[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 49 (Wednesday, April 17, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3496-S3498]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
HONORING BRIAN PALMER HAFLER
Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I would like to take a few moments
to acknowledge a very talented and promising resident of Massachusetts,
Brian Palmer Hafler. Brian was chosen as a seventh place winner in the
prestigious Westinghouse Science Talent Search, a national competition
that recognizes the outstanding math and science achievements of high
school students aged 16 to 18. Brian was recognized for his research
involving T cells, research that may be instrumental in the future
treatment of autoimmune diseases.
After graduation from the Roxbury Latin School, West Roxbury, MA,
Brian intends to continue his scientific research as a molecular
biology student at Princeton University. In addition to his scholarly
accomplishments, Brian has won varsity letters in wrestling and cross
country, numerous academic awards, and a service award for his work in
tutoring inner-city students.
I applaud Brian on receiving the Westinghouse Science Award, and wish
him success in his future endeavors.
[[Page S3497]]
TESTIMONY OF JONATHAN KOZOL
Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, I had a chance to read the testimony of
Jonathan Kozol, an author who prods our conscience, before the House
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities, which I ask to be
printed in the Record after my remarks.
It is a summary of where we are, as he points out, on this year that
celebrates the 100th anniversary of the unfortunate Plessy v. Ferguson
decision.
The need to do a better job, the need to show care, the need to
create opportunity for everyone is here. The question is whether we
will pay attention to this obvious need or whether we will ignore it,
ultimately at our own peril.
The article follows:
Committee on Economic and Educational Opportunities--U.S. House of
Representatives, March 5, 1996
testimony of jonathan kozol
Mr. Chairman: As you know, this year commemorates the 100th
anniversary of Plessy versus Ferguson, but few of the poorest
children in our nation will find much to celebrate. Public
schools throughout the land, with rare exceptions, are still
separate and unequal.
In New York City, to take only one example, public schools
for poor black and Hispanic children are nearly as segregated
as the schools of Mississippi 50 years ago. The city spends
less than half as much per-pupil as its richest suburbs--a
differential found, of course, all over the United States.
For many years, the only force that helped consistently to
militate against these inequalities has been the Federal
government. Although Federal money represents only a tiny
fraction of the total education budget in our nation, it has
been targeted at schools and neighborhoods in greatest need;
and, while Federal aid may represent, on average, only 6
percent of local education budgets, it represents as much as
20 percent in our low-income districts.
Now, as the dismantling of Federal aid is being
contemplated, as block grants are proposed as substitutes for
targeted assistance to the poor, the plight of children in
the most impoverished districts will inevitably worsen.
I remind you also of the gross and cumulative deterioration
of schoolbuildings in low-income neighborhoods. ``Deferred
maintenance''--an antiseptic term which means that water
buckets must be scattered around classrooms to collect the
rain that penetrates a hundred-year-old roof, while hallways
stink of urine from the antiquated plumbing in the bathrooms
of a school--is well above $100 billion.
Conditions like these do not just soil bodies. They also
dirty souls and spirits, and they give our children a clear
message. They tell them that, no matter what we say about
``high expectations,'' no matter what exhaustive lists of
``goals'' and ``standards'' we keep churning out for the
millennium, the deepdown truth is that we do not like them
very much, nor value their potential as Americans.
Millions of children are going to class each day in
buildings none of you would be prepared to work in for one
hour. All the boosterism in the world, all the hype and all
the exhortation, all the upbeat speeches by a visiting
politician telling kids, ``You are somebody,'' has no
palpable effect if every single thing about the school
itself--its peeling paint, its rotting walls, its stinking
corridors, its crowded, makeshift classrooms in coat closets,
on stair-landings, and in squalid corners of the basement--
tells our children, ``In the eyes of this society, you are
not anyone at all.''
The notion of ``retrofitting'' schools like these for the
computer age has something of the quality of a Grimms fairy
tale. How will a school that can't repair the toilets or
afford to pay for toilet-paper find the money to buy IBM or
Microsoft? The gulf between the national ``goals'' and the
degrading day-to-day reality of life for children in these
schools has something about it that suggests delusionary
thinking. There is simply no connection between slogans and
realities.
Despite all this, we face the strange phenomenon of being
asked repeatedly, by those who spend as much as $20,000
yearly to enroll their children in exclusive private schools,
whether money really matters when it comes to education of
the poor. ``Can you solve these kinds of problems,'' we are
asked, ``by throwing money at them?''
I always find this a strange question, but especially when
it is asked by those who do precisely this for their own
children. Money cannot do everything in life. It can't buy
decency. It obviously does not buy honesty or generosity of
spirit. But, if the goal is to repair a roof or to install a
wiring system or remove lead poison or to pay for a computer,
or persuade a first-rate teacher to remain in a tough job, I
think money is a fine solution.
