RC Schools and Social Capital | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: If you are free that Wednesday nite, it might be worth a look. Here are my comments from MSW's review of that book:
If they are arguing for school vouchers than in the end it is a political analysis aimed at teachers - the kind of garbage one expects from the Heritage Foundation or the Manhatten Institute. While they talk about Charter conversion not being adequate to stop social pathology, I don't see that they have tested it by looking at the Charter conversion in Washington, DC - which also had a temporary school voucher program for comparison purposes. Chicago might not have been the best test case.
The fact also remains that schools are closed when parishes are no longer vibrant - mostly because the families have moved away. The pathologies may very well be because of white flight - which is not just a phenomenon of the sixties. While some diocese have kept schools open or made them charter schools when the parish community leaves (Washington, DC), Chicago clearly has not. It might also be that the parish has become Latino and the immigrant families simply cannot afford tuition and the pathology is from the influx of poorer people - since it is really poverty, not race, that causes crime (or opportunity - Capone was an Italian Catholic, Mayer Lansky was Jewish but both were crooks who tapped on the immigrant community for foot solidiers. It may be that ending the drug war is the answer to ending pathologies in the neighborhood - including the police war against black men - which leaves their families rudderless. Some alternative titles could have been "Lost Fathers, Lost Community", "Lost Middle Class, Lost Community" or the very un-PC "Lost White People, Lost Community."
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