Melvin B. Miller
Editor & Publisher

Education remains the key

An important victory in the battle for civil rights was the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The court held that segregated public education is inherently unequal and therefore unconstitutional. This case sounded the death knell of the “separate but equal” doctrine that had been the law of the land since the court’s decision in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896.

It is appropriate that such a pivotal event involved education. From the end of slavery, African Americans understood that their progress depended upon educational achievement. In the South, farmhands could be seen reviewing their McGuffey Readers even as they held the plow.

Academic progress remained an important objective, but racial discrimination in employment was discouraging. Black graduates of Ivy League colleges often had to settle for jobs as postal clerks or Pullman porters. Nonetheless, many talented blacks persevered.

Recent developments have raised serious questions about the adequacy of secondary education and its impact on black progress. In earlier times, it was quite enough for high school graduates to attain basic reading and math skills. There were numerous jobs in manufacturing and agriculture that required little more formal education. Employers would teach new laborers what they needed to know to do the job.

Times have changed. Jobs in the age of technology and communications require much more intensive education in math, science and language skills. Countries elsewhere in the global economy have recognized the emerging opportunities and have upgraded their education systems to meet the challenge. However, in many places in this country the focus has been on dysfunctional urban public schools and racial disparities in educational results.

Solutions to the education problem have been impaired by the archaic thinking of political conservatives. They believe the states’ rights position that public education is solely within the purview of the individual states. There was even an effort to eliminate the federal Department of Education. However, new leadership should reconfirm that strong federal oversight of public education is essential today to “promote the general welfare,” as stated in the Preamble to the Constitution.

Under the states’ rights approach, the cost of public education has depended primarily upon real estate taxes. This funding source has proven to be inadequate in cities and towns with little industry and high unemployment. The case of Claremont v. New Hampshire has demonstrated the inadequacy of the present system for funding education.

Competing countries are producing more highly educated high school graduates because they have longer school days and less time off in the summer. American public schools have not adopted the model of foreign schools because of the increased cost, despite its demonstrated effectiveness.

At elite boarding schools, which spend three or more times the cost per student than public schools, students remain in a learning environment all day. Consequently, children of affluent families have an extraordinary educational advantage over children from working class families. While it is totally appropriate for well-to-do families to be supportive of the educational needs of their children, society must intervene to provide a level academic playing field for others.

The battle over education has changed from the racial discrimination that existed before the Brown case. Now the fight is to revise the concept of public education so that school systems have adequate resources to pay teachers for longer days without imposing an excessive burden on homeowners. It is, indeed, a civil right for American children to be adequately educated to compete in the world.

“We must never forget that we are raising the next generation of leaders.”