The Lakeport Ledger 

Section D-1 Copyright—The Lakeport Ledger—A Callipano Corporation Sunday,October30,199--

Area Youth Lectures from Beyond the Grave 

“When Atlas Can No Longer Shrug—Freedom Is an Illusion”

The first in a series of essays by Aaron Williams with John Panuzio

RACE, CULTURE & PUBLIC POLICY: We stand at a critical time in the Lake Region, in this state, and in this nation, with regard to racial isolation and imbalances, and with regard to the equality of education for all, and with regard to the legitimate role of government in our lives. It is now time for us to analyze not simply where we are, how we arrived here, and where we are going, but also to understand what vehicle and what propulsion system has brought us to this point, and what vehicle and system is most suited for taking us into the future.

A Family Story

My father was born in Lakeport nearly half a century ago, in a house on Sixth Street near Glenn Avenue, right next to the Wampahwaug Northern Rail­road’s northbound tracks. He was the oldest of two sons of Allen Williams and Geraldine Sims Williams. Grandpa Williams was a day laborer and a night watchman; Grandma worked in the laundry at St. Luke’s Hospital. After school and during the summer, my father, Mitch, and his brother, Vernon, were chil­dren of the streets—at least until Grandma came home at about seven o’clock. So goes my family’s story.

At that time their neighborhood, Misty Bottom to across Center Street, was racially and ethnically mixed—more Italian and Eastern European than African. My father’s closest friend, from then to this day, was and is an Italian American. My father often told his children that it was his exposure to his friend’s family, particularly to his friend’s parents, that allowed him, as a black child, to believe in, and to aspire to a higher calling in life.

My father sometimes put it this way. “I internalized elements of their stories, and of the stories of the neighborhood. These things were beyond the common lore of the small, more closely knit black community that was coming into the region because of the postwar industrial boom.’’

When I questioned my father about this, he said, “It was not a matter of optimism. Both the black and white communities of the mid-fifties believed things were getting better. Especially the black community—because the Su­preme Court, in 1954, struck down the separate-but-equal doctrine of 1896, a doctrine that had reversed many gains made by blacks after the Civil War.

“It was more a matter of belief,” my father continued, “and of determi­nation. Belief in the way things ought to be, in the way life should be lived, in what individuals and the community should be willing to sacrifice for a better future. My mother and father sacrificed greatly for their children, but their eyes were focused on the here and now, not on some distant future. In the home of Rocco and Tessa Panuzio there was more willingness to save and to invest, more willingness to pressure their children to study and to demand high grades, than there was in my household. The Italian families I knew had a strategy for the future; our black family had but a tactical plan for the present.”

This, of course, is but a small piece of my father’s story. But for him it was an essential piece. He was a scholar-athlete in high school, served in the armed forces, went to college, earned an advanced degree, became a successful industrial management engineer. Why? How?

Those questions demand analysis. And they evoke other questions. What is Cultural Story? Does Story determine physical, emotional and economic well-being? What stories are we telling ourselves today? How is Story told or conveyed?

In this paper I would like first to establish a framework for the importance and the effect of story; then briefly examine how race has entered the American consciousness; where and why the story of race is skewed; and finally look at the ramifications on education caused by distortions, omissions and/or pur­poseful permutations of the ambient cultural story. I will also propose a regional solution to the problems of racial isolation and imbalance in inner-city schools, which have, according to pending court decisions, caused those schools to fail to provide equal education as is required by the state constitution. I believe this solution is viable for areas like the Lake Wampahwaug Region; that it is in line with the intentions of the State Supreme Court; and that it will effec­tively disrupt cultural isolation without institutionalizing politically correct ra­cism.

The Framework

The following framework draws on and is extrapolated from numerous works, including books and articles by Thomas Sowell, M. Scott Peck, M.D., Huey Newton, General Colin Powell, Hugh Pearson, James Baldwin, Louis Farrakhan, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; from interviews with F.X. Mc­Millian, Ciara DeLauro and James Hawkins (all of East Lake High School), with State Senator Loren Bibbeton and Assemblywoman Cynthia Dyer, with General Harrison Dunney, and last but not least, with Mitch and Laurie Wil­liams. my parents.

