Education in America

Norma (née Nussbaumer) Wyles used to always say until her dying day that if you don't support  public education in this country then you don't want to invest in our future, even after you're long gone.  What would make this Massillon (Ohio) Washington High School student expelled at the end of her junior year for getting married in April 1945 believe that for the next seventy-one years?  The answer is because she wanted to make sure that everything in her power would make it possible for her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren and EVERY child of these three generations had something she didn't; a high school diploma and if they so chose to, a college degree.

After World War II and up until the 1980s, the United States public school system was considered the envy of the world.  Somewhere along the way though, education became more than just the three R's of reading, writing, and arithmetic.  It became more economical and social starting with the United States Supreme Court decision in 1954 in Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education and continuing into the Twenty-First Century on mask mandates in the nation's school systems in various states during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

After World War II, the federal government brought an idea of the late President, Franklin D. Roosevelt's to fruition; the GI Bill.  This was a program FDR came up with and Harry S Truman enacted to help returning veterans from Europe and the Pacific get back into the civilian economy.  The GI Bill educated veterans, trained them for high paying jobs, allowed for them to start businesses of their own, and buy that first time home.  Labor Department statistics from that period in history show that for every one dollar of tax payer money invested in the GI Bill, the United States Treasury got a seven fold return of seven dollars on that people investment.

Nineteen Fifty-Seven saw the first test of school integration when in Little Rock, Arkansas, nine African-American students tried to attend Little Rock Central High School.  Because this was such a big deal, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in the National Guard to escort the Little Rock Nine into the school.  Five years later, the University of Mississippi would become integrated with the admission of James Meredith after some hard hitting conversations between President John F. Kennedy, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, and Mississippi governor Ross Barnett.  This was to be followed in the summer of 1963 at the University of Alabama had the school house door blocked by Governor George Wallace, refusing the admission of two African-American students for summer courses.  President Kennedy sent the deputy attorney general down to Alabama to force the Governor to step away.  By the mid 1960s, President Lyndon Johnson recognized the importance of early childhood education regardless of a child's social stratification of either poverty or wealth.  When he introduced his Great Society plan in early 1964 one of the pillars of that program was Head Start. 

In addition to the racial issues involving education in the 1960s, there was also the issue of the Vietnam War.  In those days young men of college age were eligible for the military draft unless they got deferments in the case of such later leaders as Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, or enlisted in the National Guard as George W. Bush had done.  During the mid 1960s and early 1970s, anti-war protests were popping up all over America's college campuses.  Groups like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) were becoming common fixtures.  April 1969 would see some of the greatest SDS protests in the Midwest when students like Alan Canfora and others from Kent State University would march on various buildings on campus to end the Vietnam War.  A year later, the war would come home when at Kent State University, four students were killed and nine students were wounded when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd of students protesting Governor James Rhodes' decision to occupy Guardsmen on the Kent State campus.

During that historic weekend in Middle America, the Kent State University radio station; WKSU which was housed in the Music and Speech Building on the main campus was Northeast Ohio's go to news source for everything happening from May 1 through 4, 1970.  The students delivering both commentary and news were always respectful of the situation and acted with the highest degree of professionalism.

But perhaps the saving grace that day was the quick thinking of the popular Geology professor, Glen Frank.  That weekend, Professor Frank was a faculty marshal who would wonder the campus letting the students know that they were there just in case there was trouble.  After the shooting students were yelling murderer and Professor Seymour Baron of the Psychology Department tried calming the students by having them sit down.  Professor Frank, with his heartfelt and tearful plea to the students that afternoon just may have saved lives.  "I don't care whether you've never listened to anyone before in your lives.  I am begging you right now.  If you don't disperse right now, they're going to move in, and it can only be a slaughter.  Would you please listen to me?"  The students dispersed avoiding anymore wounded or killing that day.

In a 1986 interview at a Chardon, Ohio radio station Rhodes, who was running for a fifth term as Ohio governor was asked about Kent State by the interviewer, Bob Lewis.  He said that before that early May weekend, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover called him and several other Midwest and Southern governors and warned him that FBI informants told Hoover they had reason to believe there was going to be a "dramatic incident in the heartland". Rhodes said Hoover didn't say what form this "incident" would take, but he told Rhodes and the other governors to be vigilant and ready to respond. The Kent demonstrations picked up steam that weekend, and Rhodes then defended his response to send the Ohio National Guard to the campus based in great part on that warning he said he received from Hoover. 

After the Vietnam War ended, protests moved to women's liberation, the environment, and other social issues that helped define the period of the mid 1970s really up until 2016 with the election of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States.

