In the Classroom: Dispatches From an Inner-City School That Works. - book reviews

National Catholic Reporter, August 29, 1997 by John L. Jr. Allen

A conservative assault on public education is underway in America, at least as it has been traditionally understood -- a system of publicly operated "common schools" open to everyone. Historically, Americans have supported public education as an engine of intergenerational opportunity, a way to ensure that the children of poverty and the children of affluence start off on a roughly equal footing. Today that understanding of the purpose of public education is up for grabs.

The common school ideal has always had to contend with a competing American impulse to take care of our own first, which manifests itself in white flight and local funding of schools, assuring urban public school systems of fewer resources, both human and fiscal, to cope with far greater educational challenges. The predictable results show up in lower test scores and greater discipline problems in urban public schools than in their suburban counterparts.

One might suppose that the most rational response would be to address the inequitable distribution of resources that causes the problem. Instead, however, neoconservative theorists are ready to throw in the towel on the whole notion of the common school, substituting a free-market reconfiguration of education, wherein vouchers and competition among schools would determine the allocation of opportunity, with (predictably) most of the spoils going to those already on top.

Catholics with any sort of social justice radar at all will recognize the rather naked self-interest implied in such proposals. To add insult to injury, however, voucher advocates are increasingly using Catholic schools for rhetorical cover, arguing that the success of urban Catholic schools proves that public educators are fiddling while Rome burns, which in turn justifies efforts to dismantle the public system. Most Catholic educators find such rhetoric irritating in extremis, knowing that the solution to urban poverty is hardly to make public education weaker.

Comes now Mark Gerson, whose In the Classroom (The Free Press, $23) lends fodder to this mythology. The book chronicles the year Gerson spent teaching in a Catholic high school in Jersey City, N.J. Gerson is the author of The Neoconservative Vision and a contributor to a variety of conservative journals, and as if that weren't reason enough to approach the book with some trepidation, the dust jacket features a gushing blurb from Irving Kristol, who calls In the Classroom "unquestionably the best book yet written on life and education in a ghetto school" (memo to Irving: Read Jonathan Kozol). Gerson's experience of Catholic education, we are told, will challenge the notions that "bigger budgets" and "sensitized curricula" have anything to do with making schools better.

In the Classroom does press the case for Catholic schools as the model for how things ought to be. Gerson waxes rhapsodically about the low-budget, high-morale nature of Catholic schooling. He contrasts the community spirit of Catholic schools and a right-holder mentality, which he claims pervades the public system. Politically, he allies Catholic educators with the voucher movement, quoting a nun to the effect, "I guess we are all Republicans now."

Such right-wing idealization of Catholic education overlooks several key points. Yes, Catholic schools often succeed in urban areas where public schools struggle. But Catholic schools are smaller, attract more motivated students and parents, and always have the threat of sending kids back to the public sector. Moreover, research out of The Catholic University of America shows that the student population in Catholic schools is becoming increasingly elite, as tuition increases price the very poor out of the market. Yes, Catholic schools operate at a lower per-pupil cost. But in education the single greatest expense is salaries, and Catholic schools are notorious for paying low wages and resisting collective bargaining. While most Catholic schools are caring, successful places, they don't possess any silver-bullet solutions to America's educational problems.

Fortunately, ideological axe-grinding isn't the only thing going on with In the Classroom. Gerson is a good storyteller, and when he doesn't feel obliged to serve up stock neoconservative analysis of his experiences, he captures the day-to-day reality of teaching in an inner-city high school quite well. He does an especially good job of developing characters, writing about kids whose language, attitudes and behaviors are instantly recognizable to those who have worked in a similar milieu. Teachers will appreciate the numerous small insights into class discussions, grading and discipline that are sprinkled throughout the book. Perhaps most commendably, Gerson presents urban minority kids who are intellectually curious, articulate and personally honorable, welcome relief from the images of urban teenagers as gangbusters and dope fiends that abound on the evening news.

Gerson organizes In the Classroom around a series of themes he felt dominated his year as a teacher, the 1994-95 school year -- race, discipline, politics, the O.J. trial. His discussion of urban kids' attitudes toward race, focusing on their near-universal belief in white racism and the conviction that race is a dominant, almost determining, factor in their lives, rings especially true. Gerson is correct in his observation that because minority kids in urban areas have relatively few encounters with whites who aren't police officers or government officials -- and almost no peer relationships with white children -- these stereotypes are hard to crack. One might have wished for Gerson to press harder here, for he stops short of examining the public policies and social forces that are causing schools to resegregate at the fastest rate since the days before the Brown decision. Even in the absence of such deeper thinking, however, Gerson hits the right notes in presenting the problem.