treasure, but they don't come from assembly lines either. Like intelligence, they take years of deeply personal, meticulous cultivation. If they were so easy to manufacture, they would not be so highly prized.

Freeman seems to be saying that the process of education is extremely complex and difficult, not that the work done by any individual teacher is all that difficult. If that's what he's saying, I agree. The system can be complex while the roles of the individuals within the system are much less so.

For the sake of perspective let's note the following:

• Many "unqualified" home schooling parents manage the entire education process for their children with better results.
• Teachers with fewer degrees, larger classes and smaller paychecks did approximately the same work 40 years ago with outcomes not very different from today's.
• Staggering increases in education spending have not significantly improved outcomes over decades.
• Other countries do the same complex and difficult job with far lower expenditures, better academic results and likely better character formation.
• What makes education especially difficult is that it is impossible to apply "millions of nuanced, exquisitely tailored stimuli, all reinforced at the right time, in the right context" in a classroom environment. The right time for the right lesson is different for every student. That's why we need schools for The 21st Century Student, so students can in fact receive the right lessons at the right time, and in a context that matches their interests, abilities and learning styles.
• Most of what is taught in K-12 schools is not more complex than producing a widget, it only seems so. The software that runs your computer is the culmination of hundreds of thousands of person-years of labor. A cellphone, while easy to produce, is the same. The difference is that technology has grown directionally with increasing levels of sophistication while teaching has remained a craft requiring the reinvention of the wheel for every new teacher. We need to do for instruction what we've done for technology. We need to stop reinventing the wheel and start accumulating sophistication by producing thousands of high-quality, interactive, multimedia, learning-style-specific, Internet-delivered, parent-monitored, student-selected lessons with instant feedback, online professional support and software applications to monitor each student's progress on every lesson. Education needs to become far more complex and flexible while teachers' jobs are simplified.

These are the things we rightly want and need from our educational system. But the lie we tell ourselves is that we can get them on the cheap. California ranks 47th in the nation in per-pupil spending, 49th in class size. How many believe the company you work for can be the best in its industry if it only pays for the cheapest workers, if it only uses the cheapest materials in its products? None of us are so stupid as to believe this, yet we pretend we can get away with it in education.

California teachers are the highest paid in the nation. Adjusted for living costs, their pay is in the middle. Education Week places California per-pupil spending 8th from the bottom at $6,659, or $1,075 below the national average. Only 10 or so countries in the world spend more per-pupil than California.

When you compare California to Utah, California outperforms Utah on nearly every indicator of school spending and design, yet Utah outperforms California on student achievement. I guess Utahns are stupid enough to believe they can produce better outcomes without having the smallest class sizes and the highest paid teachers.

	California	Utah
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT (Percent scoring at or above proficient)
4th grade NAEP reading (2003)	21%	32%
8th grade NAEP reading (2003)	22%	32%
4th grade NAEP math (2003)	25%	31%
8th grade NAEP math (2003)	22%	31%
4th grade NAEP writing (2002)	23%	20%
8th grade NAEP writing (2002)	23%	23%
STANDARDS and ACCOUNTABILITY	B+	C+
EFFORTS to IMPROVE TEACHER QUALITY	B-	D+
SCHOOL CLIMATE	C	C+
RESOURCES: Equity	C+	A-
Average class size for self-contained classes in elementary schools (2000)	22.7	23.7
Median pupil-teacher ratio in primary-level schools (2003)	19.7	22.2
Per-Pupil Spending	$6,659	$5,132
RANK	44	51
Unadjusted education spending per student (2001)	$7,434	$4,900
Average beginner teacher salary (2003)	$34,805	$27,135
Average teacher salary for all teachers (2003)	$55,693	$38,268

Also, note that what Utah has likely done differently than California is to keep programs and services at a fixed level and increase teacher salaries with the money left over. California, on the other hand, appears to have ramped up teacher salaries and cut programs and services to pay for them. Its average teacher salary is more than $2,500 more than New York's despite spending $3,784 less per student! Something has to give in a situation like this, and in California it has been cuts to student programs and services, which resultantly have driven academic performance into the doghouse.

No wonder California is producing McStudents. It was the free, self-interested choice of the professionals. Now that they've robbed the students of the education services they need and deserve, educators like Freeman want the public to rush in and restore what the teachers have taken to pay for their "lifestyles"! Why should anyone trust them not to continue robbing the students? They're addicted to it.

