This is a domain-specific book that would interest specialists in education studies and education policy. It is a biography of likely the most important educational administrator New York State has ever had.
James Allen was a minor figure from the standpoint of national history but a major figure in 20th century American education. And this story of his life teaches useful historical context about New York State as it navigated the 1950 and 60s, a period of rapid student population growth, major school district restructuring and consolidation, racial integration, and severe conflict with teachers' unions--at times all at once. Finally this book shows us that Washington D.C. was always a toxic cesspool, quickly eating the nation's most skilled education administrator alive.
The author of this short work is my uncle, my father's younger brother, and he published it in 1981 while a faculty member at West Virginia's Marshall University.
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The more I read, the more I realize there is tremendous value in reading biographies of anyone and everyone. Sometimes the most valuable lessons come from bios of relatively minor historical figures, even from people who aren't historically "important" at all. We can all teach each other by the way we live, and there are excellent examples to follow in the life of James Allen in his work ethic, his personal standards, even the value of having a supportive, capable and intelligent wife. And it also shows the enormous importance of finding good mentors, who can pull you along with them as they advance in their own careers.
Moreover, Allen's life offers readers a priceless lesson to avoid Washington, DC and any jobs in the administrative state. This realm appears to have been an undrainable swamp even in the 1960s, long before the USA's hypercentralized government became the self-evidently dysfunctional Fourth Turning monstrosity it is now. Allen (somewhat inexplicably) went to work for the Nixon Administration in 1969, but barely 13 months later he was summarily dismissed, ostensibly for public statements he made criticizing the United States' invasion of Cambodia.
Sadly, after leaving the Nixon Administration, Allen would have just sixteen months left to live. The following year, he, his wife and eight others died tragically in a small chartered plane crash en route to the Grand Canyon.
One last thought: this is an era where, at the New York State level at least, society and bureaucracy was getting bigger, but it had not yet gotten so big that its leaders would be too busy to respond to fellow citizens. Allen took pains to remind his staffers to respond promptly to all incoming letters from concerned parents and citizens, to take their phone calls, and maintain what we would think of today as a miraculous standard of responsiveness and accessibility. His portion of the state government, at least, hadn't yet morphed into a soulless bureaucracy. Now we're seeing the unfortunate truth that democracies--and their accompanying bureaucracies--simply do not scale beyond a certain size. Inevitably they become faceless, unresponsive to (and even dismissive of) the citizen.
[Dear readers: what follows are my notes, quotes and reactions to the text. They are meant to organize my thinking and help me remember--feel free to skip them!]
Notes:
Chapter 1: James E. Allen, Jr: The Man
3 "His place in American educational history ranks with men such as Horace Mann, Henry Barnard and William T. Harris." See also The Peabody Sisters of Salem for more on the wife of Horace Mann, Mary Peabody.
3ff On Allen presiding over significant change and growth of New York state school public school system.
5 "People who heard him speak say his speeches were far more eloquent when read than heard--he was not reputed to be a gifted orator."
5-6 Discussion here of an academic administrator's responsibilities [which sounds a lot like what Peter Drucker would say is the responsibility of a good manager: spending time on the right things rather than only the things that seem urgent]. Also comments here on how Allen wanted both himself and his staff to be directly responsive to citizens--answering questions and inquiries promptly; in the Education Department, he reminded his staff in a memorandum, "I shall be disappointed if I find that any letters, especially from parents or even students, remain unanswered." [This is of course back during an era when bureaucracies were large--and growing--but not yet so large that they had the excuse to never respond to the people they administer education to.]
7-8 Allen never actually worked as a teacher or administrator in any elementary or secondary school; he did not possess a teaching certificate (!); instead he studied educational finance and administration at graduate school. On his wife Florence Miller Allen, who edited his speeches and helped tighten up his ideas.
8ff On Allen's egalitarianism; on the fact that he was an expert on school finance but not a reckless spender; on the great disappointment that his Right to Read program never came to fruition the way he envisioned it [more on this in Chapter 10]; Allen as a member of the Presbyterian Church but a strong believer in "the separation of church and state as it affected public education."
