Editor’s Message: The Zarb Report, Dr. C, and the Wonders of American Education

This summer our older daughter received her MFA from Georgia State University, an exemplary institution that serves over 35,000 students in the Atlanta metro area. My wife and I were proud parents and attended eagerly, of course, but we were curious to see that GSU was awarding an Honorary Doctorate to the founder of the chain of restaurants called Chick Fil-A. In his acceptance speech, the newly anointed Dr. Truett Cathy mused about how he had been just an average “C” student, but had learned more profitable lessons in the retail food business, which eventually earned him, not just pride in his accomplishments, but an impressive fortune to donate to GSU as well. When Dr. Cathy was finished, the President of the University graciously thanked him - over and over again – both for his comments, and for this prodigious support, and the audience– including my wife and I – stood and applauded.

Dr. Cathy is probably a Great American, and the President of GSU is certainly a successful educational administrator, but I had to wonder if the CEO of Chick Fil-A would have been more appropriately celebrated with a Lifetime Achievement Award rather than an Honorary Doctorate.

The American literary genius Mark Twain, on the other hand, clearly deserved his Honorary Masters degree from Yale University, as well as his Honorary Doctor of Letters from Oxford University. Twain’s contributions to the Arts and Sciences on both sides of the Atlantic were indisputable, and for Academia to acknowledge him with its highest degree was both appropriate and pleasant.

This is not because Samuel Clemens was any better educated than the former Mr. Cathy – he wasn’t – but simply because what he had accomplished as Mark Twain the Writer was something which both Yale and Oxford sought to promote through formal study. Now, fast forward to the New York State Zarb

Report of 2004, whose commissioner, Frank G. Zarb has a School of Business named after him at Hofstra University. His resume is also impressive – dwelling as it does in the worlds of law and investment - even to someone like myself, whose entire working life has been spent within sniffing distance of classroom bulletin boards and the dust of chalk.

Zarb and the governor who appointed him want to do away with administrative tenure in a profession about which they know little or nothing. The State of New York has already created Charter Schools so that clumsy business corporations can take a crack at wringing private profit out of an underfunded public system. Our schools have already bowed to the computer conglomerates by stuffing classrooms full of advanced technology that is – more often than not – only used by the kids to carry on Chat Room conversations. And higher education has already conceded the battle about whether we should exchange the generous donations from businessmen like Dr. Cathy for distinguished recognition from the Halls of the Academy. Very little of this silliness, however, undermines the basic structure within which we continue to do our jobs as educators in the nations’ schoolhouses.

On the other hand, would the distinguished President of Georgia State University turn over the administration of his school to the CEO of Georgia’s Chick- Fil-A?

Of course not!

The elimination of administrative tenure as recommended by Governor George Pataki and Frank G. Zarb, however, is a horse of a different color. Donald Trump – as we all know – recently resigned from the Board that controls his bankrupt casino empire. Trump failed as an administrator - but not before he set back the progress of human relations and traumatized a generation of wannabe business tycoons with his trademark dismissal: “You’re fired!”

Both Zarb and the George Pataki now want to apply Trump’s medicine to administrators and all that ails the public schools. It didn’t work for Donald Trump’s empire, and it won’t work in public education, because such simplistic heavy handedness when the future of our nations’ youth is considered, is both uninformed and vile.

Bob Liftig

Editor

The Journal, and Regionals