Knocking Non-Responsibles

The nation's urban public schools have lately been subjected to a tide of opprobrious criticism. In dissonant concert, such fiery critics as Robert Coles (Children of Crisis), Jonathan Kozol (Death at an Early Age) and Herbert Kohl (36 Children) have charged that the city schools are guilty of the "destruction of the hearts and minds" of children.

In a Manhattan lecture, Dr. Robert J. Havighurst assailed this angry band of skeptics as "non-responsibles" who were distorting the truth about the urban schools and imperiling reasonable hopes for improving them. A visiting professor of urban education at Fordham University, Havighurst argued that outraged accounts of ghetto education are convincing the public that the schools are in a state of inexorable decay. In fact, he answered, today's city schools are superior to those of 1920, 1940 and 1960. Their textbooks and curriculums are better designed, their teachers are better educated, classes are smaller.

While applauding the moral concern of the educational critics, Havighurst added that unwary readers of their widely publicized views "get little pieces of reality without seeing the whole complex reality." The baleful picture creates a public disillusionment, which in turn creates a defensiveness on the part of teachers, which in turn complicates solutions to the real problems of the city schools. What is needed, said Havighurst, is "a moratorium on purely negative criticism of the public schools."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.