[Dialogue] The sister speaks truth to power

[Charles or Doris Hahn]

Thank You, Thank you, Dick!
You bring such wonderful things to our attention.  In
a sense this one is nothing new, but she puts it
together in such a way that it is profoundly
disturbing, and hopefully prods me to action.  
Keep your screen running to bring us all great stuff.
Charles Hahn
--- KroegerD at aol.com wrote:

>  
> Published on Tuesday, June 26, 2007  by _The
> National Catholic  Reporter_ 
> (http://ncrcafe.org/node/1192)   
> June Graduations Beg The Question: What Is Our
> Future?
> by Joan Chittister
> 
>  
> It’s happening everywhere, I know. But I learned
> last week not to take it for 
>  granted. In fact, it may well be our major problem
> and it is hiding in plain 
>  sight.With a measure of curiosity short of
> nostalgia but greater than 
> personal  interest, I found myself watching a series
> of local high school 
> graduations on  the public service channel last
> week. Why I paused — and stayed — on 
> that  particular channel, I’ll never know. But
> I’m glad it happened. 
> It was, in fact, a veritable “taste of America”
> moment that I haven’t seen  
> too often since I left the scholastic world years
> ago. The graduates were  
> combed, washed, heeled and proper. No goon show kids
> here. They wore their  
> mortarboards flat and undecorated. Their gowns were
> pressed and glowing. Their  
> smiles were broad, proud, satisfied. 
> One group of these graduates was from a collegiate
> prep school; the other  
> from a local comprehensive high school that stresses
> technical proficiency and  
> professional skills. Both groups were attentive,
> well mannered and, as 
> teachers  love to say, “a credit to their
> schools.” If such a display of achievement 
> and  conduct has any meaning to it at all, it must
> indicate that our schools 
> are  putting out young adults who will fit into this
> society well, who will 
> surely  succeed in life as we have shaped it for
> them. 
> But that is exactly what made the whole scene so
> uncomfortable, even  
> troubling. 
> According to researcher Christopher Swanson using
> data collected in 2003 and  
> released June 6 by the national daily, USA Today,
> this country graduates only 
>  69.6 percent of the four million students admitted
> to its high schools  
> yearly. 
> What’s worse, he points out, the largest school
> districts in the United  
> States graduate even less than that of every
> potential graduation class every  
> year. Three of them — Detroit, Baltimore and New
> York City — graduate fewer than 
>  40 percent of the pupils they enroll in ninth
> grade. Eleven other urban 
> school  districts, the same research reports, have
> on-time graduation rates lower 
> than  50 percent; they include Milwaukee, Cleveland,
> Los Angeles, Miami, 
> Dallas,  Denver and Houston. 
> There are those who dispute the figures, of course.
> Lawrence Mishel of the  
> Economic Policy Institute argues that Swanson’s
> numbers fail to take into  
> account the number of students held back in order to
> complete state exit exams  or 
> to take advanced work. Whether they actually ever do
> that or not he does not  
> report, but he does insist that U.S. high schools
> graduate at least 80 
> percent  of a four year student body. On the other
> hand, the New York Post reported 
> May  22 that Mayor Bloomberg was ecstatic to be able
> to announce that New York 
> City  graduation rates had reached 60 percent this
> year. 
> Whatever the precise national figures, the question
> this year’s graduation  
> videos raised in me remains: Where are the rest of
> the graduates? Where are the 
>  one million students we lose every year who do not
> get diplomas, who do not  
> graduate, who are not prepared for any kind of
> higher education or 
> professional  advancement? What do they look like?
> What do they read? How do they vote? 
> What  issues concern them? What are they going to do
> in life? And what does 
> that have  to do with the rest of us? 
> There are lots of things to worry about in this
> world. If you have any kind  
> of insight at all you know that the Middle East can
> blow sky high at any 
> moment.  “The first battle of World War III,”
> some called the invasion of Iraq and 
> who  would deny that tag with any degree of
> confidence now. 
> And the war in Iraq gets worse by the day. Did we
> really “liberate” these  
> people or did we simply unleash the factors within
> that country that had been  
> held in check by Saddam Hussein for years and that
> are free now to destabilize 
>  the entire Middle East? 
> Is war the only way forward in this tinder-box
> world? And if not, who is  
> there who will develop a better way? 
> The immigration situation is no small issue now, as
> well. Is the question of  
> undocumented aliens only a new kind of indentured
> servitude? Are illegal 
> workers  simply one more population of people held
> hostage to an economic system 
> that  pays them little for their service and keeps
> them hidden in a system that 
> uses  them but refuses to recognize them. 
> The loss of the middle class, the increasing number
> of families falling below 
>  the poverty line, the lack of universal health
> insurance, the outsourcing of 
>  U.S. jobs to other countries are all domestic
> matters that signal a change 
> in  the quality of life in the United States. What
> will life look like in a few 
>  short years for those who are not the mega rich? 
> And most of all, in what way will the 7,000 students
> who drop out of school  
> in the major cities of the United States every day
> of the school year 
> influence  any of those answers? 
> Maybe instead of spending more money on weapons,
> more money on walls designed 
>  to seal our borders, more money on high tech spying
> and technological Big  
> Brother houses, we should spend more money on
> teachers, more money on schools,  
> more money on day care and Head Start programs, more
> money on tutors, more 
> money  on organized inner city youth programs, more
> money on adult training 
> centers,  more money on subsidized higher education.
> 
> Then, maybe we wouldn’t have to worry so much
> about our borders. Then maybe  
> we wouldn’t have to complain so much that we have
> to struggle to understand 
> our  computer technicians because they’re all in
> India now. Then maybe U.S. 
> culture  would become as desirable to the rest of
> the world as U.S. money is. Then 
> maybe  we’d really have a culture worth sharing
> with the rest of the world 
> instead of  the daily reruns of “Dallas” and the
> menu of masochistic murder 
> stories that are  our hallmark around the world now.
> 
> It looks to me as if our enemies are not so much
> from outside of us as from  
> within. What we have ignored for the sake of
> military superiority — the  
> education of a population capable of bettering the
> rest of the world as well as  
> ourselves — is costing us dearly now. 
> >From where I stand it seems as if history may
> indeed repeat itself.  
> Especially when we’re not looking. Ask the Romans.
> 
> A Benedictine  Sister of Erie, Joan Chittister is a
> best-selling author and 
> well-known  international lecturer on topics of
> justice, peace, human rights, 
> women’s  issues, and contemporary spirituality in
> the Church and in society. 
> She  presently serves as the co-chair of the Global
> Peace Initiative of Women, a 
>  partner organization of the United Nations,
> facilitating a worldwide network 
> of  women peace builders, especially in the Middle
> East. 
> © 2007 The National Catholic  Reporter
> 
> 
> 
> 
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