Confronting the Morality of MEDIOCRITY.

• Author: McNamara, Joseph S.

The U.S. spends nearly $620,000,000,000 annually on education. Yet, this massive infusion of money has failed to generate better schools. How long will Americans accept this dismal performance?

When I was an undergraduate, the Jesuit priests at Regis College in Denver, Colo., always insisted that you would be defined by what you did, not by what you said. "Agere sequitur esse," they intoned in Latin--"to act follows to be." Moreover, the Jesuits taught us that some of the most important questions also were the shortest: "So what?" and "Who cares?" When looking at the role of competition in education, the same warning would apply: Don't listen to what people say; look at what they do. Consider the effects of those actions and ask yourself who should care.

Often, the difference between what people say and what they do can be astounding. Consider the following sentences:

* Citizens are equal before the law, without regard to race, nationality, sex, or religion.

* Citizens of different races and nationalities have equal rights.

* Citizens are guaranteed freedom of conscience.

* Citizens are guaranteed freedom of religion.

* Citizens have the fight to protection by the courts.

* Citizens of other countries are guaranteed rights and freedoms provided by law.

* Citizens are guaranteed inviolability of the person.

* Men and women have equal rights.

* No one may enter a home unlawfully.

* No one may be arrested except by a court decision.

All sound good, but what actions did these words produce? In spite of their independent and democratic tone, echoing America's Declaration of Independence and other founding documents, they actually' came from the 1978 Constitution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The U.S.S.R. said all that in writing and did virtually the opposite in practice.

The former Soviet Union offered an example of what competition can do, because that's what the arms race was--competition, pure and simple. Operation Solo, John Barron's chronicle of the three decades of intelligence gathering by Morris and Eva Childs, demonstrates how the "Golden Geeks" of Silicon Valley pulled the Soviet Union apart or, more accurately, computered it to death. The very existence of cruise and Pershing missiles and the determination of Pres. Ronald Reagan forced the U.S.S.R. to admit it no longer could compete with American expertise, and the rest is history.

An acquaintance of mine, a teachers' union member, offers a perfect example of how and why most public school teachers misunderstand and fear competition. When I once asked him to describe the worst thing that ever happened to the American auto industry, his immediate answer was "foreign cars." When I told him that foreign cars had been around for decades without making so much as a competitive ripple in Detroit's motor pool, he rethought his answer and said, "Japanese cars."

Why the distinction? Because, as long as a few Mercedes-Benzes, Austin-Healeys, and MGBs were sold, there really wasn't much of a threat. However, when hundreds of thousands of well-made Japanese smaller cars were sold whose owners later bought larger, more expensive, and even better-made Japanese cars, things changed for the auto industry. The people who were buying the cars could walk into one dealership and, if they didn't like what they saw, what they were told, or how they were treated, they simply voted with their feet and spent their money somewhere else.

Analogously, as long as you had a few kids in Catholic schools, some in prep schools, and others in specialized academies, there wasn't much of a threat. No one was very concerned because there virtually was no choice for most people but to send their offspring to public schools that had, and have, a monopoly. Parents without enough money to fund a private education after paying for a public one with taxes were stuck.

Expand the market, though, to make the choices more varied and possible, make the quality obvious, and introduce at least a limited notion of shopping for the best buy--all of which the Japanese did. Then match up with an arrogant, belligerent, self-serving monopoly and watch competition do for education exactly what it did for Detroit and the Soviet Union. Competition either...