The Core Knowledge Blog

Great teaching, not great buildings, make for a first-rate education, says Jay Mathews in the Washington Post. 

Ten years ago, I wrote a book about high schools with golden reputations in some of the country’s most expensive suburbs. They were full of Advanced Placement classes and fine teachers, but I was astonished at how bad some of the buildings were. Mamaroneck High School, in one of the most affluent parts of Westchester County, N.Y., had three 66-year-old boilers that repeatedly broke down and many clocks that didn’t work. La Jolla High School, north of San Diego, full of science fair winners, was a collection of stained stucco classrooms and courtyards of dead grass.

Mathews is right, of course, but while some in education use poor facilities as an excuse for underachievement, let’s not make excuses for miserable facilities either.  I taught for years in a poorly maintined 110-year-old building in the South Bronx, whose construction predated indoor plumbing and electricity and seemed to reject both like badly matched donor organs.  Pigeons roosted in the lighting fixtures if you forgot to close the windows at night.  There wasn’t so much as a slide on the playground.   There wasn’t a playground.  On its best days it was an physically uncomfortable place to go to school.  A few blocks away, the local library remained shuttered for years while it operated out of a trailer.  It’s hard to imagine upper crust Manhattanites abiding these kinds of conditions for long for their children.  Where your treasure is, there your heart will be. 

“It might be better if we spent our money on principals and teachers who inspire, who don’t take lethargy or resentment for an answer,” says Mathews. “Put educators like that in the rickety buildings we have, and stand back.”

Stand back indeed.  It smarts to be struck by falling plaster.