A Fine Communitarianism This Is
Most, though clearly not all, op-ed pieces identify a public-policy issue that has recently been in the news, come down on one side of it, marshal arguments for that side, and point up how shortsighted, foolish, or downright evil the adherents of the other side are. Amitai Etzioni follows this course in his April 8, 1998, Commentary, "Thou Shalt Not Help Thy Kids" . A while back, Rudy Crew, the New York City schools chancellor, had stopped parents in a city school from raising money to pay a teacher who was about to become a victim of budget cuts. Similar incidents had occurred in other places around the country. For Mr. Etzioni, school officials' barring parents from raising funds for their own children is the new "scandal" of the public schools.
Instead of plunging in on one side or the other of this issue, let us look at the painful choices faced by both parents and school officials in such circumstances, and examine the larger context which makes such choices necessary. The parents at Public School 41 (I once heard the late Michael Harrington speak eloquently there on the question of equality of opportunity for all Americans) see that a teacher is about to be cut for budgetary reasons. They protest, but find that the teacher will be cut anyway. As a last resort, they offer to raise the money to pay for the teacher's salary and benefits package. Some of these parents from a progressive neighborhood with a long tradition of concern for social equality, in fact, find the choice a difficult one. They are well aware that the parents of children in some other Manhattan neighborhoods where teachers are also being let go are financially unable to raise the $40,000 or more it would take to hire a teacher for their children. They have neighbors who have recently moved to Scarsdale or Great Neck so their children might attend vastly better-funded schools; others have sent their children to selective and expensive private schools. In the end, the fund-raising parents, some callously, but others with sadness and a promise to work for more money for all New York City public schools next year, decide to buy a teacher for their own children.
And what of Mr. Crew, and other school officials faced with the same legal and moral issues? Their roles are quite different from those of the parents of children in a particular school. They are charged with seeking equity for all children within the educational unit for which they are responsible. Similarly, governors, state legislatures, and the courts throughout the nation have tried, through state educational aid formulas, to remedy glaring inequities in per-pupil expenditures between wealthy and poorer districts. Mr. Crew tells the parents they cannot hire the teacher. (Later, of course, he finds a way to do the...
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