An op-ed piece by Helen Ubinas in the Philadelphia Daily News declares that “anyone who thinks that we — yep, I’m using that word again — get to wash our hands of what’s happening in Philly schools or in any other broken urban school is downright delusional.”
She was firing back at readers who had criticized a piece she wrote claiming that all people have a stake in the success of the public schools in Philadelphia. People, understandably, argued that they weren’t responsible for the event that started this most recent firestorm: a student who knocked a school conflict resolution officer unconscious.
Instead, readers blamed parents, the school system, racism, race baiting, and a host of other people and causes for the undeniable fact that a Philadelphia high school had turned into a war zone in the last few years.
Outsiders, myself included, have commented on the Philadelphia schools. It’s hard to deny that they are dying, and kids are lashing out and acting out. When a kid knocks a school official unconscious in a dispute over a cellphone, there aren’t many redeeming qualities in the schools to be found, and there aren’t too many things anyone can say to avoid impugning parents’ best and most honorable aspirations for their kids.
However, it’s time to take a breath. Neither Ms Ubinas, any commenter, nor I can help the public schools of Philadelphia alone. But that’s not to say I don’t have a stake in Philadelphia’s public schools. The more kids we graduate who can’t live a fruitful life in our world, the longer it’s going to take to do anything about poverty. And the longer it takes to do anything about poverty, the worse our public schools will become, because poverty is, without a doubt, the root cause of every issue people bring up:
- Low expectations of students
- Bad parents who fail to instill educational values
- Classism, racism, or any other -ism
- Equality of access to educational opportunities
Yes, there are poor people who are good parents and poor people who set high expectations and goals for their children. These folks aren’t the problem, though, so we need to look to them as being a helpful part of the solution. Talk such as that published here by the Daily News doesn’t help, because it encourages and strengthens dependency of one group of people on another. That “other” group is naturally going to try to wash their hands of the situation, and if all a writer has to offer is that they’re delusional, it’s going to be a long time before people start implementing any real solution in this matter. So let’s take a breath.
I don’t believe anything I ever did led to the current situation in Philadelphia or exacerbated it in any way. Nobody is that powerful. Rather, the situation evolved over a fairly short time because of the failure of a community to come together. Maybe there is no community in Philadelphia that could even contemplate coming together. If that’s the case, the only hope parents have is to get their kids out of there. Maybe they can’t go anywhere else, though, so in that case, they need to start linking within their communities in productive ways.
I have heard too much complaining, too much blaming, too much excusing. This is a situation that calls for action, and the action must involve everyone — students, schools, and members of the community including parents — working together to stop the violence.
Although some people have proposed solutions, they’re all wrong: there are no quick answers or global solutions. The Philadelphia School District has a budget of about $2.4 billion a year, so clearly, the lack of money isn’t the problem. But if spending could be much more efficient and find its way into the city’s classrooms, would there be a reduction in the level of violence? Who knows?
In any event, despite the indignant tone Ms Ubinas adopts in her writing, she has at least one good point: If my neighbor sets his house on fire because he carelessly falls asleep while smoking a cigarette on the couch, I don’t think any reasonable person would say I had any responsibility in the fire. But I do have a stake in doing whatever I can to put the fire out.
This is a decent analogy for the public schools in Philly: I don’t hold parents from suburban areas responsible in the least for what happened or for what is happening in city schools. They pay their taxes to support Philadelphia’s public schools, many of which are charter schools, and that represents, for the most part, the limits of their responsibility to the public schools of Philadelphia. However, suburban parents do have a considerable stake in the quality of Philadelphia’s public schools and should therefore do what they can to end the violence.
Two issues with that: (1) What, really, can they do? (2) How much will suburban parents lose if Philly’s inner-city schools fail? Remember, some of these suburbanites will be people who took their kids out of the city because they were unable to stomach sending their own children to the city’s schools.
Some of this loss can be measured financially, such as in the cost to keep a criminal in prison, the loss of tax revenue because they will not be gainfully employed, the public funds spent on welfare programs, and many other costs. But some losses are not financial in nature and must be assessed qualitatively. One such loss is the pride in our cities, our communities, and other human beings who inhabit them. It’s hard for me to believe that parents at the high school involved don’t step up here. Volunteer. Be a part of your kids’ lives at school. This will only perpetuate the violence and lack of accountability to the next generation of kids. These losses don’t have a real cost or quantitative measure, but they are central to an understanding of any solution strategy.
If we assess the potential losses that would come if the schools eventually fail and weigh those losses against the cost of doing something about it — of volunteering, of getting some help for kids at the offending high school, etc. — I’m confident we would find the schools can be saved. If that fails, though, parents should try to get their kids out of Philadelphia as quickly as possible so that not too much of their education is lost to this violence.