The truth is that we've been living off of our capital, eating our seed corn for at least a generation. It was Gov. Pat Brown in the 1960s who built one of the greatest educational systems in the world. But since at least the late 1970s and Proposition 13, we've been disinvesting, drawing on the pool of older workers, importing talent from out of state and from abroad. How long do we think we can play this game and still keep a world-class economy?

Proposition 13 was passed in 1978. In 1980-81, California's per-pupil spending was $5,091 in 2001-02 dollars. By 1985-86 it had risen to $5,802 for a $711 real increase in spending per pupil despite the passage of Proposition 13. Between 1985 and 1996, per-pupil spending stayed near $6,000. In 2001-02, California spent $7,188 per pupil (in 2001 dollars) and its spending for 2005-06, in 2004 dollars, will be above $8,000.

Now, it's true that Gov. Pat Brown (1959-1967) dramatically increased spending on education. In 2001 dollars, spending rose from $2,571 per student in 1959-60 to $4,091 in 1969-70. That's only half of what California spends per pupil today, despite Freeman's accolades.

But relative to the national average, Gov. Brown actually let California's education spending slip. In 1959-60, California spent $296 (13%) more per pupil than the national average. By 1969-70, California spent $242 (6.3%) more than the national average. So much for Gov. Brown's exceptional education improvement enterprise. If California in fact had one of the world's greatest education systems, Gov. Brown built it by increasing spending at the national average and by spending a lot less than New York. In 1969-70, California spent $4,091 per pupil compared to New York's $6,259! Freeman ought to check his facts before writing his fairy tales. If he did, he would learn that he is arguing that California can have a world-class education system for national average spending--a point I'm sure he's not aware he has made.

There's no doubt that pumping up educators' salaries and benefits at inflation-busting rates, decreasing class sizes, and creating state standards and testing--in that order--have put a lot of pressure on California schools. Lots of extras, like music, have been cut and some of its school buildings are wrecks. Many California school districts now have foundations to supplement public funding. But are these the fault of Proposition 13 or the fault of educators for failing to live within a budget that has doubled in real dollars over the past 30 years? Mr. Freeman can blame the revenue side if he likes--and apparently he likes--but there are two sides to the equation.

Source: Digest of Education Statistics 2003: Table 171--Current expenditure per pupil in average daily attendance in public elementary and secondary schools, by state or jurisdiction: Selected years, 1959-60 to 2000-01

Another lie we tell ourselves is that there will be no consequences for our miserly spending -- a seductive lie, because while the costs of education must be borne today, the payoffs don't come for years, perhaps decades. This is what the biblical story about building a house on sand is all about. Our "no-payments-until-March" mentality has lulled us into believing that we can scrimp today but still harvest tomorrow.

Remember Aesop's fable about the ant and the grasshopper? The grasshopper played all summer, laughing at the toiling ant. But come winter, it was he who shivered. It was the grasshopper who had to go begging to the ant for food. Do we imagine there's going to be a charitable ant to bail out our state's imprudent grasshopper? There won't be. By the time we realize the damage we've wrought, it will be too late.

You really have to wonder why a history and economics teacher resorts to using fables rather than historical and economic data to make his case. International education spending, Utah's education spending and results, and California's real increase in spending all suggest that California could be doing a much better job for students than it is with the money it spends. This is not a story about a grasshopper who plays, but a story about an ant who goes on a binge and gorges on his supplies before winter comes. It's a tragic story about the powerful, self-enriching professional educators in California who chose to eat their young by cutting student programs and services to pay for inflation-busting increases in salaries and benefits when revenues could not support increases in both.

Finally, we lie to ourselves that "privatization" will offer some kind of quick fix that will solve all of our problems. Privatization means corporate control of our schools. Corporations are wonderful things, but they only work for a profit. To make a profit from education you need to do two things: increase efficiency and reduce costs.

I wonder if Freeman has ever heard of non-profit corporations?

Increasing efficiency means removing variability while boosting output. This is a great formula for mass-producing hamburgers or semiconductors. It is a disaster for producing intelligence and character in children. Remember, intelligence and character come from carefully managed complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty, all delivered in a safe, patient, nurturing environment. This is the opposite of efficiency.