Chapter 2: The Early Years
12ff Born in 1911, his father was president of Davis and Elkins College, a tiny Presbyterian-sponsored college offering classical education for a few sons and daughters of ministers and other professional people in a rural, rugged area of West Virginia; James was the eldest child; there were four other boys plus a girl, although the daughter died at age 4 from burns in a brush fire in the yard of the family home; also Allen's mother, Susan Garrett Allen, died in 1923 at the age of 43; James, Jr. was 12.
15ff Graduated from Davis and Elkins College in 1932, Allen was captain of the tennis team and also won the doubles championship of West Virginia; his father counsels him not to go into education: "You'll never make a living there; there's no future in it." Then he stumbled into a job on the staff of the West Virginia State Department of Education thanks to a family friend, W. W. Trent, who was West Virginia's superintendent of schools; Allen's first duties were compiling statistical data on school finance. He stayed in Charleston with the Department of Education for six years, working during the WV's restructuring of a highly local school system to a more regional and consolidated school system. Also on Allen developing political acumen as he followed W. W. Trent from one job to another, watching him deal with politicians, etc.
16ff James marries wife Florence in 1938, then in 1939 he takes a job at Princeton as a research associate working on education finance in New Jersey; he left after two years but wrote a guide for school finance in New Jersey: State School Fiscal Policy for New Jersey; he then went to Harvard for graduate study in educational administration.
17ff Other mentors: Dr. Alfred Simpson Carver, professor of educational administration; Dr. Francis Spalding, Dean of Harvard's School of Education; others he met at Harvard who influenced his professional career, including Francis Keppel, later US Commissioner of Education, and John Gardner, president of the Carnegie Corporation, and later Secretary of Health Education and Welfare under Lyndon Johnson; good examples of getting good access to future elites when you're at a school like Harvard; he's awarded a doctorate in 1944; he joins the military as a teacher, teaching Air Force instructors how to teach; after the war ended he gets a call from Syracuse University to join the faculty as professor of education and director of the Bureau of School Services, teaching school finance and school administration; then he's briefly sent to Washington to work on a commission on higher education under President Truman; then returns to Syracuse, but in 1947 he gets a call from Francis Spaulding who was now New York State's Commissioner of Education, he wanted Allen to come to Albany to be his executive assistant; three years later, in 1950 Spalding dies, and the Board of Regents appointed Lewis Wilson Commissioner and promoted James Allen to Deputy Commissioner; five years later when Wilson retired, James Allen was appointed Commissioner of Education, at 44 the youngest man ever to hold the job.
Chapter 3: The Albany Years
22ff Discussion here of the size and structure of the New York State Department of Education, the scale and scope of all the schools and universities as well as libraries, museums and historical societies under its control; comments also on the Board of Regents in New York which governs both the State Department of Education as well as the State University system; on the board members serving 15-year terms so that they can be independent of politics.
24ff On Allen and his tinkering and restructuring of the Department of Education; "Dr. Allen was responsible for the smooth operation of the department... He held this post from September 1, 1955 until he resigned to become United States Commissioner of Education on May 1, 1969." On the duties of the Commissioner of the Department of Education in New York State: carrying out the policies of the Board of Regents, supervisory responsibility for institutions of higher education, including 58 SUNY schoool, responsibility for State education expenditures (which to give a sense of scope were $4.1 billion in 1969).
25ff On how Allen was "a tireless worker often working seven days a week... He worked longer hours than anyone else, but he did not ask others to try to keep up with him." On his delegation techniques where he was not involved in most day-to-day operations and instead delegated it to some fifty associates; on his "intuitive political sense" with state politicians.
28 "Allen's tenure as commissioner was marked by growth and its concomitant centralization of influence in Albany. As problems became more complex, New York's citizens turned more and more to centralized decision making. But Allen used his power and authority judiciously and remained an advocate of decentralization and local control of those school affairs that should remain in the hands of local districts."
