[Dialogue] The sister speaks truth to power

[KroegerD at aol.com]

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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