The proposition that efficiency is inconsistent with building intelligence and character is flatly false. Remember the greatest education system in the world created by Pat Brown? Class sizes were 50% larger back then and teacher aides and assistants were almost non-existent. In other words, Pat Brown's world-class schools of "carefully managed complexity, ambiguity and uncertainty, all delivered in a safe, patient, nurturing environment," were far more efficient than today's schools. Reducing class sizes is a teacher quality of worklife issue that does little to improve academic outcomes while dramatically increasing education costs. Refer to the articles in this subtopic, especially The Truth About Class Size. See, also, No Teacher Left Behind and Reform Blockers.

Beyond that, schools for The 21st Century Student can dramatically improve both efficiency and learning. In these schools teachers will do less "managing" of students' lives and learning as students take on more responsibility for these in a highly flexible system of education service delivery. In my opinion, educators way over-manage student learning, and they do it on the basis of what's best for the class, not what's best for individual students. It's a disaster and part of The Root Cause of Education Mediocrity. See this article, wherein Dr. Patrick Hazlewood states, "To make their schooling more 'relevant to life in the 21st century,' [students] are to be given responsibility for 'managing their own learning.'"

Thus, decreasing costs means cutting the salaries of already underpaid teachers, for they represent the vast bulk of the costs in education. But good teachers are expensive, as well they should be. They possess a magical combination of empathy, intelligence, ingenuity, patience and persistence -- the very traits we're trying to develop in our children. And the best teachers have the best options for work in other fields. They will be the first to go when told to become robotic readers of regimented curriculum.

Teachers as magicians! Freeman needs to stop with the fairy tales. I certainly agree that great teachers are worth a lot of money. I can count on one hand the number of great teachers I had in public schools and college. Empathy, patience and persistence were traits of none of them. They were obsessed with their specialties, highly intelligent, impatient, exacting and demanding. I learned more from these teachers than from any teacher who cared about my feelings.

My guess is that less than 5% of the nation's 3.1 million K-12 teachers can do the magic Freeman wants. Pay them $150,000 a year, if you want. But what are you going to do about the other 95%? The solution can't be to pay them all $150,000 so the higher salaries will attract more capable teachers. Freeman would never pay all his private sector employees wages at 3 times the going rate for an an average of 15 years in an effort to attract the most capable workers. He'd bankrupt the company. If you believe that higher salaries are needed to attract better teachers, then the solution has to be to offer the higher salaries to the new and better teachers, not to all teachers. But the unions won't allow it. Consequently, poor performers are paid a lot more than they're worth and great teachers are paid a lot less. Paying current teachers higher salaries is not going to improve student learning any more than paying current public defenders $300,000 a year is going to improve their job performance. People are generally doing the best they can under the conditions in which they work regardless of the level of their salaries.

How many parents are willing to turn their children over to companies whose principal goal is to make a profit off them?

This is a ridiculous question designed to stimulate bias, not thinking. In public education all the "profits" are paid to the staff. In the private sector, the profits are shared between the staff and the shareholders.

There are huge profits in the public education monopoly and they all go to the salaries and benefits of the employees. Most private sector K-12 schools run on much smaller budgets with lower paid staff than public schools and they produce equivalent or better outcomes.

Beyond that, the profit motive isn't just about low costs. It's also about high quality. Any business that wants to make a profit in education in the long run must offer high quality programs. On the other hand, public schools can stay in business regardless of the quality of their programs.

If people really understood the differences between government programs and competition in the private sector, they'd be demanding a lot more schools striving to make a profit.

Freeman's entire article makes me deeply question what kind of historian and economist he is. I'm sensing a strong element of socialism.

How many want them taught by the cheapest teachers, crammed into the largest classrooms, reciting only the most rote repetition? Yet, if it is to make a profit, that is the only plausible vision that mass privatized education has to offer us: McStudents.

McStudents. Is that what the privatized Catholic schools produce? Is that what KIPP schools produce? Freeman is off his rocker. I think he's missing his VP salary too much. If Freeman really understands the free market, he knows that no business can survive by providing shabby services. In fact, Freeman's description of for-profit schools almost precisely describes the public school monopoly, with the exception of cheap teachers! Government teachers earn 30 to 60% more than private sector teachers. See Small Miracles. McStudents is precisely what government schools produce. See What Money Can't Buy.

The supreme irony is that the truths we should be confronting here are the very ones we so gravely lecture our children about: You can't get "something for nothing"; actions have consequences; there's no easy fix to hard problems.

