Letters to the Editor

Letters from our readers

Brown ReconsideredMary Frances Berry’s essay on Brown v. Board of Education [“Brown Out,” Issue #6] is right on all points. The decision did more than reflect the triumph of the bourgeoisie within the civil rights movement. Two late fellow academics would concur. Yale historian C. Vann Woodward certainly thought that the Brown decision was a milestone; not so much a starting point but rather the closure of one part of a campaign in order to begin another. Woodward was a close enough student of class conflict to note that there were angles of class identity throughout the entire movement, but that there was nothing exclusively middle class or bourgeois about opening up public facilities to all students of color. Likewise, Benjamin Elijah Mays, the Morehouse College president and mentor to Martin Luther King, Jr. who fought valiantly for civil rights, consistently included labor rights as part of that struggle. They were all part of a whole. He made it very clear that both the denial of train service (something he saw early in life firsthand, when he worked as a railway porter) and the blockage of education hurt a young man of decidedly non-bourgeois and rather impoverished circumstances as much as it did black professionals who were by any definition bourgeois.

Professor Berry hit the nail on the head in her review essay. I am sure I will read Dr. Goluboff’s study with great interest and that I will learn from it. But I do not expect to have it proved for me that the Brown decision was wrong-headed.

John Herbert Roper Professor of History Emory and Henry College Emory, Virginia

Reform School

I applaud both Jason Kamras and Andrew Rotherham’s “America’s Teaching Crisis” [Issue #5] and Eli Broad’s “System Failure” [Issue #6]. Although their approaches differ in the details, the authors agree on one key point: Educational opportunity is the leading civil rights issue of our time. Kamras and Rotherham are right to say that teachers are at the core of the problem but that they may also be at the core of the solution. Improving their working conditions and livelihood as educators is one step in the right direction, not to mention the utilization of research on innovative and effective teaching strategies. Teaching needs to become a highly respected career path in public service and not just a guarantee of a check.

To accomplish this, though, there needs to be accountability in the profession, a sentiment put forth dramatically by Broad’s article. Comparing our largest, most troubled school districts to Fortune 500 companies may be unusual, but it communicates the point that school districts must be managed efficiently. This means cutting the employees that are not effective. As Kamras and Rotherham suggest, peer review may be the best way to effectively accomplish such a bold step.

The American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association might say otherwise, but with the publication of Tough Liberal, Richard Kahlenberg’s instant classic on teachers’ union legend Al Shanker, one would hope the ultimate purpose of such unions could be revisited [Editor’s Note: Tough Liberal is reviewed in this issue]. And Broad is absolutely right that we must change our system of education, all the way down to the school year calendar. With any hope, we will be able to look at the new superintendent of Washington, D.C.’s public schools, Michelle Rhee, for evidence that a school district can implement just such a “New Deal” and change society. We are faced with an enormous duty to change our schools and, in doing so, change our nation. If public policy could ever do good, the time is now–and the children are waiting.

Matthew Schwieger Palo Alto, California

As a high school teacher with more than 25 years of educational experience, Eli Broad’s article hit home with me. Two things come to my mind immediately: First, that one of the keys to any successful educational reform is the implementation of a cross-curricular approach to teaching. I’ve been trying to achieve just that sort of program throughout my career. Second, the main premise of Broad’s article can be summed up in a quotation I saw several years ago: “It takes a great principal to have a great high school.” As a teacher, I know this to be true.

Grant Harkness Two Rivers High School Ogden, Utah

Johnson Revisited

Clay Risen’s essay “The War on the War on Poverty” [Issue #6] needs to be read and talked about. From my own view and experiences, government has been made the problem, and attempts to build community are called failures before action and thought begin.

My 40 years in public and private service, beginning in the Peace Corps and followed by work in the Office of Economic Opportunity and 30 years as a planning director and city manager have allowed me to see, participate, and learn from the social intervention programs spawned by the Great Society. Job Corps, Head Start, and community action programs were, in many instances, driven by community needs and consultations. The War on Poverty worked–I saw it daily. One of the many overlooked benefits was the confidence and leadership it built among young people and the formerly disenfranchised. From small businesses to elected officials, many arrived there from the opportunities created by the Great Society. The War on Poverty never failed–it was starved before it could mature.

Frederick Stouder City Administrator Prosser, Washington

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