(Originally published in the Newark Star-Ledger, 7/4/99)
As a sixth-grade public school student in 1963, I was asked to deliver a speech about brotherhood that my class had written to commemorate National Brotherhood Week. The riots that accompanied James Meredith's enrollment at the University of Mississippi had occurred a year earlier, and photographs of the dogs and fire hoses being turned on demonstrators in Birmingham, Alabama, were fresh in the minds of Americans everywhere. 
The closing words of that speech, suggested by our teacher, have remained with me ever since. They were the words of another Long Island student, an African-American girl, who said in a forensics competition, "Take my hand, for it is clean; take my heart, for it is pure; but do not refuse me justice because of the color of my skin, for if you do, I will refer you to God who made me."
The battle for universal civil rights, for freedom and opportunity for every American, has been the animating struggle of American history. It is a struggle that continues to this day. Meredith's struggle concerned the right of African-Americans to attend the college of their choice. Today, a growing number of parents, policy makers and citizens are beginning to demand recognition for a new civil right -- the right of poor Americans to send their children to the schools of their choice.
The opposition of modern-day teachers unions to school choice has placed them in direct conflict with poor inner-city parents, and with our American ideals of liberty and justice. The ultimate threat to government schools comes not from caring parents seeking the best schools for their children but from self-interested teachers unions, which secure generous salaries and benefits from monopoly school systems where, in inner-city neighborhoods, only one of every four students who enters the ninth grade graduates from high school.
In the years since delivering the Brotherhood Week speech, I have been privileged to work in Congress for the late Senator Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., and in the White House for former President Bush. However, it was only in the past five years, while working in the inner-city for Jersey City Mayor Bret Schundler, that I fully grasped how far many American school systems have strayed from their ideals.
In 1995, Pepsi-Cola Co. approached the mayor's office with a proposal that would have resulted in a contribution from the company to a college scholarship program for every case of Pepsi products sold in Jersey City. We thanked the company for the offer, but explained that the great majority of kids in Jersey City had no hope of going to college. More than half of those who enter public high schools drop out, and fewer than half of those who remain pass a basic test required for graduation.
Would Pepsi consider, we asked, contributing to a new, privately funded scholarship program being established to help low-income parents who want to send their children to private elementary and secondary schools? This plan involved no public funds, would ease the burdens on the city's overcrowded schools, and would let poor people exercise the same choices enjoyed by more affluent parents, including the majority of Jersey City public schoolteachers who send their children to private schools. Pepsi agreed, and the scholarship program was announced to an approving media and a grateful city.
But within a day, we saw how ruthless those in control of the education monopoly are prepared to be in order to thwart choice and competition. Pepsi machines in public schools were vandalized throughout the city, and an official of the public schools (whose children had attended private schools) called Pepsi officials into her office to state that school choice is "elitist" and to protest Pepsi's involvement in the scholarship program. The president of the Jersey City teachers union, who sent his son to an elite private school, threatened a New Jersey Education Association boycott of Pepsi products across the state if the company did not withdraw its scholarship offer. Pepsi complied.
The racial oppressors of Meredith's day were able to hold back racial justice for a time, but they ultimately were moved out of the schoolhouse door, allowing Americans of all races to enter. Those who oppress the poor today think they can do so forever, but they are on the wrong side of history.
School choice can be delayed, but it can not be denied. The most powerful human instinct -- the love of parents for their children -- will overcome today's heartless union bosses, who would leave children in schools where they have a better chance of dropping out than of receiving a diploma. Polls now show strong majorities in New Jersey and across the United States in favor of school choice. Political and religious leaders and the courts are increasingly giving the idea a thumbs-up.
Americans are starting to recognize school choice as an important chapter in the civil-rights movement. But what will history say of those who denied justice, stood in the doorway, blocked private initiatives, thwarted the potential and ruined the lives of so many millions of students? Perhaps, like the Long Island girl, we can only refer them to the God who made us all.
Daniel J. Cassidy serves on the South Carolina Advisory Board to the United States Commission on Civil Rights.
No comments:
Post a Comment