28ff Also on New York's 1967 Constitutional Convention to redraft the state constitution, and Alan's interest in making sure that recommendations on equal educational opportunity and eliminating constitutional restrictions on debt limitations for school building construction were written into the new constitution, this would be a substantially change from what was in the old constitution. Note that there were also numerous proposals to use busing to achieve racial balance, to place limits on the legislature's power over education, to place limits on the powers of the Board of Regents and even the Commissioner himself; most of these oppositional interests grew out of the rising costs of education.
Chapter 4: Crisis in Urban Education
34ff Contrasting the relative stability and high regard of the education system in the United States, which evolving [really devolved] to a much different and more adversarial environment in the late 60s; the primary questions in the 1950s had been about could enough schools be built, but by 1969 the mood was more would public schools survive as the best institution to educate the youth. "Americans seemed to have lost faith in their schools at the very time that educators most needed their support." On problems in urban centers and in city schools, see comments from Allen in a "prophetic" 1965 speech: "I have had to spend a constantly increasing amount of time on city school problems. I am overwhelmed by the magnitude of these problems and alarmed by the present lack of effective means of solving them." Advocating revitalization of the big-city school system during an era of urbanization and white flight; also on loss of teachers due to the stress of large classrooms and other problems leading to a teacher shortage in urban schools in the 1960s.
36ff On how urban school problems were Dr. Allen's central concern; how he took professional risk to try to tackle these problems, making him a target on some level. "It was this decision as much as anything else that one can say moved James E. Allen, Jr. from the ranks of an able and competent school administrator to that of an educational statesman."
38ff On the power blocs divided on racial and class lines as the New York City School teachers were white middle class, likewise the administrators were primarily English-speaking, white and middle class, but the school student population became increasingly black and Spanish-speaking Puerto Rican; New York City teachers unionized, forming the American Federation of Teachers, and becoming a major power bloc of their own, largely focusing on job security; also parents and community leaders pressed for control over "their" schools from the centralized city Board of Education; note that in those days NYC had the mayor appoint the Board of Education rather than have the community elect the Board of Education; also the city agreed to do an experimental local district system in three pilot neighborhoods, with a local school boards; but "what was to be simply a small 'pilot' project involving local control of three small districts turn those areas of the city into a nightmare of hostility and strife."
39 The three pilot communities were Ocean Hill-Brownsville of Brooklyn, the Two Bridges area in New York's Lower East Side and an area in East Harlem centering around Intermediate School 201. All three had predominantly black and Puerto Rican residents and low student performance, this pilot program was also backed financially by the Ford Foundation.
40ff On Allen's plan to have a long-range plan to permanently decentralize New York City schools; how it went to the state legislature in 1968, eventually morphing into a compromise plan that did not resemble his original proposal in any way other than some endorsement of decentralization; see also how the American Federation of Teachers originally favored local/decentralized school control, but then flipped because it feared teachers would lose their jobs; thus the union turned against decentralization; there was a teacher's strike threatened, also the union already held a successful striking 1967, winning wage increases: "teachers in New York City were no strangers to picket lines."
41ff On the Ocean Hill-Brownville pilot district which "assumed more authority than either the teachers union or the Board of Education expected it to have," dismissing 19 teachers and administrators; the teachers union called a strike, two days later the City Board of Education reinstated the teachers dismissed by this district, but then the teacher went on strike again because parents and citizens of that district barred the fired teachers from returning to class (!); there was yet another strike after these fired teachers returned to class for another two weeks, then a final settlement was reached on November 17th. In December high school students in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville district "went on the rampage" as the author phrases it, angry about longer school days, curtailed vacation and other measures to regain the time lost because of the strikes. There was actually a physical clash over physical possession of one of the middle schools in the district; James Allen was staying as much as he could in the area but his appeals for calm and reason fell on deaf ears; he needed actual physical protection during this time. [Jeez what a shitshow. The students always seem to come last in situations like this. The "ostensible purpose" of the school is to educate students, but sometimes it sure looks like this is a system built to serve other interests instead.]