1 have proposed the following theory of social behavior to explain the complexities of the phenomena herein examined—specifically race relations and racism in regard to equal education. I have attempted to construct a theory which is cohesive, simple, elegant, and capable of broad and accurate appli­cation. Perhaps this is only one student’s perspective, but to me, Story must be the basic element of our approach.

The story we tell ourselves of ourselves, individually or culturally, cre­ates our self-image and our world view. Behavior, individually and cul­turally, is consistent with self-image and world view. Story determines behavior.

As story changes, self-image and world view change; as these change, behavior changes; as behavior changes, so too change the results of behavior. That is, personal and cultural story have ramifications.

Because story has ramifications, it is necessary to analyze and to understand the current story we are telling ourselves of ourselves; the current story we hold individually, or as a subgroup, as a town, a region, a state or a nation. If one sees oneself as a scholar, one behaves in a particular pattern. If one sees oneself as a writer or an engineer, as a soldier or a patriot, as a radical or an alternative person, one also behaves in a particular pattern. One’s behavior in the present is very different if one’s story is of despair, of drugs and of violence, than if one’s story is of striving, of betterment and of advancement; very dif­ferent if one describes oneself as a victim, or if one’s self-description is that of a proud, accountable citizen of his town and region; and very different if one tells oneself he is a follower of the Nation of Islam and a disciple of Louis Farrakhan than if one internalizes the story of General Colin Powell.

One’s behavior, too, is different if one believes his goal is immediate, positive personal stimulation, or if one’s focus is on the self as part of an ongoing community, as part of the continuity of humanity. For individuals one might make a matrix of all possibilities—story and behavior are tremendously complex. Yet it is possible to pinpoint beliefs, to pinpoint story. For a culture or subculture, the pin must be replaced with the brush—yet cultural belief and cultural story can be ascertained.

By the term cultural story, or more fully, Ambient Cultural Story, I mean our current common knowledge, our collective national or ethnicor racial myth, our conventional wisdom, our popular memory, our folklore in all its myriad manifestations.

The story we tell ourselves of ourselves, individually or culturally, creates our self-image and world view. Self-image consists of internalized, cumulative and weighted images, which create belief patterns, perceptual formats, under­standings and conceptualizations. It is through this lens that we view the world. At the most fundamental level, self-image determines macro behavior.

Said another way, culture is built upon self-image and beliefs, and self- image and beliefs are based upon ambient story. Thus, behavior is consistent with self-image and with story. Behavior includes actions in the present as well as plans and projections for the future.

Ambient cultural story is complex, fluid and subject to external pressures, yet it also tends to be homeostatic. By ambient I mean general consensus, the bulk of the story, the feeling and flavor we get from the news and from films, the data that become boilerplate in news stories, or that are distilled into high school textbooks. I mean clichés, stereotypes, biases and prejudices. I do not mean that denials, variations and/or opposing stories are totally absent.

By fluid I mean that alteration of ambient story is possible, and that such alteration changes self-image, and thereby alters macro behavior. There would be no issue of racial isolation and educational inequality for minority students if story were not fluid.

By homeostatic I mean that story tends to revert to prior general consensus. For example, if one has repeatedly heard, and been convinced, that the typical welfare recipient is an unemployed inner-city minority whose family has re­ceived public assistance for generations, and then one is told that most welfare recipients are white, live in suburban or rural areas, and will spend approxi­mately one year on the dole, one will be reluctant to dismiss the bulk of the earlier ambient story—particularly if it is still being reinforced by story gen­erators.

By external pressures I mean that individually or culturally we are influ­enced by the stories others tell us about ourselves. One might include here the written word, both fiction and nonfiction. In America today, however, the greatest external pressure on story comes from television—a medium from which more than half of all Americans derive 100 percent of their news; a story generator, or information gatekeeper, that the average American watches for more than six hours each day.

Behavior is consistent with self-image and world view. That is a basic tenet. There are individual deviations. Group self-image is necessarily more complex than individual self-image. Still, self-image controls attitudes and actions.

