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by students, faculties, governors, are changing so drastically, and the con–
fusion of ends in the system is so extreme, it's not clear where it'll end up.
Thus your idea is certainly worth trying.
Rita
Kramer:
On a more serious level, and a more personal one, I think
that most of my education has come late in life, long after I left school, in
pursuing ideas that would have had very little resonance when I was
young. But, on the other hand, I don't think I could have done that with–
out what Hutchins College did for me, which was a little like this
baccalaureate program. It gave me a vocabulary to build on later, a frame of
reference.
Harry
Stein: I'm an administrator in a very small high school district in
New Jersey; I also teach the first period of each day. I want to make a plea
and an argument to Rita Kramer, Dr. Finn, and to Dr. Webb, and then a
highly technical point to Dr. Scholz. Mter many years of work with the
state commissioner of education in New Jersey, after working in Mrica,
and in local school districts, I plead with you to shift your focus from what
is happening at the amorphous national or state level, and focus on what is
happening at the micro level. There are sixteen thousand high schools in
the United States. Over ten thousand school districts, all of them con–
cerned wi th their own children. I am concerned wi th the 1,780 children
in my school district. National reports are meaningless to me. So are state
reports. For example, when we recruit teachers in my school district we
are practicing many of the end runs that you, Ri ta, talk about. We are look–
ing for teachers of social studies who have MBAs, who have worked on
Wall Street. There are many experiences within public schools at the micro
level that are largely invisible. We are looking at retired people with doc–
torates, without experience in education. We have the administrative and
legal capacity to get them through the system. In short, many good things
are happening at the micro level, and it's very difficult for national or state
policy advocates to get to that level. Your beliefs, which are mine, can best
be transmitted and understood by decision-makers at the micro level.
Could you in some way find the time, the energy, the money, to get to the
micro level, just as Chester did
in
going to the middle school here, and
then communicate it, because the national and state studies do not affect
our behavior? The macro level is best served by the aggregation of micro
experiences that are coming out of very traditional school systems, whose
only interests are highly introverted. I would invite your comments.
Rita
Kramer:
Are you able to do this, to make your end run, because of
N ew Jersey's alternate certification program?
