Letters

Washington Monthly, July, 1999

Not So Silent

Jason DeParle is a fine journalist. "The Silence of the Liberals" (April 1999) is not one of his better pieces of work. He puts forward a reasonably sound post-welfare agenda for "liberals" but claims in effect that he is the only one who ever said it out loud within recent memory. That is pure bunk. Establishment Washington, both political and journalistic, may not be doing anything with the story, but that doesn't mean it isn't there. And it's there not just at the level of talk. In locality after locality there are people working with some success on many of the issues DeParle lists. They would be more successful if there were more support from Washington, but they are doing cutting-edge sophisticated work.

In DeParle's mind, it seems, the only relevant place to see whether liberals are saying or doing anything is inside the Belt-way. We agree with him that serious attention to the concentrated, racialized poverty of the inner-city is a matter of the highest priority, but we're not sure who besides Senator Paul Wellstone and a handful of others in Washington get it, and we know that between this president and this Republican Congress nobody is about to do anything serious about it as a matter of national policy, the empowerment zone program notwithstanding. The last time we looked, Congress was taking away $350 million in hard-won and badly needed funds from the Section 8 housing program in order to finance the pork in the recent supplemental appropriations bill.

There is a lot of action on the issues DeParle wants attended to, but it's not in Washington and it's seldom covered by journalists, including DeParle. We look forward to a president and Congress who will be more responsive to the important agenda that DeParle lays out.

ANDREW MOTT and PETER EDELMAN CENTER FOR COMMUNITY CHANGE Washington, D. C.

Tenure Trap

Robert Worths essay on tenure ("The Velvet Prison," May 1999) was right on target. The odd thing is that the problems would be so easy to fix, but the fix is not embraced either by faculty or by administrators for fear of disrupting the status quo. All the protestations to the contrary notwithstanding, academics are thoroughly conservative when it comes to our own self-interest.

MARSHALL E. McMAHON PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION RHODES COLLEGE Memphis, Tenn.

Thank you for Robert Worth's article about the tenure system in universities (May 1999). As a former lettuce-picker adjunct and contract professor at three universities, I can attest to the truth of every material statement in the article.

In addition to the flagrant inequities it engenders and the plantation system of management it imposes on universities, tenure is economically unworkable and unjustifiable. Its practical consequence is to guarantee lifetime employment (and we're talking about long working lives) to the highest-paid, and, as Mr. Worth points out, frequently least-productive segment of the institutional labor force. More than a few universities and state university systems have come to recognize the economic predicament tenure creates. Few have done anything about it.

Mr. Worth's piece does a great service by exposing the speciousness of the arguments supporting tenure and the intellectual dishonesty of those who advance them.

BILL HUEY Atlanta, GA

Licensed Mediocrity

I enjoyed your article on teacher education in the May issue ("Method Madness") but wanted to add another perspective on lack of preparedness on the part of public school teachers.

I have a doctorate in biology and taught introductory biology courses at a local university for eight years before my children were born. Many of the freshmen I taught were unprepared for college in such basic areas as constructing a graph--something taught in elementary school. So after my children started school, I decided that I might have a bigger impact as a teacher if I were to teach in lower grades.

I quickly found that my credentials in the subject area and my teaching experience would not secure me a job in the public schools. I was told to go back to school for two years, take those methodology courses mentioned in your article, and then I would be hired as an entry level teacher at $18,000 per year. And I am not the only one. I know a number of individuals who are "content competent," that is, they know something about the subject they would like to teach and would make wonderful teachers. They are not welcomed by the educational community, even though there is a shortage of math and science teachers.

While alternative certification is on the books in many states, colleges of education and the educational establishment ensure that it is never practiced.

KATHLEEN CASON Athens, GA

Fear of Falling

Re: "Tilting at Windmills," May 1999: "Terrified paratroopers" is based on poor understanding of parachute training. Fear of stepping out into empty space is human. In 59 jumps I made as a 'trooper, I never failed to be afraid. But overcoming that fear is partly pride and partly training. The instructions you deride are valuable precisely because they reduce panic by providing practical action. Failure of both main and reserve parachutes is extremely rare, but the training you ridicule would likely save a life at the altitudes most peace-time jumps are made from.