By Kristin
Here's a Lincoln Continental. I had the opportunity to have the entire back seat to myself one long summer drive, going from Atlanta to Miami, and I'm here to tell you that the back seat was bigger than some apartments I've lived in. It certainly had better storage.
I'm old enough to remember the first appearance of "compact" cars. They were, in Southern California at least, called "Jap cars," "sardine cans," and "nut twisters." That last one is from my best friend's father, and I just couldn't leave it out. He drove a big Audi sedan and, we can only assume, drove untwisted.
The transition to small, fuel efficient cars was not an easy one, nor one without its unsavory terminology. Education is experiencing its own unsavory moment, and we see terms like "ed deform" being tossed about. Is that where we're really going? As someone with a "deform"ity, I have to assume that this term was invented to wound.
Luckily for us, with the way humans keep reproducing, some people managed to stomach the unsexiness that was a Honda Civic and chose to drive a car with better gas mileage. 29 MPG for the Honda, compared to the Continental's 7.9. Where we would be in our quest for fossil fuel if everyone insisted on driving a nut-untwisting Continental is anyone's guess.
I don't think our comprehensive, conventional urban school can keep up with the needs of our urban youth. Our schools are outdated. We may not move toward charters, but something needs to change. We keep rolling out these big, luxury models – "Room for six and only two enormous doors!" "Almost eight miles to a gallon!" "We saw a 2% growth in Black kids at standard in math!" – because the factory is already set up to do that, and maybe we don't have the money to change our machinery.
My mother's best friend rolled up one day in a car so small I thought it was a doll's car. I couldn't believe it was for grown ups. It was about 1976, and the car in question was a blue 1975 Honda Civic. It looked foreign to me, more foreign than the many VW Bugs cruising around San Diego, with their curvy hips and their blatant disregard for any real real trunk space. And we were okay with "foreign." I mean, my parents drove a VW Bus, but it at least had aisles, for crying out loud, handy when you had to walk forward and dig another Tab and Coors out of the cooler for mom and dad as you made your inadequately air-conditioned way from Phoenix to Salt Lake. Handy if you wanted to unfurl a sleeping bag and catch a catnap on the floor between Moosejaw and Regina, as I once did. This compact Honda was uncomfortable in its strange commitment to efficiency. So….Eastern.
People did not have an easy transition to small, fuel efficient cars. Things got ugly. I'm sure workers in American Auto Plants got angry and feared for their jobs – those sneaky Asians taking jobs away from good solid American Auto Workers ready to roll out a respectable Continental – but the reality was, and is, that the planet cannot support cars that get 7.9 miles to the gallon.
Things had to change, and they did. It wasn't pretty, either for those who wanted to keep putting together Lincoln Continentals or for those who chose to support the enemy and buy a Honda, but it happened because it had to.
And so it is with our schools. We have a nostalgic attachment to our schools, because we spent our childhoods there.
The schools that so well served the generations invested in the future – the generations of the Civil Rights Era and the GI Bill Era – those schools aren't serving today's kids. Maybe the kids need to be more motivated. Maybe the parents need to be more involved. Maybe a Lincoln Continental is a great car if you total 7.9 miles a week and want to install a jacuzzi and widescreen T.V. in the back seat.
Our school models work for some, and they work well in some areas, but they are not even beginning to meet the needs of our students who live in poverty, who live in households handicapped by a lack of resources and an inability to access services, and who are at the mercy of a system that claims it's doing as well as it can, because it can't afford to do better.
I agree Tom. But it’s hard to change.
Tom, I know. The bus was so good for being designated as the carpool vehicle of choice, and so bad for being cool. The best thing about it was that when the kids were home alone, and doing something we weren’t supposed to be doing, we could hear my mom coming up the hill about a quarter mile away.
God. I’m so close to being with you on points 1 and 2. I’m totally with you on 2. The thing with 1 is that I am not confident we can move this beast and adopt practices successful schools are doing.
It makes perfect sense to look at what those schools are doing who are being really successful with kids who are below standard, but it’s hard to change. Someone is going to lose.
Excellent analogy, Kristin, even though that second paragraph made me squirm.
(My parents also drove us around in a VW bus, by the way, and trust me, it was not the car you want to drive when you’re 17 years old, listening to Boston on the 8-track and looking for girls at Golden Gardens!)
Anyhoo. I would like two things to happen:
1. We continue to study successful charter schools to see what they’re doing and implement those strategies in our public schools. (My parents eventually bought a Dodge Colt; a great little car that Chrysler finally got around to making after they quit wringing their hands in despair.)
2. FULLY FUND EDUCATION! And then, perhaps, open a few charter schools.