43ff The New York State legislature passes a school decentralization law in 1969, establishing a community based school district system in New York City, creating elected community school boards; while the Union lobbied for and received job security guarantees and the right to citywide collective bargaining. Note that it was during this drafting stage of this law that President Nixon asked Dr. Allen to become "Assistant Secretary for Education and United States Commissioner of Education" [an interesting and odd job title but that's what it was called]; the author says that there was a delay moving from Albany to Washington DC because of his concerns about what was happening in New York [but it doesn't appear that this delay was all that significant: he was appointed February 3rd, 1969, long before this law was put into effect in New York State. [Note: after spending some time crosschecking all this online I think I've got the timeline down: he was appointed February 3rd, 1969, he actually began work on May 5th, 1969 and was then ultimately dismissed June 10th, 1970; we'll get to the dismissal in Chapter 8.]
Chapter 5: The Commissioner's Dream--Equal Educational Opportunity
46ff On the origins of free compulsory education in the United States, in part thanks to Thomas Jefferson; on separate but equal doctrine; on the 10th amendment which made schools locally controlled, but then effectively superseded by the 14th amendment guaranteeing rights to all people regardless of race or social background, which set the stage for the 20th century application of the 14th amendment on education; Allen's comments on discrimination against black students; also a parenthetical comment here that is interesting: "Dr. Allen's position on the issue of school desegregation is reported to have contributed as much to his eventual dismissal as United States Commissioner of Education as any of the state of reasons." [Again, wait for this, it's coming in Chapter 8.]
49ff At a hearing of the United States Civil Rights Commission in 1966, Dr. Allen listed all of the things New York State did in education to comply, including identifying racially isolated schools, dealing with de facto segregation, its policies on integration, etc. On Dr. Allen's belief that "the only way to proceed was to be consistent and courageous, to oppose all forms of segregation, even the type that resulted from housing patterns and traditionally established school attendance zones."
50ff On the Malverne-Lakeview School District in Hempstead, New York, where there were elementary schools that were not racially balanced; New York State stepped in and redrew the district to homogenize the schools; this was a precedent for New York; it went to court, was reversed on appeal, and then re-reversed at the appellate court level; Note that the district never did follow through on the commission's order even after these legal issues were settled in the court system; see also harsh criticism Allen received in Nassau County newspapers.
53ff On wealth disparity in districts driving unequal educational opportunities; this is a lot like desegregation in the sense that some communities simply had more wealth to tax on behalf of their schools than other communities had. On Dr. Allen's proposals to reform educational financing; a quick backgrounder here on how american education typically featured small towns with their own school supported by local property taxes, but as cities grew and as some communities had industry (or other tax bases) they could tax to fund schools, this led up to a 1925 law in New York which gave incentives for districts to consolidate; in New York there were more than 12,000 school districts in the 1800s; by 1965 there were 800 operating school districts. Problems with the system of taxing property that led to unequal education; on the creation of state supplemental support to make sure that districts had a minimum floor of revenue.
55ff On educational equality for handicapped children; on "a certain vagueness as to what constitutes equal educational opportunity" for this group; also on Allen recognizing the danger of the label "mentally retarded," instead wanting a a label "which does not carry with it surplus meaning." [Interesting, this is a speech that dates back to 1969.]
Chapter 6: The Washington Decision
60ff [This chapter essentially speculates on why Dr. Allen decided to leave New York and go to Washington. It's a good question, and to this reader it appears Allen made his choice based on a little too much idealism and naivete.] April, 1969: Dr. Allen's farewell meeting with the Board of Regents before "taking his talents" to Washington; he actually would be taking cut, from $45k to $38k a year, his staff would be significantly smaller, there was less authority in the DC job because the states actually executed education and the federal government in those days only gathered statistics and kept track of trends. On the fact that he regretted not taking this same position when it was offered to him by Kennedy in 1960, "he spoke wistfully of the Kennedy offer on several occasions" which gives both the author and the reader that this was a job he had set his sights on for a while. [A cynic might also note the incredible amount of crap he had to deal with with the New York City schools in those days: the repeated teachers strikes; the student rampage; his inability to settle the various disputes; also the glaring fact that he left his New York State Commissioner job right in the middle of all of this--to me this indicates perhaps another catalyst for why he left.] Also comments here on NYS governor Nelson Rockefeller's austerity budget in 1969 which was considering a 5% cut in education appropriations; this marks the end of expanding budgets in New York State. Dr. Allen considered a 5% cut to be "disastrous." Note also that Dr. Allen was 57 at this point, had he waited till the next administration he would be 65 and too old [note also Allen wasn't going to live much longer anyway, not that he could possibly know this of course]; also the job would make him a sort of chief spokesperson for education, he was led to believe that the Nixon administration would give education a high priority, that he would have a free hand in his job, that he could make changes, etc. [none of which actually turned out to be true, unfortunately].
