0
OPINION
Page Friday, October 30, 1981 The Michigan Daily
C
Corporate taxes could help save
schools
By Maureen Fleming
It doesn't make sense. The state Constitution
guarantees the right to a primary and secon-
dary education for all children. But the Con-
stitution can't pay for it.
Parents demand the right to have their
children educated. But, too often, they won't
pay for it.
MEANWHILE, ALPENA schools have
closed. Taxpayers revolted, and the state
refused to bail the district out. Tomorrow's
special millage renewal election there will
decide whether they can re-open.
Taylor schools are scheduled to close in early
November. Four other districts could shut their
doors within a year if millages don't pass. All
six districts.have had repeated millage elec-
tions; all have been defeated.
Taxpayers say they shouldn't have to
paying more money for schools with declining
enrollments. They fail to take into account in-
flation, which has sent education costs soaring.
SOME SAY they won't renew millage
because their schools are mismanaged. A
special team of state investigators is looking at
the Taylor system because of these charges.
Unfortunately, the city's residents are un-
willing to renew millage while the study is
being completed.
The school tax could be judged unfair to the
elderly-except they get their money refunded
through the state's Homestead Act.
Perhaps it is not surprising that the state of
Michigan can't help out its financially-troubled
schools. People, after all, make up the state.
WITH .14 PERCENT of the people unem-
ployed, fewer taxes are generated, making less
money for Michigan, which filters less money
to the school systems.
Children have been forgotten in the struggle.
It is disgraceful that residents of the closing
districts have chosen to deny their children the
basic right of an education.
A New York ruling Tuesday outlawed that
state's method of funding schools, ruling that a
system relying too heavily on local property
taxes to finance public education is con-
stitutionally defective. It discriminates against
children in poor school districts, the court said.
MICHIGAN HAS A similar school-funding
formula. As a result, nine Wayne County school
districts plan to sue the state, using the New
York argument.
Rather than losing in court, the state should
work out a more equal taxation system. And
taxpayers should understand that even though
public schools are free, the money must come
from somewhere.
The system of assessing school taxes on the
basis of property values is fair. People with
more expensive homes pay more taxes, which
still are less than the cost of a private education
for their children.
SOME SCHOOL districts have voters who
believe in a high-quality education for their
children; approval of millage increases year
after .year despite decreasing state aid shows
this. These voters should not be penalized for
spending money on education.
One way to equalize school funding would be
to redistribute corporate taxes. For instance,
Southfield has 80 corporate headquarters, all
paying Southfield school taxes. Because of the
enormous tax revenues the corporations
generate for the school district, residents don't
have to pay as much to ensure quality
education for their children as do taxpayers in
predominantly residential communities.
Corporate school taxes should be paid direc-
tly to the state and distributed to all of
Michigan's school districts. It isn't the magical
cure, but it's a start.
Fleming is a former Daily staff writer.
al
A
Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan
Demise of 'amily universe'
a0
Vol. XCII, No. 44
420 Maynard St.
A n Arbor, MI 48109
Editorials represenrt a-majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board
A black representative
T HE APPOINTMENT of a black
representative to the University
Office of Minority Student Services is a
ound, but long overdue, decision. For
amore than a year, University student
services administrators have offered,
euases and rationalizations for not.
,filling the post.
The position first became vacant in
.June, 1980, when black representative
,Richard Garland was fired for what of-
ficials termed "behavioral problems."
Despite student protests, the Univer-.
sity decided not to fill the spot per-,
manently; they said it could be filled
by the other ethnic represen-
tatives-hispanic, native American,
and Asian American-in the office.
This move, however, ignored the
1specific needs of the black student.
-population. It was almost as if Univer-
psity officials were saying that all
ethnic backgrounds are alike. The
University, in effect, chose to ignore
,the differences between the black,
hispanic, native American, and Asian
American experiences.
Finally last August, Thomas
Moorehead, University community
services director,. decided that the of-
fice could use another person-and he
made preparations to hire a black
representative. However, he neglected
to solicit any student input in the selec-
tion process as he had earlier
promised. One of the chief respon-
sibilities of a minority representative
is to work with students; it seems
logical that students should have input
in the selection process. Many studen-
ts, fortunately, have indicated a
willingness to work with the represen-
tative, despite their lack of input in the
selection process.
At least now there is a black
representative in the Minority Student
Services Office. It's unfortunate the
University had to hem an4 haw for
such a long time until it recognized the
need to fill the position.'
By John L. McKnight
CHICAGO-Everyone in government these
days is for the family. It has become a major
theme in U.S. politics, and it's the fundamen-
tal building block in President Reagan's
vision of a revitalized America.
In the older neighborhoods of the nation's
cities, however, that vision is taking on a
special irony. Here, the systematic assault
on the family universe which has been waged
for years-under' Democrats and
Republicans, liberals and conser-
vatives-still goes on.
INDEED, THE very conception of the
family held by those at the institutional top of
the U.S. society remains at polar odds with
the view held by those at the neighborhood
and family level.
The view from the top is expressed by
voices which speakof families as "markets,"
"producing baby booms," "in need of being
strengthened," and "having demographic
patterns demonstrating various needs."
One hears this language most frequently in
the board rooms of corporations, the staff
meetings of social service agencies and the
hearing rooms of legislatures.
It demonstrates the uniformity of the in-
stitutional view of the family: Family is to
buy, to use, to consume, to be helped, to be
treated. And family is to provide effective
workers and soldiers for the maintenance of
institutions.
BUT OUT in the Neighborhoods of Chicago and
our other great cities, families are the place
where you are, from which you come, and to
which you will return. However you define
them-extended or nuclear, legal or de fac-
to-families are about survival. Families
make, do, make-do, produce, solve, celebrate
and, sometimes, fail.