For example, at the most base level: When we as a nation believed in Manifest Destiny, our policies and actions reflected that belief. When we viewed ourselves as an altruistic nation willing to go anywhere, to bear any burden in the defense of freedom, our actions and foreign policy tended to be in accord with those principles, with that idealism. And when our paradigm was the advancement of civil rights, great social strides were taken toward inclusiveness and equality.

Yet with the completion of the interstate highway system, which has al­lowed people to work in cities and live in suburbia, and which has enabled “white flight” from the inner cities; with the rolling economic recessions of the past twenty years; and with the passel of public programs that have pro­duced unforeseen side effects, attitudes have changed. Stories have reverted to those of earlier decades. Ensuing social behaviors now reflect those changes. One author noted in the late eighties, “We now exist in a time when we believe in looking out for number one, in getting our piece of the pie no matter whom we screw over or abandon. Once egalitarian inclusiveness was considered a virtue. Now it is equated with the political and economic misdeeds of insincere city, state, and national politicians and bureaucrats.”

In ancient Greece there was an adage, Ethos anthropou daimon, “A man’s story is his fate.” A society’s, or an ethnic group’s myth—the story it tells itself of itself—too, is that society’s or group’s fate.

What happens to a society if the people come to believe they are as morally bankrupt as their social commentators repeatedly tell them they are? Or to a group if the people come to view themselves as prone to violence, greed, racism, and bigotry? Of if they are shown that violent physical response is the best means of dealing with someone with opposing viewpoints? Are the thresholds for reacting in manners consistent with those images lower than if the self-view is of a people as accountable and disciplined citizens striving for a better tomorrow for them­selves and future generations?

Macro behavior is consistent with self-image, and self-image always meshes with ambient story unless acted upon by a significant outer force. Yet the theory of cultural or “macro” behavior cannot be used to determine specific behaviors of individuals. It is, instead, analogous to quantum physics. One cannot predict the behavior of a specific individual from cultural myth any more than one can predict the path of a specific electron—but overall trends can be predicted, and accurately. And they can be directed by controlling am­bient story.

Macro behavior can be manipulated by story control—as the founders of our nation so well recognized and feared. It was not coincidental that freedom of speech was included in the first article of the Bill of Rights. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst’s spreading of disinformation is an example of story control altering macro behavior—in this case instigating the Spanish-American War. Another example might be drawn from Cambodia’s Maoist dictator of the mid-1970s, Pol Pot. His policy “Year Zero’’ was an extreme attempt to wipe out existing cultural story and supplant it with an alien ideology, in order to alter macro behavior.

Other examples: One may infer fear of story control from recently ex­pressed angst over the mergers of Disney/ABC and Westinghouse/CBS. Are America’s image makers and information disseminators becoming too monop­olistic? Will they control cultural story making via narrow, self-serving pro­ductions? The billions of dollars spent yearly on advertisements—a form of storytelling and/or image making—is a primary form of cultural image ma­nipulation and behavior control.

Story is not always complete—there are omissions and gaps, both expedient and purposeful. Story is not always accurate—there are extrapolations, embel­lishments and fabrications. Story is not static—it is always growing, dying, being revised and reinvented. What is consistent is that story forms self-image and world view, and behavior is consistent with self-image and world view.

People have learned many ways to describe themselves. Individuals might include age, gender, ethnicity, nationality, political tendencies, religious affili­ations, region, race, height, color of eyes, size of nose, amount of facial hair. These tags represent characteristics. Every person whose career is in advertising knows that ethnicity has characteristics; so too, nationality, religion, and po­litical affiliation. For the individual, we might call story-based cumulative char­acteristics personality. For a group, we use the term culture.

Some elements of personality or of culture are shaped by specific defining moments. My father tells the story of a cold autumn evening when he was fourteen years old. He'd left football practice and he was alone in Lake­port’s west end. His friend had been sick that day and absent from school. As my father crossed through the park that night, perhaps 500 or 600 feet from where he walked, in a circle of light at the far side, he witnessed a group of boys younger than he, stoning, or perhaps “apple-ing,” an old woman. There were perhaps ten or twelve boys. The woman could not defend herself other than shuf­fling on, trying to protect her head with her upraised arm. My father says he did not believe the boys were physically damaging the old woman, and soon she and they disappeared into the darkness. Still, he relates, at that time, he did nothing—did not yell, did not go for help, did not intercede—fearful, he claims, that he might have gotten himself badly beaten. “I was frozen into inaction, into noninvolvement.” he said. “I have thought about that incident many times. For me, that night was a defining moment. I vowed I would never allow the defenseless to stand alone.’’

