Newspaper Columns by Bishop Paul V. Marshall
Shall We Fund Education or Institutionalize Poverty and Racism?
Bishop Paul V. Marshall
July 2000A recent cartoon in The National Catholic Reporter caricatured a jubilant Uncle Sam. Frame one: "We're on top of the world." Frame two: "The stock market is booming. Unemployment barely exists. Budget deficits are a thing of the past." Frame three: Money is pouring in. We're rich?" In the concluding frame Uncle Sam says, "Someday we might even be rich enough to educate our children."
My work takes me regularly to 14 Pennsylvania counties. One thing that strikes me is how wonderful public education is in some areas and how desperately neglected it is in others.
In the few years I have occupied my present position, three cities in Pennsylvania that contain some of the worst schools have been willing to assume burdens up to a billion dollars for sports facilities. In one of our cities, schools are so under-funded that teachers buy basic classroom supplies with their own funds and local churches cooperate to raise money for textbooks. To educate our children is primarily the state's obligation, but also local government's.
Children who most need the education ticket out of poverty are being deprived of it.
Our way of addressing educational issues in this state institutionalizes poverty. That so many of the children who are the victims of this situation are Hispanic or African-American suggests that racism also is institutionalized.
Children have a unique role in our society. Though politicians often call children "our future," their needs are here-and-now. It is up to our state government to do what has been done in so many parts of America, making sure that educational resources are distributed adequately now, not in a few years.
One frequently hears of how difficult it is to get a good labor force in America. Does it not occur to anyone that the solution to that problem starts in grammar school?
The teams and businesses that will profit from the events ought to be building the sports facilities. Dishonest trickle-down theory, suggesting that money eventually reaches those in need, sells the public on huge sports facilities. The truth is that many bites will have been taken out of the pie before Jane and Johnny see their share.
Obviously we can't have it all without increasing taxation, so we have to learn to accept limits. This is perhaps the hardest thing for Baby Boomers to accept now that it is our time to run things. Although we have experienced what feels like wealth without limits, resources are limited. If the topic is health, transportation, or education, we have to learn how to manage what is there without immediately asking for more.
The word from religious circles that has become business parlance and desperately needs to penetrate political circles is "stewardship." It's about distributing limited resources in a world of apparently infinite need according to accepted major goals.
To adopt a stewardship view on a personal level is to ask how one plans to fund his or her life's main goals. We really are familiar with this kind of thinking. Do we spend money today for a pool in the back yard, or do we put that money away for retirement or a child's education?
Still, we assume that on the public level resources do not have to be managed in terms of goals rather than votes.
We need to remain aware that there is an education crisis in Pennsylvania and remind ourselves that not everybody can have everything they want. Can we have both schools and arenas at the present level of taxation? That is a question for economic experts. If we must choose between stadium and school, however, let's choose our children and their future.
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