Back to policy making by aphorism. What's Freeman's solution in all this highly embellished rodomontade? Spend more money. Pay teachers more. That sounds like a grab for the easy fix to me. If Freeman wants a comprehensive, student-centered solution, he needs to abandon his 19th century, teacher-centered universe and start thinking about transforming schools into institutions for The 21st Century Student.

We need to stop lying to ourselves that we're doing what is needed to produce high-quality education. We can continue to mass produce cookie-cutter students on the cheap and we will reap a generational whirlwind of well-regimented, intellectually impotent dullards. Or, we can tell the truth. We can pay the honest freight to cultivate true intelligence and character in our children. To be sure, it is much harder and somewhat more expensive, at least in the short run. But it is the only way to sustain the blessings of prosperity that have graced our state.

My best guess is that Freeman is positioning himself for something. His cookie-cutter rhetoric and blindness to the data that contradicts his position is evidence of extreme bias, which either makes him a dullard or a master manipulator. I'm guessing it's the latter.

I see absolutely nothing in his writing that indicates he has ever read, much less understood, anything Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize laureate in economics, has ever written, including Why America Needs School Vouchers and Free to Choose.

Robert Freeman, former vice president of international marketing at Sybase, teaches economics and history at Los Altos High School.

Before I leave Freeman's fairy tales, let's see what California can expect to achieve by increasing its $7,434 per pupil spending to New York's $11,218 (in 2001). With 6.3 million students, California would have to increase education spending from about $47 billion to $71 billion (plus inflation since 2001) for more than a 53% increase in spending.

Using data from Education Week's 2005 Quality Counts, we see that California can expect to raise its academic outcomes to approximately the same level of Utah's. Approximately 11 percentage points would be gained in the percentage of its students scoring at or above proficient on national exams. That means about 700,000 more of its students would be reaching proficiency, based on New York's spending and performance record. So, for a spending increase of $24 billion, that works out to be $34,300 for each student added to the proficiency column. There has to be a way to get a bigger bang for the buck. It's called a school for The 21st Century Student.

	California	New York
STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT (Percent scoring at or above proficient)
4th grade NAEP reading (2003)	21%	34%
8th grade NAEP reading (2003)	22%	35%
4th grade NAEP math (2003)	25%	33%
8th grade NAEP math (2003)	22%	32%
4th grade NAEP writing (2002)	23%	37%
8th grade NAEP writing (2002)	23%	30%
STANDARDS and ACCOUNTABILITY	B+	A
EFFORTS to IMPROVE TEACHER QUALITY	B-	B-
SCHOOL CLIMATE	C	C
RESOURCES: Equity	C+	B
Average class size for self-contained classes in elementary schools (2000)	22.7	22.3
Per Pupil Spending	$6,659	$10,002
RANK	44	3
Unadjusted education spending per student (2001)	$7,434	$11,218
Average beginner teacher salary (2003)	$34,805	$35,259
Average teacher salary for all teachers (2003)	$55,693	$53,017

District says red, white, blue beads are gang-related
MSNBC/WNYT
Jan. 8, 2005

WNYT-TVUSA - A federal lawsuit is slated to be filed Friday. At issue is whether a Schenectady girl's constitutional rights were violated when school officials asked her to remove a necklace.

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Twelve-year-old Raven Furbert insists the beaded necklace shows her support for the troops. School administrators say regardless of what the necklace means, the beads are not allowed.

Think about this, folks. Do females wear beads in their hair to school? Do they wear necklaces? Neither is prohibited. But, if they take the beads out of their hair and put them on their necklaces--POOF!--instant miscreant. I mean, you have to be darn near a genius to think up all these subtle combinations to trip up students and get them into trouble so you can punish them. It's a great way to create a respectful learning atmosphere, wouldn't you agree?

For Raven, every day is a chance to be patriotic. Her uncle, J.D. Barnes, is serving in Iraq. So she made a red, white and blue beaded necklace to express her patriotism and her support for the troops.

She wore the necklace to Mont Pleasant Middle School on Tuesday until she was told to take it off.

"All they said was [the beads are] gang-related," Raven said.

If the school bothered to ask Raven why she was wearing the necklace, then it knew beyond all doubt that these beads were in no way connected to gang activity.

What the school is really concerned about is having to decide whether person X's beads are gang-related but person Y's beads are not, and then having to justify the decision.