63ff Note that this was not a cabinet level post; allegedly Nixon had heard a speech Allen gave in 1960 while Nixon was vice president under Eisenhower and was impressed; he asked Allen for a copy and sent him a congratulatory letter; there appears to be no other contact between them, ever. Also on the various congratulatory comments made by political figures after Allen was appointed, as well as comments on his tenure as Commissioner in NYS, including from Jacob Javits, then Senator; also Senator Jennings Randolph; former Governor Harriman, etc.
Chapter 7: The Washington Years
68ff [The wheels quickly fall off for Allen in DC.] "It was clear that Dr. Allen had been misled by the Republican administration. ...the Administration refused to recognize independent thinking and gave virtually no response to the Commissioner's requests for support. ...there was little commitment to support education in America, despite pious statements to the contrary." Note that in going to Washington, Allen left a very well-defined, well-established position of power and agency to directly influence millions of students; instead he went to an undefined position in Washington that would have no guarantee of any policy power whatsoever, and as a Democrat he'd be working as a political opponent (on some level) of the Administration as well, even though it appointed him. [The reader can't help but feel sympathy and wonder if Allen was too idealistic, too naive--or both?]
72ff What follows here are some of the plans Dr. Allen had in mind for restructuring and reorganizing the education bureaucracy in Washington DC; [it's a bit discouraging and sad to read this, the reader will soon find out that Allen only lasted a little over a year in this national job, and clearly never was able to make any changes in the first place]. "The plans to reorganize the Office of Education proved far easier to formulate on paper than to put into practice. The Commissioner's time during the first six months in office was almost totally occupied by matters pertaining to the reorganization and with recruiting staff to fill key positions." Worse: the nominees that Allen made for vacancies at the top levels of the Office of Education were consistently rejected because they were "not viewed as sufficiently partisan Republicans. Still worse: "A wall seemed to exist between Dr. Allen and the White House" as his memos were ignored or rejected; "the White House never consulted with Dr. Allen on policy decisions affecting education"; "the promise of a 'crowning achievement' turned slowly to the realization that his days in Washington were numbered." Allen even told his wife not to unpack all their belongings in DC!
76ff Already by May, 1970 Allen confided to associates of a complete falling out between him and the White House. [This took exactly one year]. He writes a forceful letter to the president, it's unlikely it ever reached Nixon's desk; we learned that he was dismissed about a month after this letter was sent, and the reader gets a foreshadowing here about Allen's tragic death in October of 1971, just a little over a year later.
Chapter 8: The Dismissal
81 [The epigraph of this chapter is the public statement that Dr. Allen made on the Cambodian invasion] "Obviously, my professional competence cannot include questions of the sort. Thus any opinion that I have is only a personal one, like that of most other citizens. I find it difficult to understand the rationale for the necessity of the move into Cambodia as a means of supporting and hastening the withdrawal from Vietnam--withdrawal that I feel must be accomplished as quickly as possible. What concerns me most now is what our responsibility is in dealing with the disastrous effects that this action had on education throughout the country and on the confidence of millions of concerned citizens in their government."
