PUBLIC SCHOOLS: who's really in charge?

Until the 1920's America's public schools were chiefly a local responsibility. In the 1920's, for instance, some 162,800 local school districts were governed by locally elected lay people who raised the bulk of the revenue, enjoyed considerable autonomy and were responsive to local pressure. These days, state imposed consolidation, has reduced that number by 88%, to a total of 13,598. Consequently local autonomy, control and sensitivity to local pressures have shrunk dramatically. 

At the same time school funding gradually shifted from the local to the state level — although the proportion varied from state to state. These days Vermont provides the most: 87%. Utah provides the least: 58%. The rest of the funding falls mainly on local school districts. These days the federal government provides just 8%. 

Here's why this matters. Whoever pays usually sets the rules. With state funding predominating, most key decisions are made at the state level. And when the federal government has gotten more and more involved. Local authorities often are not consulted in any meaningful way. Just told what they must do. These local authorities also are often required to pick up some, sometimes all, of the tab. (State and federal law-makers are fond of enacting one requirement or another then imposing much, sometimes all, of the cost of accomplishment it on local school districts.

There was a brief increase in federal funding beginning most markedly with the administration of George W. Bush — the self-styled "Education President." At this time the federal government increased education spending about 33% to 12% of the total. This further diminished state and local power by adding federal rules that went with the funding. As time when on, enthusiasm for education spending diminished and with it all the increased federal funding. Their rules, however, are still around. Consequently parents and local communities find themselves further and further removed from meaningful influence.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Another source of community and parental disempowerment is the ever decreasing number of schools and a concomitant  increase in the number of students per remaining schools. In 1920 there were some 190,000 public schools, k-12, with an average of 100 students per school. By 2020 there were only 131,000 public schools serving an average of 528 students per school. That's five times more students per school than in1920.  

As school populations grew, individual student differences became less and less important. The chances of a principal even knowing the name of every student, much less anything about them, shrank to nearly zero. Their knowledge of individual parental concerns also shrank dramatically. 

So where does this leave us? With public schools that are less and less responsive to individual differences and more and more indifferent to community values. Who's really in charge? State and federal bureaucrats who are in the hire of state and federal legislators, that's who. Whether or not that's what we want, that's what we've got.

CATHOLIC v. MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS: an historical comparison

A significant number of Americans object to Muslim immigration. They see these people as culturally incompatible and dangerously intolerant. And they worry that Muslims are flooding into this country in record numbers. What are we to make of this? 

Let’s look at it historically. In the 19th century Americans were similarly concerned by the number of Roman Catholics, mostly Irish, who were pouring into an essentially Protestant America. A major worry was that these immigrants were obedient to a foreign monarch, the Pope, who directed an authoritarian and anti-Protestant institution that Protestants found especially threatening. How could a people accustomed to authoritarianism and intolerance ever learn to live in America? Wouldn’t all these Catholic foreigners band together and become another America altogether. 

Then there was the sheer numbers of Irish Catholics immigrants. As early as 1860 Catholic presence in America exceeded the total population of the U.S. 70 years prior. Their number eventually reached five million. That was a lot of very culturally different people to absorb so quickly.

But Irish Catholic immigrants rather quickly proved so capable of embracing democracy and blending in that a third generation one, John F. Kennedy, became the 35th President of the United States.

Unlike the 19th Century Irish, contemporary Muslim immigrants do not pledge allegiance to a single autocrat nor even to a cohesive institution. None pledge common obedience to ta single leader. There even is bloody disagreement, among them about what it takes to be a Muslim. 

On the other hand, the very most militant among them want to convert all of the United States to Islam, if necessary by the sword. And institute their version of Sharia Law. Those who refuse conversion are to be enslaved or annihilated. 

Muslim immigrants constitute only a tiny fraction of the 19th and early 20th Century flood of Roman Catholics. In fact, the entire Muslim population of the United States amounts to less than 1% of America’s total population. Moreover, less than 5% of all immigrants currently entering the U.S. are Muslims.

The trouble is a substantial number of Americans see the United States as exclusively Christian. So non-Christians are, ipso facto, Un-American. This view is embraced by many. Some even claim the United States was founded as a Christian nation. To be sure, this claim is inaccurate. Some of America’s most influential founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Ethan Allen and Thomas Paine, were not Christians so much as deists or rationalists. They preferred facts over beliefs and were determined to separate church from state.

What about these present-day Muslim immigrants? Will they, unlike the Irish Catholics, prove durably alien? Will they come to constitute a separate America? Then again Muslim immigrants might prove to be solid American citizens just like the Irish. That remains to be seen.

Recently some Somali-Americans defrauded Minnesota and the United States government out of multiplied billions of dollars. This massive fraud is causing some Americans to link criminality and faulty citizenship to Muslims collectively. That’s certainly untrue. But if people believe it, it’s true in its consequences.

The Irish-American experience proves immigrant Muslims have no corner on immigrant criminality. Some immigrant Irish became gangsters of the first magnitude. Indeed the Irish Mob was one of the nation’s most notorious organized crime groups. Then later arriving Italian-Americans proved even more capable of organized criminality. So the Somali’s have no patent on that. 

Of course a comparatively small number of Muslims have proven to be murderous terrorists. Those who crashed passenger planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon being the most prominent These perpetrators were foreign nationals. But in many American’s minds their terrorism is linked to all Muslims. That’s certainly not fair. But when a situation is defined as true, it is true in it’s consequences. And that means a sizable segment of Americans oppose Muslim immigration. (Including home-home grown converts.)

 Looking back, though, many Americans once thought Irish-American Roman Cathoics immigrants were a distinct threat. But that has faded away. Does that mean Muslims attain, or even desire, the same inclusion. We shall see.