Why, schools, of course

Ah, Mother's Day. I sent my mother flowers because she loves them and, of course, called her. She was going to the beach. Must be nice - the closest thing we have to a beach in DC is "The Club" at 25th and N, which to mere mortals is the Foggy Bottom public pool. You can still get a sad little Washington tan, though.

In any case, in honor of Mother's Day, two of the Sunday talk shows, This Week and Fox News Sunday, invited Laura Bush for a chat. I always like hearing what she has to say - I consider myself a moderate Democrat, but I think Laura is smart and a good role model. She spoke about two topics of note for education. She's been involved, at least as a symbolic figurehead, in the revival of schools for girls and women in Afghanistan. While in America we've started to worry about boys in our schools (and rightfully so, I believe), there are parts of the world where girls still must struggle to learn to read and write. As I learned in my master's thesis, though, popular Western views about what Eastern women should have often do not take into consideration the indigenous culture. That's probably a topic for another day, since it is rich in questions of symbol and substance.

Laura Bush also spoke about schools in the Gulf Coast. One of the questions Georgie Stephanopoulos (I did look that up to check the spelling) asked was that how would the schools deal with the "biggest children's health crisis" (mainly a mental health crisis) in a generation. Mrs. Bush responded that the schools can "of course" deal with the challenge if they're open.

I find this troubling, because every social issue we have gets thrown into the schools. Richard Rothstein's article "Out of Balance" (see link on sidebar) treats this issue intelligently - if we put $50,000 into schools or $50,000 into housing (or setting up a public health care system, or helping working mothers with day care, or, or, or), where would we get the best return on our investment in, say, test scores? Are we wasting our money by constantly setting up programs through the existing bureaucracy of the schools?

I think that it is easier to put money into an existing public sector entity (one of the few) than to set up new government programs. The general population does not like welfare type, public assistance programs. Fine. But if we're already putting the money into our schools, wouldn't the decision be better informed if we were to try to put some of that money elsewhere? Why should schools shoulder the responsibility of feeding kids breakfast, lunch, and dinner in addition to reading, writing, and 'rithmatic?

So, why "of course" can the schools do everything? Can they really, and are they doing it well?