Story can pass from person to person, from friend to friend, from father to son. My father’s story of inaction and his vow of protection have been given to me and 1 have internalized them. It is one of the reasons why I believe that the cities cannot be abandoned.

F.X. McMillian explains it thus: “If the countryside abandons the cities, it will be like a reverse Maoist tactic—but it won’t make the cities or the coun­tryside any safer. It is the same with the Third World. What will happen if we don’t assist Mexico, if we do an ‘Atlas Shrugs,’ and EPR rebels gain significant footholds? Will we, here, be safer or less secure? You see, what goes on elsewhere may be our business.’’

What happens in the inner cities is the business of the suburbs. What hap­pens in the suburbs is the business of the inner cities.

Principles of Application

Long-term or cultural ramifications of public programs, policies or laws, or of media projections, often differ from the intent of those programs, policies, laws or projections—because individual and cultural self-images thereby in­duced are more determinant to long-term, macro behaviors than are the di­rect effects of the policies or projections.

For example: If one is working with youth, one must be very cautious in the manner programs are established to prevent unwanted behaviors—drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, suicide—least the program have the opposite long term effect and actually increase the unwanted behavior by creating elements of self-image that would not otherwise be present.

The best of intentions notwithstanding, other examples of misfired policies might be drawn from the creation of poverty pockets while attempting to pro­vide affordable housing; the accusation of racism leveled against America’s Viet-Nam veterans by “antiwar” organizations attempting to disengage American military involvement; or the ascendancy of the violent image of black males over other elements of our personal and cultural story because of the romanticizing of black militancy by the media.

Policy cannot be only a matter of aims and goals, but also must be a matter of manners and means. If there is one thing apparent from the government programs of the sixties, seventies and eighties, it is that even with the best intentions, and with a high degree of success in reaching stated goals, there have been numerous and disastrous side effects. The housing projects of Lake­port, built to provide adequate shelter for an element of the population that was living in deplorable conditions, have indeed provided better housing conditions for thousands. The projects have also concentrated economically-disadvantaged minorities, and have isolated them from the surrounding, more affluent culture. (This is the very essence of the lawsuit and court decisions we are now facing!)

The story of interracial violence within the American military of the 1960s and 1970s repeatedly has been portrayed in popular media projections, yet the ambient story we hold is distorted both in number and in emphasis. During the very worst year of inter-American violence, the total number of serious incident reports (SRI) with racist causation was approximately two hundred, for a force, including rotations, that numbered some 700,000 (Dunney). And what has very seldom been reported or told are the millions of close interracial friendships— that is, racial harmony—within an American military that had never before been so totally integrated. One might speculate that the skewing of this story has been to the detriment of race relations in America; that were our ambient cultural story one of racial harmony, and our self-image one of people getting along without regard to skin tone, macro behavior would follow story and image. The principles of harmony and tolerance are taught and fostered in our schools—yet, with respect to Americans in Southeast Asia, our schools con­tinue to emphasize the worst and disregard the best. This is self-defeating.

As have been the most commonly publicized stories of black protest. Hugh Pearson wrote in The Shadow of the Panther: Huey Newton and the Price of Black Power in America, “The radical left and the left-liberal media continue to play a major role in elevating the rudest, most outlaw element of black America as the true keepers of the flame in all it means to be black.” One must ask, has the media’s forced ascendancy of this element of the story over all other elements of black protest and black life kept many African Americans in a ghetto-culture mind set?

It is important to keep in mind that our cultural story, our mythos, includes not only the misjudgments, errors, crimes, atrocities and scandals of our past, but also the great accomplishments, the altruistic struggles, the valor and sac­rifice earned and waged with tremendous effort, that have brought betterment of the human condition to millions. If only negative elements of a people’s story are reinforced, and positive elements are denied or dismissed, that culture will have no positive role models, and its macro behavior will reflect the neg­ative self-image.