The answer that comes to every administrator's tiny mind is easy. Ban them all! Religious beads, beads worn to memorialize death, political beads, stylish beads and all beads heretofore unimagined. It's supreme idiocy in the context of a nation that even half-heartedly recognizes the right of free speech for students in government schools.

"I don't get how beads can be gang-related," she added.

Even if some beads are gang related, why should the criminal predispositions of others make the innocent wearing of beads a school violation subject to punishment? Is this how schools show respect for students?

Raven's mother, Katie Grzywna, thinks her daughter's rights have been violated.

"In my opinion it's a constitutional issue. Freedom of expression," she said.

Good for you.

That constitutional issue is now at the center of a federal lawsuit Raven's attorney intends to file on Friday.

"If this little girl wants to come here and wear this necklace to show her support for those people then that's an issue I as a civil rights lawyer will fight for," Bob Keach said.

The school's code of conduct states student's jewelry "will be safe, appropriate and not...interfere with the educational process." It also says "students will not wear any clothing deemed to be gang related."

You see that? The clothing doesn't actually have to be gang related to be banned, it just needs to be deemed to be gang related. The federal court will have something to say about the reasonableness of the district deeming Raven's beads to be gang related.

The code of conduct does not explicitly mention beads or beaded necklaces. But school officials say the beads have been affiliated with gangs in the past. So they're not allowed.

I've got news for those in charge of the Schenectady schools. CLOTHES have been affiliated with gangs. Why don't you just make students show up naked? HAIR has been affiliated with gangs. Why don't you make students shave off all their hair? I mean, after all THIS IS A SAFETY ISSUE.

"We want to make sure that our students have options to express themselves, but it has to be done in a way that's safe for everyone in the school building," said Shari Greenleaf, the attorney for the city school district.

Every issue is a safety issue, isn't. I'd like to know how Raven's beads made anyone in the building unsafe. Why don't reporters ask these questions?

"It's red, white and blue. The colors of the school are red, white and blue. This is potentially gang-related? What does that mean? It's ridiculous," Keach said.

Oops! Looks like Schenectady is going to have to change its school colors. You can't have schools using gang colors, now can you?

School officials say the color red is often affiliated with one particular gang, and the color blue is often affiliated with another.

Do you let students use red or blue crayons in art class? Shall we ban U.S. flags from public schools if one gang or another adopts it as a symbol of affiliation?

I have got to find that college that's handing out degrees in moronity. We've got to get that place closed down.

The school would not comment specifically on the lawsuit. It is expected to be filed Friday.

Peter Berger / Schenectady (NY) Sunday Gazette
Dec. 26, 2004
Peter Berger teaches English in Weathersfield, Vt. Read more Peter Berger articles.

See, also, Schools That Do Too Much: Wasting Time and Money in Schools and What We Can All Do about It.



Students: Peter is an English teacher. Of all the articles he has written, this is the one to study for the secrets of great writing. It's packed with lots writing techniques. See if you can find the following:

• an example
• an anecdote
• repetition of a key word or phrase (Hint: there are two--one major and the other minor by frequency)
• a list
• a summary
• a comparison
• an allusion
• contrast
• cause and effect
• use of or reference to sound, sight and touch
• inversion of a value system
• citation to authority
• a climax
• an understatement
• a rhetorical question
• a twist
• a paradox
• a reflection

In the play Amadeus, the king reprimands Mozart because his opera has "too many notes." Mozart goes on, "Which notes don't you like?"

Similarly, one might be inclined to reprimand Peter for having too many writing methods, but which ones aren't likable? Peter would likely respond as Mozart, saying there are neither more writing techniques nor fewer than needed.

On the substance of Peter's article, that schools should not and cannot take the place of parents, one should ask whether he has supported his case as strongly as he might have and whether the article is logically bound as tightly as it is rhetorically bound.

I'm not sure what the Cratchits would think, but by modern standards I'm pretty old-fashioned. I refuse to shop till December, and I still say Merry Christmas even though you're not supposed to anymore.

These days the approved multicultural salutation is "Happy Holiday." Speaking for myself, I'll take a sincere greeting from anybody's tradition. You don't have to subscribe to a common faith to exchange blessings.

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"A Christmas Carol" is one of those blessings. Each December when I read about Scrooge or watch him in 1953 black and white, I learn a different lesson.