A rhetorical devise used by some politicians points to
unusual districts such as Washington DC, or East St. Louis,
Illinois, that spend a bit more money than some of the nearby
districts but do poorly by comparison. This, we are told, is
proof that ``money does not matter.'' But, in most cases,
there are districts that also plagued by pediatric illness
like chronic asthma, by lead-poisoning, by astronomic rates
of AIDS, and joblessness, and drug-addiction, and a global
feeling of despair. Equality, as Dr. King reminded us, does
not mean equal funding for unequal needs. It means resources
commensurate with the conditions of existence.
It is true that there has been anarchic inefficiency in
certain urban districts; this needs to be addressed. But even
where efficiency has been restored, as in Chicago for
example, funds are not forthcoming. Still we are told to
``cut the fat'' from the administration. But in New York, as
in Chicago, there is no more fat to cut. We are now cutting
at the bone and at the hearts of children.
And so we come at last to 1996 and to the present moment in
the U.S. Congress, where the forces of reaction tell us it is
time to ``get tough'' with poor children. How much tougher do
we dare to get? How cold, as a society, are we prepared to
be?
New York City, as things stand right now, can barely eke
out $7,000 yearly for the education of a first grade child in
a school I've visited in the South Bronx, but is spending
$70,000 yearly on each child it incarcerates--$60,000 on
each adult. If Title I is slashed by Congress, it will
devastate the children in this school. In the 1980s, these
impoverished children lost the dental clinic in their
building. A year ago, they lost the afternoon program
where they could be safe in school while mothers worked or
looked for jobs. This June, their teen-age siblings will
lose summer jobs as Congress lets that program die as
well. Only 10 percent of these children are admitted into
Head Start programs. The one place to which they are sure
of being readily admitted is the city's prison island--now
the largest penal colony on earth.
Beyond the cutbacks, there is one more shadow looming, and
that is the everpresent threat of education vouchers--a
modernized version of a hated memory from 40 years ago, when
Southern whites fled from the public schools after the Brown
decision, seeking often to get public funds to subsidize
their so-called ``white academies.'' They didn't succeed in
this attempt, but now another generation--more sophisticated
and more clever in concealing racial animus--is driving
toward the same objective by the instrument of vouchers.
This time, they are smart enough to offer vouchers to black
children and poor children too, but the vouchers they propose
can never pay for full tuition at a first-rate private school
and, in effect, will simply filter off ``the least poor of
the poor'' who can enhance the voucher with sufficient funds
to flee into small private sanctuaries that exclude their
poorest neighbors. By filtering off these families from the
common areas of shared democracy, we will leave behind a
pedagogic wasteland in which no good teacher will desire to
teach but where the masses of poor children will remain in
buildings that are schools only in name. We are getting close
to that point even now. Vouchers, combined with further
fiscal cuts, will bring that day considerably nearer.
Some of us who stand up to defend the public schools may
seem, at first, to be in an untenable position: We give the
appearance of not wanting to change while pointing to how bad
things are today. This is our fault, I think, because we tend
to speak defensively about the status quo, and fail to offer
a more sweeping vision for the future. We scramble to save
Title I--and so we should. But Title I, essential as it is,
is a remedial side-dish on the table of inequity. We should
be speaking of the main course, but have largely failed to do
so.
Our vision ought to be to build a public system that is so
superb, so democratic, and well-run, that no responsible or
thoughtful parent would desire to abandon it. To bring this
vision to fruition, we would have to raise the banner of
efficiency as high as any voucher advocate has done. We
cannot defend dysfunction on the grounds that it is somehow
one of the inevitable corollaries of democracy. But simply to
support ``efficiency'' or to encourage innovations such as
charter schools is not nearly enough. Innovative and
efficient inequality is still unworthy of America. We also
need to raise a bolder banner, one that cries out for an end
to gross inequity, one that uses strong word for the savagery
of what we do today: providing college preparation for the
fortunate, bottom-level-labor preparation for the lower-
middle class, and prison preparation for our outcasts.
None of my respected friends here in the House of
Representatives believes that it is fair to rig the game of
life the way we do. We wouldn't play Little League like
this. We'd be ashamed. Our victories would seem
contaminated. Why aren't we saying this in words Americans
can hear?
There is too much silence on this issue among Democrats. It
leaves the field to those who speak bombastically, with
violence of spirit, as they swiftly mount their juggernaut of
cutbacks, vouchers, and secession from the public realm.
Virulent racism, as we know too well, is often just beneath
the surface of discussion too. I heard few voices in the
Congress that address this boldly. There is a sense of quiet
abdication and surrender.
Despite my feeling of discouragement, I would like to add
that I was reassured to see that Secretary Riley spoke out
clearly on the voucher issue recently. As always, he was
eloquence and fearless. The same eloquence and the same
fearlessness are needed now among the Democrats in Congress.
Some of those Democrats, whom I have had the privilege to
know for many years, will be retiring soon. Before they do, I
hope that
[[Page S3498]]
they will find the opportunity to wage one final battle for
those children who cannot fight for themselves. I hope they
won't leave Congress quietly, but with an angry sword held
high. In that way, even if they lose this battle, they will
leave behind a legacy of courage that a future generation can
uphold with pride.
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