Teaching, The Noblest Calling Of All

Last month, I returned to the classroom.

Regulars to this space know that my first career, back a century or so ago, was as an educator in the New York City school system where I served as both teacher and administrator. My four year stint in the classroom ended in 1972 when I became Acting Assistant Principal of P.S. 219 Queens in District 25.

Since then I had the opportunity and pleasure of teaching or guest lecturing at St. John’s, Kingsborough and New York Community College. Those stints were at least a quarter of a century ago. Wow! 

Although, when opportunity avails itself, I play the professorial role to Trib staff — especially editorial — it is too infrequent to my liking. Teaching is a noble profession and a nobler calling. Recognizing that someone actual acquired useful knowledge from you is the ultimate reward of having that knowledge. Sharing ideas, concepts and thought processes to enlighten and challenge is about as good as it gets.

I got the chance again.

At the invitation of Marcia Comrie, my friend who helped found the PRESS of Southeast Queens with me, I found myself at York College. Marcia, the faculty advisor of the student newspaper, Pandora’s Box, invited me to guest lecture to a class she teaches with Mira Lowe, news editor of Newsday.

The class was preceded by a 20-minute visit with Dr. Robert Hampton, York’s new President. Hampton is an intelligent, delightful addition to the Queens community and views his task at York with reality and vision. We wish him well.

As I entered the classroom with Marcia, Mira was clearing her desk for me and I found myself a quarter of a century later, perhaps a little grayer, preparing myself to challenge a class as Marcia emoted with some fancy introduction of me.

The racially diverse class of some 20 men and women was tough to work. College students don’t chime in with the freedom that a true learning laboratory should inspire.

It started out slowly, I asked: Who wants to be a reporter?

A show of hands.

The follow-up question, "Why?" seemed overwhelming at the beginning.

What should we look for in a reporter?

They responded with one or two word answers: curiosity, flexibility, news judgment, writing skills, dedication, attention to detail.

I added the word "desire" and began to recount some memorable journalistic endeavors.

They got involved.

We talked ethics in journalism — yes, it exists.

They were interested.

They asked about political correctness.

I answered — politically incorrectly.

We talked about reporting a story and I turned to lateral thinking — a puzzle solving skill I use to help new reporters discover that there are many ways to question and attack a story:

As I started throwing out twists to traditional patterns, they became involved, playing with these optical illusions of words and the classroom moved closer to a place where ideas were exchanged. I challenged. They responded and even challenged back.

There was the questioner — a hand-raised inquiry for every variety of subject.

The note taker — I really don’t know why — but she wrote more than I spoke.

The heckler — I pity the poor guy she winds up with — just kidding.

It was a classroom, probably like many others across the country. Students there to learn, get a degree, and spend their transitional years in search of their future.

And all too clearly, I knew that I missed teaching. For no matter how large my weekly audience, writing doesn’t change the future.

Teaching can.

Debt Takes No Holiday; NYS In Fiscal Quagmire

Henry Stern

Arnold Schwarzenegger is now Governor of California, beneficiary of a public uprising at the way the state was being run by Gray Davis. 

The huge deficit in California should not divert us from the fiscal disaster impending in New York State.  At a recent Citizens Budget Commission conference in Palisades, New York, the theme was the State: how it overspends, how it has increased debt by using public authorities to borrow billions of dollars (Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said these extra-budgetary entities evoked Enron economics), how the State uses one-shots to reduce structural deficits, etc.  It was pointed out that, unlike the City’s, the State budget does not follow GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles). 

Former Governor Hugh L. Carey gave the keynote speech and was in rare form, summarizing the state’s financial condition and recalling how he had saved New York City from bankruptcy in 1975 by shared sacrifice, with business, labor and government working together to help the city out of that fiscal crisis. There was little cooperation in the spasm of 1991, which led to massive layoffs of city employees. Now the state is in a similar position, facing increasing debt and demand for expenditures.

The debt that New York State has incurred now exceeds 38 billion dollars and is the highest total for any state. This debt requires billions of dollars to be paid each year in interest, making it more difficult to balance the budget. The sale of tobacco bonds, secured by future payments by the tobacco companies as part of the settlement of a nationwide lawsuit, was used to balance this year’s state budget.

The overspending by the State is the fault of both the Governor and the Legislature.  In 2002, running for re-election, Governor Pataki reached an agreement with Dennis Rivera, head of the Hospital Workers Union, for substantial raises for health and hospital employees, which the state helped to finance.  He paid long-overdue aid to the city so it could give increases to Randi Weingarten’s UFT. In turn, he received the endorsement of both union leaders, creating a climate in which his re-election was inevitable. New York’s deteriorating financial situation was kept under wraps during the campaign, and when Comptroller Carl McCall, Democratic candidate for governor, pointed out the fiscal consequences of the Governor’s generosity, he was denounced by the union leaders, and remained essentially silent on fiscal issues thereafter.

In fairness, one cannot blame Rivera or Weingarten for these agreements; they were acting in the interest of their membership. And the tradition of exchanging votes for favors is not new. What is remarkable here is the enormous cost of these transactions; it was cheaper a century ago when people were bought off as individuals, not en masse.

The State, which operates in a chilly, isolated place called Albany, has always received less media attention in New York City than city government.  State government is less accessible, less interesting, and does not affect our lives as directly as city services do. 

But the state does impose taxes, and a high tax climate leads to the loss both of businesses and people who can afford to pay the taxes. The cities and counties impose taxes as well, which are 72 percent higher than the national average. Local taxes are higher because the State requires localities to pay 25 percent of the $16 billion and growing Medicaid costs (the state pays 25 percent, the federal government 50 percent, the least the Feds pay to any state).  It is human nature and economic sense to try to avoid the taxman, especially if the money he demands is more than his colleagues in neighboring states require from their industries and their inhabitants.

The state legislature has for years been in the habit of enacting pension increases, enhancements and sweeteners, including bills creating presumptions that particular diseases are job related and therefore merit disability pensions. 

These backdoor burdens are imposed by legislators pliant to union (i.e., contributors’) demands for benefits that the unions failed to achieve in collective bargaining. 

These increases cost counties and cities hundreds of millions of dollars, but they are classic unfunded mandates, the state paying not a penny.

Finally, Schwarzenegger’s plan for California’s budget includes borrowing fifteen billion dollars. This will put the Golden State in the number one position in the United States in public debt, surpassing New York State, which will become number two. In this derby of debt, New York City is number three, and the other 48 states, plus hundreds of cities and public authorities (the most recent class of debtors) bring up the rear.

Of course, the National Debt dwarfs all state and local obligations.

Hasta la vista.

Not4Publication.com by Dom Nunziato