This year it was Bob Cratchit's daughter Martha. Bob calls her "our Martha." We don't talk like that anymore, but spoken or unspoken, that little word "our" is what family is all about.

Today many experts tell us the family is in trouble, and that kids are in' trouble as a result.

That's not to say there weren't problems in Bob Cratchit's London, or that many 21st-century families aren't doing fine, or that doing fine can't include slamming doors, hard times and misunderstandings.

But things seem shaky enough at home that schools are increasingly called upon to fill in and deal with issues that once were taken care of around the kitchen table.

Is it that things are shaky enough to call for intervention because problems are more complex, families are less connected, communities are less integrated, more mental health professionals have more to say about what should be done and more time to say it on the government payroll, some or all of these and/or something else?

Climate of connection

The expert authors of the "Wingspread Declaration" prescribe a contemporary remedy. They want schools to "create a climate of connection" so "every student feels close to at least one supportive adult at school."

What could be the good, bad and unintended consequences of doing that? Overall, is this an improvement or a trap? Moreover, consider whether the assumption that students need supportive adults is valid. Could it possibly be that non-supportive (demanding, critical, and Scrooge-like) adults can lead to better overall outcomes?

According to the Wingspread folks, this surrogate closeness to teachers will boost academic performance while it also reduces tobacco and drug use, suicide rates and teenage sex.

I can see where getting along with me could induce a student to work harder in my class. Of course, I've worked hard in classes where I didn't feel connected, and I've also known students who liked me just fine but never cracked a book.

As for closeness, I try to make an impression for good on my students. I know that here and there that impression will last, and that a handful will remember me as warmly as I remember my special teachers.

But as highly as I regarded my special few, none of them were the reason I smoked or not, or took drugs or not. They certainly weren't the reason I had sex or not.

I try to inspire my students. I try to appeal to the better angels of their nature. I enjoy spending my days with them. But I should never be more than a small part of their lives. I shouldn't be the "supportive adult" they're connected to. Their parents should.

The Commission on Children at Risk is also concerned about kids' deteriorating mental and behavioral health, but this commission warns that medication, therapy, and programs at school won't help the "growing numbers of suffering children."

Instead, they need deep connections to moral principles, spiritual and religious guidance, and clear limits and expectations. These experts likewise trace the present "crisis of American childhood" to a lack of close connections to other people.

English teachers aren't those other people.

Parents are.

I don't mean we should turn our backs on suffering and misfortune. Jacob Marley was right. Whether I'm a teacher or a carpenter, mankind is my business.

And if Marley's counsel isn't enough, there's an even older text that enjoins us to care for widows and orphans. We need to be careful, though, that our good intentions don't create more orphans.

Because the more we substitute schools for homes, the weaker both will become.

Correct, with one caveat--government schools will become more politically powerful as they expand the scope of "free" services to students. But education will become weaker, and I think that's what Peter means.

When two kinder gentlemen solicit Scrooge's help for the poor, he informs them he already supports several institutions. "Are there no prisons?" he asks them. "Are there no workhouses?"

That wasn't much of answer. But "Are there no schools?" isn't much better.

No replacement

Our trouble today isn't that we lack institutions, or even that we lack well-intentioned institutions. Our trouble is that no institution can ever care for us the way we need to feel cared for and be cared for.

No institution, including school, can supply the connectedness that children need.

Schools can't replace homes.

We shall probably find out whether they can or not. Plato wanted children raised by the state without ever knowing who their parents were. It's the direction we are headed in. Increasingly, being a parent will be more like being a non-custodial parent with weekend and holiday visitation rights--and, of course, the duty to pay child support. The values, principles and beliefs of parents who are doing their jobs will be increasingly trumped by government imposed values, principles and beliefs with the justification that it must do for all students the job necessitated by the neglect of a few parents.

In the end Scrooge becomes a good friend, a good master, and a good man. And everybody knows how he helps the Cratchits and how his help saves Tiny Tim.

But there's another family to note at the end of the story, the family where he's welcomed as Uncle Scrooge - his family where he can find comfort and rest from his endeavors out in the world.

Wherever we are, school included, we need to think like Scrooge. We need to look to the world with decency and compassion, especially that part of the world that's near enough for us to touch. But it's even more needful that we look to our families, to those whose names begin with "our," for their sake and for our own.

In hope and with best wishes.