Reading, Writing -- and Iroquois Politics

By GEORGE RUSSELL Thomas Sobol

Q. As New York State education commissioner, you have caught a lot of heat for recommending that we emphasize multiculturalism in American history.

A. The heat doesn't surprise me. There is probably no more volatile subject in American political life than race. That doesn't make it any less important that we find the constructive, moderate, middle position on the matter.

Q. What exactly is that position?

A. My goal is that all of us in this society come to know more about one another, partly to live better with one another than we are sometimes now doing. There is no inconsistency between teaching the common democratic values and traditions that unite us and teaching more about our differences. In fact, they're complementary. It's just teaching more of the truth about more of our people to all of our students. Can I give you an example?

Q. Go ahead.

A. About three or four years ago, I was visiting Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn. The school is largely black, a few Hispanic and a few white kids. I sat in on a group of blacks trying to come to grips with the name of the school, Thomas Jefferson. There were some who thought Jefferson was probably one of the greatest Americans; they ought to be very proud to be part of a school that bears his name. Others said, Thomas Jefferson kept slaves. How can you have any pride in yourself as a young black American while being part of a school that bears the name of a slave owner?

The discussion was guided by a very skillful teacher, who eventually got a good many of the kids around to the point that in a way both things are true. The point is that it became possible for those otherwise alienated blacks to feel comfortable with a larger tradition in which they had a role.

Q. One of the criticisms of multiculturalism is that it's a cover-up of the failure of education to help blacks.

A. There's no question we haven't done a very good job educating a lot of black and Hispanic kids. At the same time, I don't pretend that if we just make our educational program a little bit more multicultural, all the problems of black and Hispanic academic achievement are going to disappear. They're not. This isn't the only thing that needs to be done. But it needs to be done. The truth of our history demands it.

Q. Diane Ravitch, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, once said that New York State's curriculum is perhaps the only one that describes the main influences on the U.S. Constitution as the Enlightenment and the Iroquois political system. Why do you teach that?

A. Well, it depends on the way we teach it. It's very clear to me that our Constitution derives from the political traditions and thinking of Western Europe. Now it is a fact, I guess, that the Iroquois nations learned to live compatibly with one another. Whether or not that had any impact on the people who were the framers of the Constitution, I don't know, but I am set to acknowledge its possible influence in part. It makes sense to me not to overemphasize it.

Q. But why teach it at all?

A. Why teach anything that's part of our history if there are only a few people involved? Why would you want not to teach it?

Q. For a number of reasons, including the likelihood that talking about it is not germane to the Constitution.

A. Those are good considerations, but the fact is that there were people here in New York State before the Europeans arrived. They had some forms of government. I don't think it's irrelevant for people to know what all of that was. We're not out to make a Dances with Wolves; we're not out to romanticize anything. But I see no harm in talking about it.

Q. Another concern about multiculturalism is that we are not teaching history for its own sake but to insert lessons in self-esteem into the curriculum.

A. It's not a goal of what we're doing. Our goal is intellectual honesty. But if it happened to promote self-esteem along the way, why would anyone object?

Q. Some people disagree that there is a direct correlation between improvement in self-esteem and the ability to learn.

A. There is that correlation, by the way. Any experienced teacher will tell you that those children learn better who think well about themselves. What would be dangerous to do -- and what we are not doing -- is to try to create a history program with the false goal of making kids feel good.

Q. What do you think about setting up separate schools for black males to improve their education?

A. I'm not comfortable with it. Again, my goal is to bring people together, not be divisive. I understand the motivation for it. Most of the people who seem attracted to that movement strongly feel that kids have not been given a good education elsewhere, and they're trying to find something that works. Lots of white kids attend schools with virtually no minority population, and we tend not to be concerned about that. So you can sort of understand the motivation of other people who want to do the same thing.

Q. Why are you concerned in the one case and not in the other?

A. I guess I'm a product of my own upbringing. It's just more traditional to accept that as the norm in society.

Q. Frustration with public education is at an all-time high. How come?

A. First and foremost, many circumstances have changed in society, and schools have not kept pace. Our demography, how parents spend their time, the increase in the use of technology, the globalism of our economy -- the world has changed dramatically. But the schools by and large are the same. You can make a case that in many respects the schools are improving, not getting worse. For example, when my father graduated from high school around World War I, 1 of 4 Americans did so. Now we're graduating 3 of 4. The problem is that the modern economy can't tolerate a condition in which 1 of 4 young people fails to complete high school. We don't have large railroads to build by hand or forests to clear or whatever. We don't have that demand for relatively unskilled labor anymore.

Another reason is that more kids are spending more time on their own; they're not under adult supervision. Schools are being called upon to do more in this area. We're not equipped to do it very well. Some schools do a good ; job of it, others do less, but it all fuels the dissatisfaction.

Q. There also seems to be a feeling that graduates are less competent.

A. I'm not sure that our best students from our best schools are less well prepared than when I graduated. Where I agree is that many of our graduates still lack the skills they need to function effectively in this society, and this requires vigorous programs for change.

Q. Not being able to read and write is a fairly serious deficiency.

A. It is a very, very serious matter. It is not just that some of our urban schools are failing, but even in our gilded suburbs we are not doing the job we should for many of our kids. We have a program right now for trying to solve that, the New Compact for Learning.

Q. What is it?

A. It's an agreement among parents, educators, government and business in New York State to come together to make the required changes in the system. It has certain principles. The first is, we've got to focus on results. The job is not to teach lessons, conduct classes. The job is to make sure the students learn. The second is that you can't be satisfied with minimum competence. The third is that you have to reward success and remedy failure. Many of our traditional schools seem to be like the societies of Eastern Europe -- a sense of staleness, lack of ownership by the participants, going through the motions. We've got to create incentives for people to push toward better results.

The last of the principles is the notion that it takes the whole village to raise a child. The schools have the kids only 180 days a year, for several hours a day. The rest of the time the children are away from those influences.

Q. You raise many issues, but one of them you avoid is school choice, the notion that parents can opt to send their kids to private schools, using public funds to help them.

A. One of the proposals we tentatively made about a year or so ago was a pilot program of non-public school choice where the public schools were demonstrably failing some students. In the end, the opposition -- from the teachers' union, school-board associations, school-administrative groups -- was so forceful we withdrew the proposal. One of the reasons I made the proposal was to penetrate people's consciousness that the need for fundamental reform is real and that we are serious about it.

Q. Why do you think the parochial school system performs better than the public system?

A. First, any child in that system is there because somebody in that child's life made a conscious decision that that's where they ought to be. Somebody is interested in the child and the child's education. Second, the relative lack of a dead hand of bureaucracy: I think they have flexibility. Also, the ethos. There simply is a set of values that takes it for granted that learning is important. But I was for many years a school superintendent in the Scarsdale public school system, which turned out many highly successful students. It was the norm in that school that people would take learning seriously, and they achieved well.

Q. Are you willing to dissolve a school in the New York system because it is not doing its job?

A. Yes, or at least shut it down and reorganize it. There are some schools in this state I would not want any of my children attending, and I think it is terribly wrong that we permit them to continue. My first instinct would be to collaborate with the people involved and try to get them to improve the situation. But if that did not work, of course we would want to change the situation.