0 OPINION -4 Page 4 ei 3itrbiganu wEaliij Edited and managed by students at The University of Michigan Wednesday, September 22, 1982 The Michigan Daily 9 Vol. XCIII, No. 12 420 Maynard St. Ann Arbor, MI 48109 Editorials represent a majority opinion of the Daily's Editorial Board NFLJ stke: Whn o res? PLUG YOUR ears. Cover your eyes. Lock your doors. You can't cape it. It's everywhere you turn. The horror? The NFL players' strike. Yes, the strike has struck terror into the hearts of millions of Americans- th those who can't live without foot- 6all and those who don't give a damn. It's sheer misery for the fans. The strike practically ruins half the week- Monday night, Thursday night, and Sunday, to be specific. Except for the occasional collegiate football fix, NFL jpnkies across the country face the agony of a slow, painful withdrawal. : But the suffering is immeasurably greater for those who abhor the game and find the hoopla surrounding it bleyond any sane person's grasp. After Xl, the prospect of having football clog ip the airwaves four or five times a week is bad enough. Hearing about the football strike every night on the six O'clock news, however, is sort of like a wing hell. So the nation sits and waits for relief. Another shoc T SEEMS some folks in the Reagan administration have made "an finest mistake." They authorized- Xcidentally, of course-the shipment of 2,500 high-voltage shock batons to yuth Africa. ; The batons, which are used like cat- tWprods to deliver a 3,500-volt shock to anyon"in their way, will go into the liands of South African police units. The prods will undoubtedly come in l1indy for officers trying to control ,unruly" crowds showing disagreement with the government's policies of racist suppression. But, ,Iministration officials insist, the shipment was all a mistake. For those who would criticize the administration's handling of the mat- ter, they will point out that, due to their quick thinking earlier this month, they were able to block the shipment of some 500 of the batons to Korea. Why they allowed the shipment to South Africa, while blocking the one to Kiorea, is crossed off to "ad- ministrative inadvertence." Even by the Reagan State Depar- tment's admission, such tools of con- trol should not have been sent to either V V lI A.J%uL4L%PI Who will come out the winner in the strike? Who knows? Sure, the owners get a whopping amount of money the players never see. But it's hard to get too choked up about the strike when the average player's salary runs $83,000 a year, or when bargaining is deadlocked over whether an additional $1.6 billion for the players is spread out over the next four years or the next five years. Will the management cough up more of its multi-million-dollar profits? Will the players get their fair share of those tempting television revenues? Will tomorrow night's games between the Falcons and the Chiefs be canceled.? Who cares? Will the costs of the strike be passed on to the fans in the form of higher ticket prices.? You bet. With stakes that high, the strike's real loser is bound to be up in the stan- ds, not out on the field. king 'mistake' country, both having rather em- barrassing human rights records. But, alas, the Reagan officials who OK'd the sale to South Africa neglected to ask the diplomats at the State Depar- tment before giving the go-ahead. And now that the prods have been shipped, these same officials point out, it's too late to do anything about it. Clearly, sending the batons to South African police, who will use them to disperse protesting blacks, is not a smart political move. It is particularly dumb when it comes as the Reagan administration is trying to dispel charges that it is insensitive to violations of human rights in "frien- dly," pro-Western countries. The fact that South Africa has few real com- petitors for the title of the world's most morally corrupt regime doesn't help Washington officials trying to cut their losses on this one. Maybe that's why administration aides are now acknowledging that the sale's approval was a "mistake," and are trying to ex- plain it as merely an oversight. For those on the other end of the American-built prods, that may be a hard explanation to accept. Stewart E'ASKETRALL STRIKE 3 EASoN E&&/N? /a ___ o V41d -NC - ... k a ] DO a. I " .. i How to save public e Break up the school By Denis Doyle Two major education trends which gained force in the late 1970s now are firmly in place: Public schools are in serious trouble, and private schools are flourishing. As public school enrollments continue to decline, private enrollments increase. As revenues for public schools decrease, private school tuitions increase and more parents are willing to pay higher fees. As public schools continue to fail minority children, evidence mounts that minority children, too, perform better in private schools. DO THESE trends mean that the days of public schools are numbered? Will tuition tax credits or education vouchers be enacted and reinforce the movement to private schools? Public school officials are nervous about the future because they have much to be nervous about. But thoughtful public school suppor- ters should treat vouchers and tax credits as a stalking horse, not a genuine threat. Indeed, public school advocates have the ability to bury the issue of public aid to private schools-not by opposing it, but by improving public schools. Public school people will only increase their distress if they simply wring their hands and complain that private schools have all the breaks: Private schools can admit who they like; they can fire or hire teachers as they see fit; they cantsuspend or exclude unruly or hard-to-educate children. What these complaints add up to is that private schools have standards for student and teacher behavior, and that they act on these standards. Public school ad- ministrators ought to be wary of admitting their