Atlas Can No Longer Shrug

Society must still protect individuals from bigotry and prejudice. Discrimination in housing, education, employment and voting access must still be criminal acts. But saying this does not mean that reverse discrimination is the solution. No society will ever be successful in controlling racism (or drug abuse, violence, gambling or corruption) by treating individ­uals, unless that society also maintains an ambient cultural story that leads to the desirable behavior.

A society cannot make laws or pass policies that will make people rich. The opposite, however, is true. Policies can be made that will hinder the long-range advancement of subgroups or minorities. The much-maligned “welfare system” is perhaps an example. Some of the current crit­icism of these programs is baseless, however, some of these programs have had disastrous side effect, for many and varied reasons.

Let us first hypothesize a principle called attractiveness. Attractiveness pulls people with a particular predisposition to particular areas or programs. This, in itself, is not a problem. But when an allurement is, by public policy, so established as to virtually coerce a concentration of minorities, the attrac­tiveness indeed becomes the problem.

Our local welfare programs—for housing, food, and medical treatment— are municipality-based rather than regionally, statewide, or nationally based. A municipal system creates poverty pockets; a universal system will weaken those pockets. A municipal system in which a central city offers greater services than surrounding towns creates pockets of poverty cultures; a universal system will weaken the attractiveness of pockets by allowing (not forcing) the dispersal of the poor throughout the region. The long-term effect, as it is expected to be with education, will be to provide the poor with positive role models—that is, to present to them role models with a different cultural story…

... not a matter of promoting forced regional integration or of promoting programs that will assist inner-city minorities to mingle with the middle class in the surrounding suburbs… These are Band-Aids… a matter of dilution not of people but of services and of programs of assistance... If these pro­grams created equal attractiveness throughout the region, then individuals or families would make their moves of their own free will and choice…

Enablement programs may signal, or may create, within an individual or a segment of society, an ambient story that says, “You are weak. You are dis­abled. You are not deserving of more than a subsistence existence. You are a victim. Because you are black, or Hispanic, or a woman or a veteran, you cannot do for yourself what nonblacks/Hispanics/women/veterans can do for themselves.” If that story is internalized, weakness, disability and victimhood become reality. Behavior is consistent with self-image. Is that not why we cheer the person who screams, “Rubbish! I can do it!” or even the little train that says, “I think I can. I think I can”? Caution to those who seek empowerment programs—some create a loss of empowerment in the name of empowerment!

...cultural capital,as Sowell defines it, includes attitudes toward entrepreneurship and education, toward specific skills, toward general work habits, toward saving, spending, and investing... (Culture,as here used, does not mean arts, music, language, dress, etc.)

Interestingly, when a family, no matter where their financial situation be­gins, learns to manage and control its cultural capital, it becomes upwardly mobile both socially and economically. The corollary is also true. When a family, no matter its starting point, forgets these basics, its economic trend is downward. This phenomenon transcends race and ethnicity, which is why there are rich and poor in all races and ethnicities. This does not mean that African-Americans have not or do not face obstacles beyond those faced by European-Americans. Yet the most difficult obstacle to surmount is not outside prejudice, but one’s own subculture attitudes—particularly if those attitudes are being reinforced by enablement programs that concentrate those same attitudes in physical sites (poverty pockets), that have in turn ossified a portion of the community into that subculture and into those pockets, and that have destroyed the social mobility of those who wish to break free. It is this ossification, this destruction of social mobility, of will, that can enslave even the strongest. Fighting this ossification presents a dilemma for minority advocacy organiza­tions. They need to have their constituency concentrated, to be the majority in one area—this is their source of power. Simultaneously they recognize the need of the people to be diverse; to be part of the mainstream culture—this decreases their power…

Williams’ Plan for Regional Desegregation

Transforming Story: Transforming the Region:

A Proposal for Redistricting

There has not been a black person in my grandparents’ or my parents’ generation who has not suffered an indignity at the hands of a white person in a position of authority over him or her. Their distrust is understandable. How­ever, I am speaking for my generation and urging all people of my generation to maximize our attitudes and actions for our own future benefits.