82ff At a meeting of college students working as summer interns in the Office of Education, a meeting that also included staff and media, totaling some 300 people; note also that "news reporters began covering public appearances of top Nixon Administration officials in order to report disagreement with the administration on the issue of Cambodian invasion. [In other words, a time, long past, when the media was not quite so beholden to the regime.] Allen knew that the media would be there, he also knew that he'd get questioned on Cambodia, and when the question came, he pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket on which he had previously written a two-paragraph response in case it was asked. The students applauded and the media reported it immediately. Not only that but Allen "confided to aides that he was greatly surprised that he was not dismissed immediately after his statement was released; he fully expected to be." It turned out that his dismissal had been decided on before he'd made the statement, the question at the White House only was when it would actually occur. Also note that at a press briefing four days later, the Presidential press secretary denied that Dr. Allen had been asked to resign because of his Cambodian statement. He was actually fired for real on June 10th some twenty days later, as Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare Robert Finch was given a directive to fire Dr. Allen. Per the author "The White House wanted loyalty above all else." The White House summoned reporters while the meeting between Finch and Allen was in progress and announced Dr. Allen's dismissal. "Allen was to be given no opportunity to resign." [It's ironic that his Cambodia statement actually give him a few extra weeks of employment because the Administration didn't want to see the statement and his firing as too obviously linked... modern public employees might study this as a temporary survival strategy! When you know you're going to get fired anyway, say something ideologically contrary to the Administration, and it might buy you a few extra weeks.]
85ff [Ouch] "When he reached the street, he was to discover just how thoroughly complete a Nixon dismissal could be. The government car to which the Commissioner was entitled had been taken away, leaving him no way to get home except by taxicab." Various other comments on his thinking at the time: "He did not wish to stay on and serve an administration which had no commitment or sense of urgency about education. ...conflicts and difficulties were present from the beginning. ... Allen's removal was a clear warning to other independent thinkers in the Nixon Administration and a signal to all middle and top-level administrators--no dissent would be tolerated." [Once again, if it was so clear that this was true about the Nixon Administration in retrospect, couldn't Allen have seen it in prospect? And thus foreseen more than enough reasons to not take the job in the first place?] Dr. Allen, then 59, took a position as a visiting lecturer at Princeton and then did speaking gigs around the country, while beginning to write a book that he would never finish.
Chapter 9: The National Institute of Education
92ff Thoughts here on the inertia of government agencies and institutions; on the Office of Education, which in 1969 expanded massively in personnel and budget "with little regard to questions of effectiveness and efficiency"; on Allen's proposal (never enacted) to create a National Institute of Education as an outside agency that would monitor the effectiveness of the Office of Education; also on a proposal to do pure research on education, researching how children learn, patterned after the National Institute of Health or the National Institute of Mental Health; this would be one of the domains of the National Institute of Education. On the legislation that Allen worked on and the questions that had to be resolved in developing that legislation, and on Dr. Allen's plans for the National Institute of Education's purpose. Allen had been fired before Congress ever acted on this bill, but in 1972 Congress did enact legislation creating the National Institute of Education. [Note that in 1979 this institute/agency was absorbed into the Office of Educational Research and Improvement, a research division in the US Department of Education, and then in 1985 it was basically closed down, its functions distributed throughout the OERI agency.]
Chapter 10: The Right to Read: Education's "Moonshot"
100ff On low literacy levels among portions of the US population; on 1960s-era education programs which were scattershot, doing things like expanding libraries, building media centers and serving breakfasts, but having no impact on the basic problem of literacy. "For some unexplained reason, schools were failing to help the children in the one area that they needed help the most--they were letting too many get through without learning to read well. This distressing evidence became a source of considerable embarrassment to the educational community. The promises of the 1960s were not being fulfilled." [A reader today can't help but assume that literacy rates have almost assuredly dropped even more from where they were in the late 60s. It's also perhaps worth thinking about the Fourth Turning phenomenon when institutions--in this case compulsory education institutions--stop performing their ostensible purposes and begin serving other purposes instead.]
102ff During the chaos of the teacher strikes in New York City in 1968, a woman came up and spoke to Dr. Allen at a parent meeting and used the phrase "right to read": this conversation had a great impact on Commissioner Allen, and he began using it as a slogan, later using it relentlessly during his time in Washington; Mrs. Nixon even called him after he gave the first formal public announcement of a "Right to Read" program on September 23, 1969; one month later she agreed to become honorary chairman of the Right to Read Council. Note, however, that the program never received White House support.
