An Interview with Mayor Rudolph Guiliani: Education in New York City
1995; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 77; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1940-6487
Autores Tópico(s)Education Systems and Policy
ResumoIn this interview with Mr. Goldberg, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani sets forth his proposed solutions to the problems besetting the New York City public schools and describes the frustration he feels because he lacks the political power to effect change in that huge and cumbersome system. Rudolph Giuliani is angry about the way education works in New York City, and he wants everyone to know it. When he talks about the education system in the city, he uses such words and phrases as dead, useless and rigor mortis. New York's 107th mayor is absolutely convinced that failure is inherent in the current system and that the system must undergo dramatic change. The bureaucrats at 110 Livingston Street (school headquarters), Mayor Giuliani says, perpetuate themselves. The things they are doing are largely useless, and then those things are superimposed on the people who are useful, and it kills their creativity and their morale. There are approximately 1.1 million students in the city's 1,085 schools. Many of the schools are old and in serious dis-repair. In 1994 the graduation rate after four years of high school was an abysmal 44.3%. That same year, more than half of the city's children scored below grade level in reading, and almost half scored below grade level in math. The dropout rate for all students stands at 18.7%, and the budget is inscrutable - it is virtually impossible to tell how much is spent on administrators, bureaucrats, vendors, contractors of all types, and programs imposed by Washington, Albany, and the courts, Mayor Giuliani says. Add to that the pervasive corruption in several local school boards, and you have a prescription for continual failure. The system the mayor sees in New York is very far from the one he remembers. Rudy Giuliani grew up in a working-class family of small shopkeepers. His teacher was his mother. began teaching me to read when I was about 3 1/2 or 4 years old, he recalls. She spent a lot of time getting me interested in learning, particularly history. knew how to tell a story and make you want to read. As a youngster, Giuliani went to parochial elementary and secondary schools, graduating from Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn in 1961. He received his undergraduate degree from Manhattan College in 1965 and has clear memories of good teaching at all the schools he attended. He recalls such outstanding teachers as Brother Kevin in high school and Brother Alexander Joseph at Manhattan College, both Christian Brothers who took extra time with students and who were tough, demanding, and exacting on their students and on themselves. The memory of that parochial school education is important enough to the mayor that today he holds up the Catholic school system as a possible model for the city's public schools. In a speech this past August at the Wharton Club, Giuliani referred to his alma mater, Bishop Loughlin High School, and pointed out that its principal, Brother James Bonilla, can set educational priorities and spending policies right at the school level. Giuliani went on to recommend that the parochial schools in which there are high standards, school-based management, and school-based budgeting - could serve as a template for the city's crumbling system. He noted that the parochial schools have 151,000 students in New York City but have very few bureaucrats in their hierarchy. Giuliani loved every minute at New York University School of Law. Many of his classmates saw the study of law as necessary to get where they wanted to go, but Giuliani was attracted powerfully and immediately to the law itself. A teacher who made a great impression on him was Professor Childress, who taught contracts and introduced Giuliani to the Socratic method. In Childress' classes Giuliani had to think, not just absorb information. Another teacher whose memory has stayed with the mayor was Irving Younger, who taught evidence and gave him his first sense of wanting to be a trial lawyer, most particularly in the U. …
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