THE ink was barely dry on last week's newspapers before howls of protest began about my comparison of Punahou and Iolani to public schools. Managing schools
isn’t monstrousIt's like comparing apples and oranges, I was told. Actually, it is like comparing very expensive, privileged apples with poor, under-funded oranges that are culturally incapable of competing in the world fruit market.
The argument goes that kids going to private schools come from better homes, have more money, more parental support and a higher expectation to do well. Kids going to public schools, especially in areas of the state where parents are on welfare or holding menial jobs, are at a disadvantage because the schools don't have the books and equipment needed. It is natural, they say, for kids in public schools to perform at a lower level.
That is pure B.S., or, in keeping with the fruit motif, pure P.S. (Peach Sorbet). There's plenty of money for public education, it's just that it is not being managed correctly. It is not being managed correctly because the entire public education system, as I pointed out previously, is run like a Soviet-style, widget-producing collective. It is managed by an elected school board with more members than the cast of Godzilla (the original version, which had more extras) and overseen by legislators who would send their kids off to an Indonesian Nike training center before enrolling them in public schools here.
The calls and e-mail convinced me that the current system is so entrenched that some people actually assume public schools have to bite. It's like when everyone assumed that telephones had to be stupid-looking and black.
Irritable writer P.J. O'Rourke points out irritably that there essentially are four ways money is spent:
1. Your money on yourself. (Good beer for your enjoyment.)
2. Your money on someone else. (Crummy beer for your friend's potluck.)
3. Someone else's money on you. (Lobster, if the company's picking up the check.)
4. Someone else's money on someone else.
Unfortunately, No. 4 is how most of government operates, except in the case of the Ewa Village's project, where No. 3 ruled.
The difference between private and public schools is the difference between No. 1 and No. 4. In private schools, parents spend their own money on their own kids and expect results. In public schools, parents have divorced themselves from their ownership interest. As a result, others, like legislators, spend someone else's money (taxpayers') on someone else's kids -- public school kids.
And, that's why public schools, comparatively speaking, suck.
Parents have got to realize that it IS their money going into public schools, and heaps of it. And it's going there for THEIR kids, not other kids. So, they have to expect their money to be managed correctly and for the schools to operate on a modern level, or at least like a 1960s-era Sears.
Anything you can imagine the parents of kids in private schools doing if their schools were falling down or children getting a substandard education, parents of public school kids should do.
Reaction to bad management would be immediate, harsh and possibly involve treble damages. If private school parents were being ripped off, there wouldn't be any long-winded school board meetings listening to a bunch of junior politicians make excuses. There'd be lawsuits and the sound of heads hitting the pavement and rolling down the street. Don't tell me that the parents of public school students can't do the same thing.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
or send E-mail to charley@nomayo.com or
71224.113@compuserve.com.
The Honolulu Lite online archive is at:
http://starbulletin.com/lite