inability to do likewise. TO FRAME the problem properly, however, it is necessary to approach it from a different angle. Assume that our public of- ficials and our public institutions reflect our social desires and priorities. Assume that representative democracy works. Is there really a constituency in this society for low test scores, poor school performance, and discipline problems? Of course not. The present set of dismal circumstances represents public policy run amuck. Teachers, students, and taxpayers still believe that schools are places for children to learn; that the unruly and undisciplined should not interfere with the education of the motivated and serious; that standards should be set and met. The true roots of the problem are revealed in those urban school districts where it is most acute. Such districts often are bureaucratic monopolies, as unresponsive and remote as industrial cartels. Parents who choose private schools do so because they have lost faith in the capacity of public schools to deliver what they want. They believe in choice, diversity, and respon- siveness. They believe that different students and different schools should be matched. They do not believe in the "one best system" of standardized schools to which children are assigned by bureaucratic edict or accidents of geography. Ten years of Gallup Polls reveal a con- sistent and powerful finding: The citizens most unhappy about public school quality are not intellectuals, or reformers, or radicals, but big city northern blacks. In 1980, 37 per- cent of this group gave public schools a "D" .or an "F" rating: by contrast, only 9 percent of residents of towns in the 20,500-50,000 population range gave schools low marks. INNER-CITY minorities, after all, have the most riding on school quality. Historically ex- cluded from good neighborhoods and good jobs, quality education offers them their one real hope of advancement. What this suggests for public schools is that they can learn something from private schools. Above all, private schools are uniformly small and non-bureaucratic, as public schools once were. Just as public schools were consolidated into massive un- wieldy districts over the past half century, producing ever larger and more bureaucratic systems, so now they can be "decon- solidated." Real control should exist at the building level, and the district-wide superin- tendent and staff should serve the school, rather than the reverse. The key actors in the education enterprise are principals and teachers, and they should be encouraged to reassume their professional responsibilities. An end to the arbitrary geographic assignment of pupils is a necessary first step Open enrollment and genuine parent choice would make public schools voluntary associations, places where teachers and students are more responsive to one another. In voluntary schools, teachers and students would recognize reciprocal obligations as well as rights. THE GREAT variety of approaches among private schools attests to the truth of a simple observation: Teachers, students, and parents differ greatly. A good school for one student or teacher is not necessarily good for another. If there were one best way to educate, a public school monopoly might make sense. But there are as many ways to educate as there are many different kinds of people. The y; 'ducati on: 'districts. response to public school monopoly need not be private schools; through deconsolidation, it might lead instead to curricular differen- tiation and enrollment without reference to traditional political and geographic barriers. An effort to develop a comprehensive plan for competitive public schools already is un- der way in California, directed by the: Sacramento-based Sequoia Institute. Sequoia is exploring legal and structural alternatives to the existing system, including the possibility of an initiative that would permit' the public to vote for school district decon- solidation, or a voucher system restricted to public schools. HATS CUR OFt-R-Ok yEAN? TK TO LELAVE ITh I YEAH! AT THE other end of the country, New: York's district superintendent for Spanish. Harlem, Anthony Alvarado, has eliminated the neighborhood assignment of students.: Beginning this fall, Harlem students are choosing which schoolnthey will attend. Alvarado makes no bones about the likely,,. consequences: "If a school isn't good enough it won't attract students. Students should not- be forced to go to a school that they and their parents do not think is as good as other' schools." Together, deconsolidation and student choice could revolutionize our public educational system. No longer confined to schools by geography or bureaucratic fiat, students and their families could enroll in in- stitutions that appear to satisfy their interests and meet their priorities. Teachers, as well, could select schools consistent with their own interests, abilities and talents. School systems administered at the in- dividual building level can offer more than good education. They can become focal points for the entire community-seedbeds of citizen participation and democracy. In turn, the op- portunity to choose carefully among schools becomes an important responsibility: It requires students and their families to ac- tively commit themselves to a course of ac- tion. Public schools can indeed regain their natural constituency-and recapture their historic sense of mission-if they are willing to dissolve the monopoly of which they are a part. Monopolies in any sphere are not only hostile to consumer interests; they eventually suffocate themselves. Doyle, director policy studies for the prise Institute, wrote Pacific News Service. of educational American Enter- this article for Wasserman 0 THE 5M\ALW.& ARMS RACE HiAS RISEr ANMTe-IE5 ABOUT A THIRD WLD WAR. 5UT TOD~AY THosE EAR5 WC-F5 GAMEDN - IN A JOINT STATEM'ENT U~4kiED STATES DCLAGD. QA"Vvtlo*rfv %ANrKUr 1'