It is time for leaders of the black community to stop blaming the white community for all black problems. It is equally time for the white community to stop looking at the black community as though it were the root and source of all evil, all crime, all drug abuse—or if not the root, the most willing par­ticipants. Let us transform and transcend. Let us envision a future not simply in which black children and white children can sit together, but one in which all Americans of all races and all ethnicities truly have equal opportunities. Treating each other as adversaries makes problems worse.

Instead of a Diversity Plan designed to unite us through tolerance, let us change our perspective and propose a Unity Plan which also celebrates our differences, a plan that seeks to combine all the threads of this land into a single multipattemed and multicolored tapestry which we call America. The difference is not simply rhetorical, nor is it one of emphasis. The objectives are the same, but one creates an ambient cultural story that will bring us to­gether, while the other creates a story that tears us apart.

The following proposal represents a strategy for the future. It was initially drawn to specifically represent the Lake Wampahwaug region; however, it is not specific to our region and may be used as a general paradigm for any region with a central, medium-sized city (50,000-250,000). This proposal can­not be applied to large metropolitan areas—New York, Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Los Angeles, etc.—because of their much greater areas of dense pop­ulation. Though the same principles and processes apply, modifications, not here addressed, would be necessary.

I have proposed this solution not only because I believe it is less invasive and less disruptive than other plans being considered, but also because I believe some of the plans under consideration are either ill-conceived Band-Aids or are so severe and coercive that Atlas can no longer shrug. When Atlas can no longer shrug, when govern­mental decrees are so overpowering that individuals have no choices, freedom is an illusion.When freedom is lost, ensuing macro social behaviors deteriorate and the Land of the Free becomes the land of virtual slavery! No one benefits.

Some of the proposals of the first category—such as the national voucher system—will, I believe, result in unintended side effects similar to the side effects of the housing projects of the past forty years. With reference to voucher systems and magnet school systems, one must ask; Which students will take advantage? What will happen to those students who are left behind? What story, what self-image, and what world view will the “remnant” internalize? What cultural characteristics will concentrate in the “left-out” neighborhoods? Will these programs result in even greater disparity between the educational haves and the educational have-nots?

Ramifications of proposed programs and policies must be projected before legislation is passed. A plan to move even 100 students from District A to District B, and 100 from B to A, presents a logistical nightmare for those providing the transportation as well as for the students involved. However, this is of minimal consequence when compared to the nightmare produced by plac­ing anyone in any district in which they do not have, and are not likely to develop, a vested interest.

Below I will present a solution that maintains local parental control and that allows students and families to have a vested interest in their school and their school district. For whatever policy or plan is adopted, we need the equiv­alent of an Environmental Impact Report—except this should be a Cultural Impact Report, a study on the projected effects of the statutes on ambient cultural story, and thus projected changes to cultural self-image, world view and macro behavior.

Not in the above terms, but in essence, the above is exactly what the state lawsuit and pending decision have decreed. This state is not unique in its rulings. A case in Kansas City, Missouri, stemming from a 1977 lawsuit in which parents claimed unequal educational opportunities was still in the courts in 1994, when White House attorneys filed briefs with the Supreme Court arguing that student achievement test scores should be a factor in determining whether a school system has eliminated segregation.

Our state’s supreme court’s pending desegregation order recognizes that segregation in the inner-city school districts, though unintentional, has in­creased dramatically in the past twenty years. It acknowledges the need for breaking certain aspects of inner-city culture, and the need to expose inner-city youth to suburban and exurban cultural norms. Whether the plaintiffs in the lawsuit wish to agree with that wording or not, this is the essence of their request. Said another way—those inner-city parents who pressed the lawsuit want their children to be, culturally (economic/work attitudes), more like sub­urban and exurban youth. Their sole goal may be economic opportunity, but those opportunities are most often created by specific cultural attitudes—not by government programs.

Whether the plaintiffs understood the essence of their request, I do not know; but that pith is essential to the social health of the Lake Region. The suit, the court decision, the recognition of the need to desegregate, all make ultimate sense. They will make ultimate sense, however, if and only if positive cultural attributes are assimilated in areas in which there is a paucity of these attributes. The ultimate failure of the proposed plan will occur if the negative cultural attributes that have been concentrated in poverty pockets were celebrated and spread across the region.