Families also exist in a special universe.
They are surrounded by other bodies that
make up the interrelated system necessary
for the family to work. These bodies are the
neighborhood organization, civic club, ethnic
organization, local political club, family
business, local union, church or temple and
thousands of informal groups.
It is this universe that gets much of the
work of America done. It is this universe that
provides the gravity that holds America on
course as our great institutions and their
systems increasingly fluctuate, wobble, veer
and fail.
VIEWED FROM the neighborhoods, the
family and its related organizations are the
center of life.
Yet, with government's blessing and direct
help, large-scale institutions generally
dominate and take power away from the
family universe. And from the viewpoint of
these institutions, families are not the center
of society-they are the end of a pipeline, at
the bottom of an organizational chart of
society.
Indeed, evidence of policies that disem-
power the family universe abounds. Gover-
nment services are replete with programs,
for example, 'that promote the division of
families by age. This is most vivid in the case
of the elderly, where public agencies en-
courage care by institutions rather than
families.'
MANY GOVERNMENT programs also are
injurious because they allocate massive
resources to professionals who basically see
the family as a client in need of treatment and
therapy.
These service professionals have the in-
creasing effect of convincing. families that
they are incompetent to know, care, teach,
cure, make, or do. Only certified experts can
do that.
Moreover, professional services take in-
creasing proportions of public money,
desperately needed by the poor, and consume
it in the name of helping poor families. In one
Chicago neighborhood, for every dollar
received.In cash income by a person forced on
welfare, medical care professionals receive
50 cents.
We need a radical new policy that
reexamines such service transfer payments
in terms of their potential to promote a real
investment in competence and independence.
INSTEAD, THE very social and economic
context that could ensure the working
capacity of the family universe is being un-
dermined by a public policy which favors
large-scale corporations to the disadvantage
of small-scale family and neighborhood en-
terprises, as well as the small family farm.
This administration, like its recent
predecessors, clearly sees the economy of the
family only as a trickle-down beneficiary of
large-scale production.
A government seriously concerned about
family and production would begin to
reexamine what we make and how we make
it. Why not hold hearings on neighborhood
economy, tools for community production,
legal authority to create local energy
management corporations?
EVEN WITHOUT such reinforcement,
families in our older, inner-city neigh-
borhoods function as critical survival centers.
But as the neighborhood savings institution
begins to invest neighborhood savings in the
growth of suburbia, a part of the family
universe dies. As community schools become
centralized and their purposes are defined by
professionals, a part of the family universe
dies.
As government offers advantages to large
corporations and "uncompetitive" neigh-
borhood enterprise collapses, a part of the
family universe dies. As doctors, lawyers,
social workers, teachers, counselors,and
therapists are funded to provide more and
more services, the functions of the local civic
and ethnic associations and churches
atrophy.
As television replaces the local political
club as the vehicle for selecting our represen-
tatives, a part of the family universe dies.
The basis of an economy for family sur-
vival-the authority, tools, skill, capital-is
being taken away, andthe family in the inner
city, especially, often stands alone.
The. question, therefore, is not whether
government is willing simply to declare itself
"pro-family." It is whether government is
prepared to remove the restraints and
provide the protections to allow the family
universe a central place in our society. To do
so will require a new breed of public of-
ficial-because the family and its constituent
groups presently have no real lobbies, while
those who have taken our power and authority
have loud voices in Washington.
We wonder out in the neighborhoods-at the
corner of Kedzie and .Madison in
Chicago-whether anyone in Washington can
even hear us.
McKnight is associate director of the
Center for Urban Affairs and Policy
Research at Northwestern University. He
wrote this article for Pacific News Ser-
vice.
9
*1
"ANP NOW A TESTIMOH1AL FROM A SATISFEPI
-- AS SON AS HFS STRONG EHA16N TO'
_ w
:1
f ~OFTHE
M . 5.+,'MWTPA
QCUSTOMER
TALK
LETTERS TO THE DAILY:
French dept. grading syste
s--7%.
:/
.-
.'I
To the Daily:
Last week, I got my French
midterm back. Upon seeing the
grade distribution, I was shocked
to discover that only about five
percent of the students got grades
in the "A" range. As I looked on, I
saw that the majority of the
students (approximately seven-
ty-five to eighty percent)
received "C"'s.
My TA informed me that the
reason the grades were so low
was because of the French
Department's strict grading
policy. It was also explained to
me that the grading policy was
followed in order to help students
learn French better (via disgust
motivation?) I totally disagree
language courses "pass/fail",
which only requires a "C-"
average to pass. The result is that
students do just enough work to
pass the course, and they forget
about learning the language. This
is the status quo.
I would like to advocate a
change. I would like to see the
University's French Department
liberalize its grading policy. If
this is done, students will receive
better grades for their efforts.
Better grades will in turn en-
courage students to learn the
French language better. This is
what I assume to be the goal of
the French Department.
What it all boils down to is this:
it is a mattr fm ntiatnn. The
get better grades for a good
reason, a student will eventually
develop the love of the language
that is so essential in learning
that language.
Especially in learning a foreign
language, grades are not an end,
but a means to an end. They are
motivational tools-tools that,
used in the right way, can en-
courage students to learn the
m woes
language better. I honestly hope
that the French Department
seriously considers liberalizing
its grading policy so that more
students will be motivated to
learn French.
Il faut encourager les
estudiants a apprendre le fran-
cais!
-Thomas Jacques
October 29
10
r .
.r __.
,: .....
Letters
to the Daily
should
be
typed, triple-spaced, with inch
margins A 11 suhmiksinnC smust he
I 1 r it tl Awls y: 14--AA L