Education: Who Gets Shortchanged?

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New York City has the nation's biggest school system—and one of the saddest.

What "inertia and apathy" portend for the city—and for the whole nation—was summed up last week by the Ford Foundation's President Henry T. Heald, onetime (1952-56) chancellor of New York University, in an angry speech before New York City's United Parents Associations. "What happens in the nation's largest city makes its impact throughout the country. Educational neglect means aggravation of the conditions leading to irresponsibility and lawlessness among our youth, an increasing economic burden for social welfare, the perpetuation of islands of squalor amidst shining centers of commerce and culture. And what is most tragic of all, it means that the potential genius and greatness in some of the youth in New York will go largely undiscovered and undeveloped." The answer, that poor and immigrant New Yorkers have always managed to rise, is no comfort to Veteran Educator Heald. "Their rise was often promoted by a developing, dedicated, sometimes inspirational school system. How will their counterparts of the 19605 fare?" By all evidence, not well. "An educational revolution is beginning to sweep the U.S.," but New York schools can barely "keep a foothold on the status quo." They are run by a politically appointed board of education, gripped in a "fiscal imprisonment" that plants city hall between the schools and state funds. The whole system is bogged down in a mire of "administrative inefficiency, political manipulation and official timidity." And why should this be? In essence: "The response of many of the most intelligent people of New York to the school problem has been to flee from it. Rather than stay and help do something about the schools, they resort to private schools or the suburbs.'' Yet "a first-rate school system is within the grasp of New York City." The job begins with recovery of the purpose of the schools—education. It begins with "a drastic overhaul" of school administration —complete divorce from the city's politicians. And perhaps most of all, urged Heald, it begins with privileged citizens' remembering that "it is your children who are being shortchanged."