When the 1980s came around, the United States was in a more conservative mood.  Even though President Jimmy Carter had created a United States Department of Education, Americans were ready for tax cuts and stepping back a bit.  College, which had been somewhat affordable for the average American prior to 1981 with the help of a few part-time jobs found themselves applying for student loans.  Over a forty year period, the national student loan debt over two generations has climbed to approximately $1.9 trillion.  Such un affordability has made it harder for younger Americans to start families, go into business for themselves, and to buy a first home before their 41st birthday.

The same was said for school funding as well.  States like Ohio started a lottery program where a percentage of the proceeds would go to the schools.  But the property owners in the state of Ohio are still paying for public school districts through property taxes, which the Ohio Supreme Court declared unconstitutional.  An example would be a public school system like Uniontown Lake in Lake Township, Ohio is considered one of the best public schools in their county given the average income of its residents.  Therefore they have the top of the line investments in education to create a nearly 100 percent graduation rate.  Then you go just 14 miles north to Akron, Ohio.  This is a city that is not as affluent since the rubber plants left the area so the average income is less and their are fewer home owners.  As a result, homes sit abandoned and schools suffer.  Because people aren't having babies like they did after the war, there is no need for every neighborhood to have their own high school so schools are forced to consolidate.  Some, like James A. Garfield in the Firestone Park neighborhood and Kenmore in the Kenmore neighborhood; two football rivals have now merged creating larger class sizes.

In the early 1990s, when running for President, Bill Clinton understood the importance of a post high school degree and the ability to afford to pay for it.  He took to the nation as President what he did as the governor of Arkansas stating that if you want an education, we will help you get one, but you will pay for it in some way.  Enter Americorps in September 1994.  This is a program created to help college graduates pay back their student loans upon college graduation and help improve their communities through such trades as education and health.  You give two years of your time to help a community in need and your student loan is forgiven.

As the decades moved on we started to see a rash of violence in the schools and April 20, 1999 was when Americans started to open their eyes to the problem.  That morning, two students at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado opened fire on their fellow students and their teachers.  Given the amount of fire power that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had that morning it was a blessing that more students and teachers weren't killed.  Thirteen people, not counting the two killers were killed and twenty-four were wounded in the attack.  The next big school shooting would be on December 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut when Adam Lanza, after killing his mother at home went to Sandy Hook Elementary School and executed an entire first grade class.  This one tugged at Americans' heart strings because it was so close to Christmas and because of the age of the majority of the victims.  The disturbing thing about the aftermath was the sick conspiracy theories people like Alex Jones put out that those children weren't really killed but actors.  The proof was that all of the caskets at the funerals were closed.  We would then see in 2018 another major school shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School where on Valentine's Day Nikolas Cruz entered the school killing seventeen people.  The president of the United States offered thoughts and prayers.

More recently in this country, the big thing is the COVID-19 Pandemic.  In 2020, students would learn virtually on their computers and learning on-line from home.  Seniors in the Class of 2020 missed out on many rites of passage, the most important one being able to graduate with your friends and in person.  As a new school year started in the fall of 2021, the controversy was the idea of a mask mandate in the schools in some states.  It got so bad that school board meetings around the country would get ugly and governors would punish school officials by withholding pay if they go against their unmasking mandate.  This issue is yet to be resolved.

As the United States enters a new era in government and in education, the question is going to be how do we educate our young people to be trained for the jobs where they're needed the most?  President Joe Biden initially proposed in a $3.5 trillion human infrastructure bill the idea of two years of Pre-K schooling and up to two years of post secondary education be free to students and their families.

Now, education is not always about the seriousness of learning.  You have fun supporting your school's sports teams and no school has a rivalry in football like Massillon Washington High School and Canton McKinley High School.  A little known fact is that the Massillon vs McKinley game is the only high school football game to have bookies bet on in Las Vegas.  This rivalry is so epic that either team could have a 9 and 0 season but if you lose that tenth game the coach had better get the for sale sign up in front of their house the next day.  Likewise, if either team has an 0 and 9 season going into the tenth game and you win, the coach is considered the conquering hero.  In the latter part of the Twentieth Century, Massillon City Schools had a school levy on the ballot to fund the schools and that levy's passage depended on whether Massillon defeated McKinley before the election.

One of the unique things about high education in the United States is expanding your mind to more ideas outside your comfort zone.  When you go to college, you lose a sense of security that you might have felt while in high school.  College is where you meet new people with different backgrounds and your mind will be exposed to new ideas beyond the values you were raised with.  Such ideas could be on issues like sex, politics, religion, the environment, and race.

As we move forward in educating the young people and ourselves in this competitive world, we have to remember that we're not competing for jobs with the kid across the street.  We're not competing with the kid across town or the state, or even across the country.  We're competing for work with the kid around the world in countries where education is revered and deemed important to future success.

Jill Biden has been quoted as saying that "Education teaches us compassion and kindness, connection to others."  When anyone has any kind of education, no one can ever take that knowledge away from you.  It is with this collection that we can learn from the past to make our future brighter than our past and our present.