No matter one’s intentions—for good or for evil, from love or from hate, from fear or from pity—inner-city poverty pockets cannot be abandoned or be left to fester on their own. Suburbia and exurbia cannot look the other way. That would be the equivalent of one saying, “Well, the cancer is only in my lungs. The rest of me is healthy. I’ll ignore it.”

As a nation we are one body, and if any part of our body is ill, we are ill. Still, one does not attempt to raise the self-esteem of a cancer by celebrating its differences. One celebrates the healthy tissues with the hope their ascen­dancy will cause the cancerous cells to atrophy.

We are now at a time, because of the court order, when the people in areas where education is working have the wonderful opportunity to dictate to the people in areas where education is not working—to dictate how programs should be run; what should be the academic standards; what should be the standards of student behavior; what should be the standards for teachers and administrators.

As long as the people of the City of Lakeport have been willing to assign, or willing to allow the court to assign, to the people of the surrounding com­munities the responsibility for the education of the children of the city, then the people of Lakeport must be willing to live by their own and outside co­-dictates.

If you are a resident of a school district where the system is working, it is now your duty to direct the boards of education in areas neighboring your district that have defective systems, in the ways and manners to run their busi­ness (which is now, by court decree, your business). But in doing so, you must become part of the neighboring system (see below).

Further, being that the court has ruled that town borderlines are no longer a valid or legal criterion to establish a school district, and seeing that 80 percent of the average local town’s budget is their educational budget, one might con­clude that a well-managed system in South Lake Village, or in Kansas, or in Simsbury, or in East Lake, has every right to direct a poorly managed system in Lakeport or in a neighboring defective system—by combining with that system.

Personally, I do not understand why the judge has chosen to further disempower the people of the cities when what would probably make more of a difference is to increase their empowerment by encouraging them to be, or making them, more accountable for the outcome of their own children’s edu­cation.

One additional point before I present a plan that I believe maintains local or parental empowerment, meets all other criteria the court has established, is cost-effective, and for which the Lake Region may prove to be the perfect testing ground (Cultural Impact Study for the nation?).

Over the past several years, the Ledger has reported that schools of the “poor cities” in the state rank second to the schools of the “rich suburbs.” It should be noted that Lakeport spends $7,922 per student per year. East Lake spends $7,068 per student per year. If you subtract the average cost per student for transportation, the figures become: Lakeport $7,685; East Lake $6,761. The idea that city schools are poor and suburban schools are rich, at least in the local area, must be matched against spending figures. Funds, of course, come disproportionately from the state to school districts— essentially the rich suburbs, via tax transfer payments, already support the cities.

It is not a matter of rich and poor as far as what the school districts have to spend, or as to what scores students within a district achieve on standardized tests. Other factors, such as ambient cultural story, determine outcome.

Disband the School District That Has Failed

Redraw All District Lines

The disbanding of old school districts that have failed does not eliminate local control over the newly realigned, regional school districts. This has been a major failure of various experimental programs that have ceded power to either commercial companies or to higher and more removed governmental entities.

The people of the district that has been disbanded, become part of the new, regional district. They are not disenfranchised. The new district is not based on municipal lines, yet all people within the new district are local resi­dents. Local control is not lost. The failed district no longer exists.

The redrawing of district lines and the dissolution of the failed district should be cost-effective because little has changed: No long-distance busing is required, and the least cost-effective district no longer exists… (No matter the expenditure, if students are not being educated, the system is cost-ineffective.)

Taxing for the new districts should be handled in a manner similar to taxing for the overlapping fire district that exists between Lakeport and South Lake­port. That is, for any property within a district, the portion of the tax collected that would have gone to the town’s or city’s school board will now simply go to the new public education entity.

Far more important than cost-effectiveness, however, is the dilution of inner-city students into the population of suburban and exurban students. Once again, this is the court decree; and it is a desirable decree.

The ramifications on both minority and majority subgroup cultural story, self-image, world view and macro behavior, if natural assimilation is allowed to flow, will be pos­itive.

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