Chapter 11: The Education Commission of the States
110ff Questions here about which "level" of government should be responsible for building and maintaining school systems in light of the significant expansion of size and influence of the national government in Washington, DC. Further comments on how the Constitution is silent on schools; how the "right" of states to control education "was slowly being eroded" as school costs grew during the inflationary era after World War II; also on how the Federal government, with its tremendous taxing power, gained a lot of relative power over states/municipalities during these decades.
112ff On Harvard President James B. Conant; on his various works; on his close friendship with James Allen; on a discussions of linking States together in an interstate "compact" for education [interesting how this is an issue that doesn't really map well to the left/right political spectrum, it's more of a question of centralization/decentralization] Both Dr. Allen and Dr. Conant wanted to maintain state control, a sort of states' rights version of education. The idea here was be to have the 50 states join together to form nationwide policies themselves, not have them "handed down" from Washington; this organization came into being as the Education Commission of the States at a conference in 1965 [and this organization still exists as a nonprofit by the way]. Note also we learn in this chapter it was Conant who recommended Dr. Allen to Robert Finch for his Washington job.
Chapter 12: American Education in an Age of Transition
120ff On the major changes that occurred over the course of Allens' career.
121 Very interesting one-paragraph tangent here on how public schools kind of get "first blame" for the frustrations of the people, because they're more technically more politically accessible (local people vote for or against school taxes), but also because they are more physically accessible: teachers and administrators are members of the community, they face the people directly. In contrast, most statewide or nationwide institutions are so huge and faceless that there's not any real direct accountability to the people at all. Also there's no direct ability for citizens to vote for or against state or national taxes, borrowings or appropriations. Very, very interesting.] "Public schools have often been among the first of the public agencies to feel the effects of public dissatisfaction with conditions in America. There are several reasons for this. First, schools are the most readily available of all public institutions. In most states, people vote taxes to finance their schools at regular intervals. They do not vote directly on most other taxes; for example, they have no direct voice in military appropriations or Social Security taxes. But they do vote on school bond issues and school levies. If they are dissatisfied with the cost of government generally, the schools are virtually the only agency they have the opportunity to vote against. Schools are in their immediate neighborhood. There is an involvement of parents with their children's schoolwork; parents visit schools and become acquainted with teachers and administrators, who are themselves often residents of the community. The result of this close contact between parents and taxpayers with their schools is that schools feel the effect directly and immediately of any crisis of confidence in America."
[We can think about how to invert this idea, and sadly it explains how to reverse-engineer a large, nation-state control system: the key thing is to make sure as much of the surface area of that control system is faceless, unreachable by the people, not in contact with the people, and with budgetary constraints that are not controlled by the people: to maximize control you will want as much of your institution run this way, it then becomes untouchable, resistant to any limits to its powers, and it's even outside of the cognitive environment of the people! They're not really thinking about it because it's faceless and untouchable. As the author says, because schools are not (as) faceless, they become sort of an unfortunate target, as well as a metaphor or a symbol for what the people are angry about. Thus the schools likely catch a lot of flack and blame for things they have nothing to do with at all.]
123ff More interesting comments here on the late '60s, when college campuses had open confrontations between students and administrators; here's an interesting comment from Dr. Allen in a speech: "Far too much of the response [to unrest in schools and colleges] has been merely a seeking of ways of dispelling or quieting it so that things can go on very much as before." [Holy cow was he ever right: if you're a school administrator of course you'd want to just have things stay the way they are: the students are only there for four years, every year one-fourth of them literally leave, so you can easily wait them out while you live our your whole career! From the students standpoint, however, everything needs to move right now. Also the typical university or school institution they're battling against has many layers of control between students and the things they want changed (say, curriculum changes, endowment divestment, etc.). So these two opposed entities will needs to make significantly different chess moves. At the end of the day though, this is a great example of a gigantic chasm between the interests of faculty/administrators and the interest of students in a university setting.]
124ff Thoughts here on accountability of education institutions; fiscal and personnel management; satisfying the public that the school is performing its job; that tax money is spent prudently; etc.
