Politics and economics are inevitably intertwined, as are all of the 
major institutions in our society.  Education is no exception.  In the 
past, necessary changes in our established institutions have generally 
resulted from more or less catastrophic events such as wars or severe 
depressions. However today its becoming more and more risky to rely on 
catastrophe to shake up our thinking.  Education appears to be emerging as 
our last best hope.

     My primary goal (I'm sorry to admit) upon entering the teaching
profession was financial.  This is probably the case with most that enter
the profession. One needs money to eat, and without food it would be
difficult to teach.  Thus fear of losing one's job usually plays a vital
role in the average teacher's performance on the job.  And many would agree 
that this is the way it should be.  Yet I feel that the actual facts belie 
this position.  The institution of education today in our society wallows 
in an archaic state.  It is definitely not prepared for "the bridge to 
the 21st Century", as evidenced by the fact that for the last several 
decades almost every political candidate from State Legislator to Governor 
to President has included "the improvement of our educational system a 
cornerstone of his or her platform.  Oddly though, College test scores 
and records of achievement have for years throughout the country revealed 
that those ranking lowest are those who generally enter the teaching 
profession.  Thus the old adage, "Those who can do. Those who can't 
teach.", is not entirely unfounded.  Money does undoubtedly play an 
integral part in the game.  As a union rep. in the system, I had the 
privilege of addressing the incoming group of new teachers in the LA 
City School System.  As I would look over the audience of young elementary 
school teachers I could not help but notice that 90% were women.  Upon 
my efforts to recruit them to the union, or to persuade them to put their 
jobs on the line to take a stand against the administration, the board, 
or even the community for the betterment of educational conditions 
(fighting for reduced class sizes, better salaries, or increased 
instructional tools or facilities) the majority appeared to 
be more committed to providing a second income for the family, and often 
would defer to their husbands' admonitions about "rocking the boat".

     At this time, however, no other of our institutions is in any greater 
state of disarray than is education in America. Declining college 
enrollment, Increased high school dropout rates, lowered academic 
standards, declining achievement test scores, lowered standards for hiring 
teachers, teacher strikes and work stoppages, endemic throughout the nation 
tell only a part of the story.  This can be witnessed by even the 
indiscerning eye.  However, as an iceberg whose bulk lies mostly underwater, 
the real disaster, consisting of the failure of our educational system to 
concentrate on, and to succeed in producing students interested in taking 
part in the democratic process, and qualified to reason intelligently, goes 
on unnoticed.  The educational process seems to be suffering from a 
snowball effect.  Inadequate education produces, of course, a populace less 
able to cope  with the task of rectifying what may be wrong with the 
institution.

Turning this downward spiral around is no simple 
task.  Because as previously noted, our major 
institutions are interrelated. And at the core 
of the  blockage lies that almost sacrosanct 
institution - the free-enterprise system. 
Financial interests rather than academic concerns 
play the major roll in governing our educational 
system.  There need be no conscious conspiracy to 
curtail progress in this area, when the 
requirements for improvement appear to run counter 
to the economic interests of the taxpayer, as well 
as those of the corporate powers. Business interests are primarily concerned 
with having the educational system produce skilled technicians to staff 
their work forces.  And the average taxpayer, often feeling in a financial 
crunch himself, would rather someone else paid for public education, or at 
least wait a little longer.

     Consequently, no political campaign involving funds for education 
passes by without the familiar refrain "Money can't buy good education".  
And generally, this logic is sufficient to convince the average taxpayer to
vote to protect his hard-earned bankroll from "government waste"!  Of 
course, it is true that money, alone, will not necessarily buy good 
education.  However, the more pertinent, but less understood, truth remains 
- You can't have good education without money.  Doctors, lawyers, and 
dentists, earn, on the average, three to five times what teachers are paid.  
Yet teachers deal with our most vital and important asset - our minds!  
Collegiate achievement records will verify that those entering the teaching 
profession generally possess the lowest grades or academic achievement.  It 
is not very likely that this would be the case if teachers received 
financial compensation comparable to their worth, and their training.  This 
situation is, of course, attributable to the "free market system.  

     Quite a few minds today, often themselves products of faulty 
educational school systems prevalent over the past decades, seem to feel 
that we could basically cure our educational shortcomings by running our 
schools more in a business-oriented mode.  They'd like to have some kind 
of voucher system installed - where more private schools would be involved. 
Parents would have more choice in which school they could send their 
children.  Profit and loss would determine the success of the schools, and 
parents, not professionals, teachers, or any "new-fangled" scientific 
studies or approaches would determine the curriculum.

     If there is really to be a connection between business and education 
I believe it might best be restricted to a certain oft told analogy about 
a factory whose assembly line kept turning out more and more faulty 
products.  The management's answer to the problem was to take more men off 
the line and place them in the salvage department to repair the faulty 
products.  Needless to say the strategy failed and  the company eventually 
went belly-up.  Yet this is not too unlike the situation in society today 
where less and less of our resources are going to public education and to 
support needy families, but more and more is viewed as required to bolster 
police, security systems, and prisons.

     If our educational process is to produce individuals who will do more 
than simply fit into a corporate firm, or to serve as a containment center 
for children until they reach adulthood, a lot more financial resources are 
required.  Interest-centered, project-centered curriculums, not facts-
jamming, or test oriented curriculums, are needed to lead students to 
acquire social consciousness, and thinking skills requisite for survival 
today.  Each child has differences in the way he learns, and must therefore 
be treated as an individual, which requires quite a change in the ratio of 
students per teacher than exists now.  Since teachers make up 60 to 75 
percent of the typical school district budgets, a lot more money is needed 
to pay for, as well as to train a greatly increased number of teachers.  

     Once again, some sage advice from one who has been around for many 
years, analyzing, and reporting on, the American scene, "...education lies 
at the bottom of every problem we have.  If people were truly well-informed, 
were truly philosophical, were truly aware of our associations with one 
another (then) presumably, our dialogue and our reporting would be 
considerably better than it is. ...The tragedy is, we aren't educated to 
any degree. ...for the United States the first priority of the new order 
must be a revision of the educational system to ... guarantee that each of 
our citizens will have equal resources to share in the decisions of the 
democracy, and a fair share of the economic pie." (Walter Cronkite - LA 
Times Mag. Jan. 21, '96)

     The home environment is also an important ingredient in shaping the 
child's interests, values, and overall attitude in school.  If parents, 
including both males and females are kept too busy earning a buck doing 
either menial or often unproductive jobs in order to feed themselves, there 
is, of course, little time to supervise the kids.  If the welfare system is 
designed (as usually it is) to make it difficult or impossible to receive 
aid if an unemployed male is residing with the family, then again we further 
diminish the chances for the children to receive essential help and 
guidance.