Educating Myself
My daughter called me today very concerned about Mayor DeBlasio’s announcement that he intends on opening NYC public schools in the Fall, but only for two or three days per week, so more or less half time. The idea is to use existing facilities and using them to the maximum social distancing capacity and filling in with online learning of the sort used this Spring around the world. She was both concerned about the infectiousness of the school environment and the fact that she has a very gifted daughter entering second grade and she does not want her falling behind for lack of sufficient face-to-face teaching. She has concluded that she does not feel her daughter added much to her education during this Spring of Zoom classes. I’m not sure how easy it is to tell that at the margin with a young grade-schooler since her daughter reads well and went to science pre-school so she has a decent grasp of math and science. She is the offspring of two Ivy League educated parents who take education and things like reading very seriously, so she does not lack for indoctrination about the importance of a good education. But still, she worries, which is simply who my daughter is.
The gist of the discussion was about the value of hiring a tutor to supplement her educational experience and give her more teacher FaceTime. I said that I would be a dutiful grandfather and pay for that sort of tutoring to ease her mind. I paid for both my granddaughters to go to a top-rate nursery school. My daughter did all the research on the Brooklyn public schools and was very convinced that she had picked a winner for both her daughters (if one gets in the other gets “grandfathered” in to make family life workable). I was on board with that program since I have never been convinced that private schooling before college is necessarily an advantage from one perspective or another.
I went to public schools through eighth grade and then to private schools for high school. The first year was to avoid a long drive to an inferior school in south-central Maine (at the time ranked 49th in the nation in education). The last three years were less discretionary since we were living in Rome, Italy and private school was the only option. Notre Dame International Prep was more like a parochial school than a prep school. The Overseas School of Rome was like a good public school and St. Stevens was like a normal prep school. In any case, when I got to college I found my classmates at Cornell that had gone to public schools like those in the metro NYC area were not as well prepared for college as me, they were far better prepared than me. Let’s ignore the negative view I have about sending your children off to have others at a prep school raise them in your absence. I did one year away and three at home during high school. I’m glad I did both, but I believe I benefitted far more by living at home than being in a prep school frat house.
My two older children went to a good suburban school and both did well enough to be admitted to Cornell. My youngest son was raised in Manhattan and he went to a small private school (except for three weeks at The Bronx High School of Science, one of the premier NYC public schools, which he hated immediately probably for its four hours of commuting per day). I loved the more enlightened liberal education he got in that small private school. He too got accepted to Cornell and along the way he explored music, drama and all the arts in addition to being steeped in diversity training in all ways. I thought all my kids got good pre-college educations that suited their needs and sensibilities. They all had both parents with college degrees that valued education. But none of them had what I got, which was a deep-seated sense of the importance of education from a mother that had bootstrapped her way into Cornell from a modest and earthy farm family and then went back as a woman of forty-five with three children and no husband or support therefrom to get her Masters and Ph.D. And those graduate degrees were in Adult Education. I grew up living that educational imperative.
I am happy to help my grandchildren with their education, whether it is kicking off a 529 account for them, paying for quality pre-school, paying for extra-curricular activity classes (piano, swimming, dance, etc.), paying for tutoring or helping in whatever way is needed next. I can think of no better use of my money than giving my grandkids that sort of help. I don’t want to say it is my obligation, but it certainly fits my value system. I am glad to be able to help. I did tell my daughter that I hoped she would keep the girls in public school because I have come to feel that the social indoctrination of being educated in the public system will be a badge of honor not a liability in any way. I like thinking that my grandkids are getting a wholesome and diverse American education the way the country has always intended. That is idealistic, but its how I feel.
This morning I heard the Mayor DeBlasio announcement about NYC schools that riled up my daughter and then this evening I am reading that Harvard and MIT are suing the Federal Government to stop the Trump Administration for trying to say that foreign college students that are enrolled in courses of study that are expected to be done all virtual cannot stay in the country and must return home. The two schools both say that this will result in educational chaos and undermine their safety decision-making in addition to their overall already challenging educational program. It is hard to tell if Trump just doesn’t like foreign students or if this is yet another attempt to force institutions like schools to prove his cavalier approach to COVID-19 is a good path by effectively forcing them to offer face-to-face instruction to avoid the alternative chaos they describe as likely under the Trump “send-em-home” policy.
Whenever I think Donald Trump cannot go lower in his actions, he succeeds in surprising me. Whether its about strong arming educational administrators or pushing out those bothersome foreign students who fuck up the curve for the American kids like Trump by working too damn hard, this is an amazing turn of events. The Republican base must have some portion of thinking people who attended good schools like Harvard and MIT and who realize that the Boston immunological challenges are far greater than they are for a remote campus like Cornell (who will hold in-person classes this Fall). Do any of these red voters understand the value of education the way my mother and most immigrants and foreign students I ever taught during my ten years as a Clinical Professor have and do? I try to help all my progeny and even myself to get and stay educated. It is not a debatable issue to me. Educating myself every day is my version of “Cogito ergo sum”.