Chapter 13: Education for Responsible Citizenship
130 Interesting quote here from the author articulating his philosophy of education: "There are two fundamental purposes of education in any organized society. The first is the preservation of the social order. This purpose adheres to the idea that the education of future generations in the basic beliefs of its citizens and of the laws of its government is essential if that society is to be preserved and advanced... The other purpose of education is that schools exist for the individual, for his or her own self-fulfillment. According to this purpose, schools are organized to give each individual child the education necessary to enable that child to live a satisfying life." On the complex resolution of these sometimes contrasting purposes, and on how these purposes can also overlap, with education offered to students on both citizenship and on arts and humanities. Further comments here on grappling with student movements and unrest, with technological changes, with environmental deterioration, with urban blight, decay and sprawl; also comments here from Dr. Allen on pollution and technology in speeches he made while working at the Nixon Administration; Dr. Allen proposing "that the out-of-doors become a classroom," also work-study programs to get teenagers into contact with political leaders who dealt with environmental issues; giving teachers special training and environmental education. [Unfortunately all of the steps that he took in the topic areas addressed in this chapter were either right before or right when he got terminated from his position in the Nixon Administration.] Finally comments here on the internationalization of education: Dr. Allen commenting on how in the 1960s American education was western-oriented, monolingual, etc., predicting that the education system would be internationalized.
Chapter 14: The Role of the Arts in Education
140ff Comments here on Allen's lifelong personal interest in the arts, on wanting a balanced education, on the importance of science but also with the arts; his support for arts programs at inner-city schools; quotes from his various speeches on the topic. On his creation of the division of humanities and the arts in the New York State Department of Education, "the first of its kind in the nation," responsible for developing a statewide program of performances in the arts made available to schools.
Chapter 15: The Church and Public Service
148ff On Dr. Allen's thoughts on the role of the church in American life and in American education. He occasionally spoke at churches; on his belief of the separation of church and state, consistent with the Supreme Court's decisions; on Allen as "the epitome of the committed Christian public servant."
Chapter 16: Legal Opinions of the State Commissioner of Education
154ff Discussion again here on how the Commissioner of Education in New York State had much more power and influence than even the United States Commissioner of Education, with a much larger staff and a much larger array of powers, with direct activity in policy making, etc. Also the New York Commissioner had "judicial authority over all matters pertaining to schools" and New York was unique for this bureaucracy structure, the commissioner and his office was actually given the authority to hear suits and render legally binding opinions in the educational domain [Interesting!]. All this despite the fact that James Allen was not a lawyer, nor a specialist in school law (he drew from a staff of legal advisors who would draw up briefs and give legal advice, especially on desegregization and other "thorny legal questions." [The desegregation legal decisions are discussed in Chapter 6; that chapter also addresses other policy views that Allen had.]
156ff Discussion of prayer in public school, struck down by the Supreme Court multiple times, also on subsequent decisions of the Supreme Court striking down the practice of daily Bible readings or the recitation of the Lord's prayer; the law did however allow a release time plan in which children could be released from school on a voluntary basis to attend religious classes in nearby churches; also on a controversy over the fourth stanza of The Star-Spangled Banner which had "unconstitutional" references to God and could not be used in prayers; on Allen making a decision about this, but also helping the state school systems deal with various community pressures caused by this issue.
158ff On loyalty oaths and the Feinberg Law enacted in 1949, requiring the Board of Regents to "eradicate subversive influences" in the school system; on the Regents asking teachers to sign a loyalty oath as a condition of employment; this was during a time of the spread of international communism; there's also a specific case where the New York City Board of Education not only required loyalty oaths but also required teachers to inform on other teachers who they believed to be members of the Communist party. "The commissioner had to decide whether a teacher's refusal to inform on another teacher could be used as a basis for dismissal in the same way that the refusal to sign the loyalty oath was used." Dr. Allen shut down the idea and this decision, although he was "supportive of the policy that removed admitted communists from teaching."
159ff Other cases/issues: on school dress codes and balancing the students and parents' rights with reasonable standards for proper dress; on disallowing expulsion without the student receiving a hearing etc.
In Memoriam
164ff This is a short coda to the book talking about the plane crash that killed James Allen and his wife, with various public statements made about him at his death, including articles and editorials in the New York Times and Washington Post.
To Read:
James B. Conant: Slums and Suburbs