Volume 11, Number 9 · November 21, 1968
The Issue at Ocean Hill
By Jason Epstein
About a month ago in these pages I suggested that the conflicting interests in the New York City school strike were irreconcilable and that they raised questions of national importance. What I meant was that the city's entrenched and decadent educational bureaucracy had come to be regarded by much of its clientele not as an aid but an obstacle to the education of a majority of the city's children, and that for many New Yorkers the time had come for this bureaucracy to be dismembered and its various powers decentralized. Since the bureaucracy is largely white and the school population more than half black and Puerto Rican, the transfer of authority over budgets and personnel from the central bureaucracy to local governing boards, many of them inevitably to be controlled by blacks and Puerto Ricans, foreshadowed a revolutionary transfer of power not only within the educational system but within the economy of the city itself, with obvious implications for the country as a whole. It was to prevent this transfer that the United Federation of Teachers went on strike.
Feature, 3991 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |