The Philadelphia Inquirer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page A11

Monday, September 28, 2009 THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER www.philly.com All Commentary I Above all, a moral humility School choice would reshape U.S. education Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich on Capitol Hill By Robert Enlow Tomorrow in Philadelphia, two of politics' most interesting personalities the Rev. Al Sharpton and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich are expected to join Education Secretary Arne Duncan in kicking off a tour of America's urban public schools. Sharpton and Gingrich have said they intend to draw attention to persistent problems and promising remedies in education. In putting the spotlight on fixing education, this odd couple plus one should focus on reforms that actually have a shot at helping kids.

The trio should use its bipartisan bully pulpit to focus on the one reform that can truly shake up public education: school choice. Since "A Nation at Risk," the landmark 1983 report to Ronald Reagan on the state of American education, the United States has continued to see high rates of adult illiteracy, a lack of educational progress relative to other nations, and a remarkable increase in taxpayer funding for public schools. From 1970 to 2003, average per-stu-dent spending in American schools soared 128 percent, its grand projects for remaking man and society. But his natural skepticism led him often to resist conservative counterenthusiasms as well most recently, the general panic about changing family structures. Irving had an abiding reverence for tradition and existing norms.

But he thought it both futile and antihuman to imagine we could arrest their evolution. He never yelled for history to stop. He was less concerned about the form of emerging family norms, such as France's non-marriage Civil Solidarity Pact, than whether they could in time perform the essential functions of the traditional family from the generational transmission of values to the socialization of young males. That spirit of skepticism and intellectual openness was a marvel. One of Irv-ing's triumphs was to have infused that spirit into the "Public Interest," the most serious and influential social-policy journal of our time.

Irving cofounded it in 1965, then closed it 40 years later, saying with characteristic equanimity, "No journal is meant to last forever." A new time, a new journal. On Sept. 8, 2009, the first issue of a new quarterly, "National Affairs" successor to the "Public Interest" was published. Irving Kristol died 10 days later, but not before writing a letter to its editor two generations his junior expressing pleasure at its creation. That small, tender shoot, yet another legacy of this great good life, was the last Irving lived to see.

We shall see many more. For Irving Kristol, doing good was about as unremarkable as breathing. By Charles Krauthammer After the plain pine box is lowered into the grave, the mourners are asked to come forward immediate family first and shovel dirt onto the casket. Only when it is fully covered, only when all that can be seen is dust, is the ceremony complete. Such is the Jewish way of burial.

Its simplicity, austerity, and unsentimentality would have appealed to Irving Kristol, who was buried by friends and family Tuesday. Equally fitting for this most unsentimental of men was the spare funeral service that preceded the burial. It consisted of the recitation of two Psalms and the Prayer for the Dead, and two short addresses: an appreciation by the rabbi, followed by a touching, unadorned remembrance by his son Bill. The wonder of Irving was that he combined this lack of sentimentality with a genuine generosity of spirit. He was a deeply good man who disdained shows of goodness, deflecting expressions of gratitude or admiration with a disarming charm and an irresistible smile.

That's because he possessed what might be called a moral humility. For Irving, doing good witness the posthumous flood of grateful e-mails, letters, and other testimonies from often young and uncelebrated beneficiaries of that goodness was as natural and unremarkable as breathing. Kristol's biography has been rehearsed in a hundred places. He was one of the great public intellectuals of our time, father of a movement, founder of magazines, nurturer of two generations of thinkers seeding our intellectual and political life for well over half a century. Having had the undeserved good fortune of knowing him during his 21-year sojourn in Washington, I can testify to something less known: his extraordinary equanimity.

His temperament was marked by a total lack of rancor. Angst, bitterness, and anguish were alien to him. That, of course, made him unusual among the fraternity of conservatives, because we believe that the world is going to hell in a handbas-ket. That makes us cranky. But not Irving.

Never Irving. He retained steadiness, serenity, and grace that expressed themselves in a courtliness couched in a calm, quiet humor. My theory of Irving is that this amazing equanimity was rooted in a profound sense of modesty. First, about himself. At 20, he got a job as a machinist's apprentice at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

He realized his future did not lie in rivets, he would recount with a smile, when the battleship turret he was working on was found to be pointing in the wrong direction. It could only shoot inward directly at the ship's own bridge. He was equally self-deprecating about his experiences as an infantryman in World War II France. he once said to me. "We were lost all the His gloriously unheroic view of himself extended to the rest of humanity its politics, its pretensions, its grandiose plans for the renovation of humanity.

This manifested itself in the work for which he is most celebrated: his penetrating, devastating critique of modern liberalism, and of Arne Duncan, secretary of education. The Rev. Al Sharpton, civil-rights activist. Charles Krauthammer is a Washington Post columnist. He can be contacted at letterscharleskrauthammer.com.

support school choice and public schools at the same time. Donations to private scholarship organizations are putting competitive pressure on some school districts that are losing pupils. The schools are paying attention to their lost customers and making improvements. Unfortunately, due to faltering state revenues and the impact of the recession, officials are considering reducing the size of the tax credit this year. They may shift some of the tax credits to the film industry.

That's a move that parents and political leaders from both sides of the aisle should view as a rudimentary mistake. But the Sharpton-Gingrich-Duncan tour illustrates just how far we've come. We can no longer deny that bad public schools are bad for our children and their future. We have a liberal civil-rights leader, the onetime leader of a conservative political movement, and the secretary of education joining hands to take a closer look at what might move America past its long-standing inertia on this issue. This moment is too important for feelgood photo opportunities and congratulatory press conferences about so-called reforms that just tinker around the edges.

President Obama and Democrats have been arguing that competition is the key to a successful health-insurance model in America. Competition will also improve public schools. Give parents their own money whether through tax-credit scholarships, such as in Pennsylvania, or voucher programs, such as in Washington and watch skeptics embrace hope and change for the next generation of inner-city schoolchildren. yet student achievement did not rise in tandem. Despite huge increases in spending, 17-year-olds' performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress did not improve during that period.

Children stuck in schools with a high incidence of violence and generations of academic failure don't have years to wait for a rescue mission, and that includes Philadelphia's. Each year lost is another class drifting at sea dropouts who wind up with lower incomes, early pregnancies, drug and alcohol addictions, and prison sentences. Educators have a moral obligation to offer children hope. They must provide an education that will give them a shot at a job and earning potential. Serious, lasting changes in education can be brought about by the mere threat of competition, which puts the focus on the real consumers: parents and their children.

We saw it beginning in the late 1990s, when a school-voucher program was instituted for children in failing public schools in Florida. Principals and superintendents reacted by offering school on Saturdays, tutorial programs, and home visits, all in an effort to do anything they could to help children learn. And it worked: Student achievement improved. Here in Pennsylvania, Democrats and Republicans have worked together in recent years to give children more educational choices. For example, in 2007, Gov.

Rendell signed legislation expanding a state tax credit for businesses that want to donate to scholarship organizations or public-school improvement projects. Because of the expansion of the program, 44,000 students a year get scholarships to attend private schools that work better for them. The corporate tax break is capped at $75 million a year, and hundreds of Pennsylvania business are taking advantage of it to FREE SEMINAR ON BACK PAIN Back pain is one of the most common medical problems, affecting 8 out of 10 people at some point in their lives. It can range from a dull, constant ache to sharp, shooting pains surgeries that treat chronic back and neck pain with less risk and less recovery time than traditional open back surgeries or fusions. In fact, the LSI experience has been streamlined into a signature that make even the easiest tasks extremely difficult.

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If the cuts become final, as many as 400 of the DEP's 3,000 employees would be let go. This would leave insufficient resources to enforce the laws that protect the quality of our air, water, and soil. In addition to the DEP cuts, the budget agreement requires leasing an excessive area of DATES Wednesday, October 1 4th at Thursday, October 15th at LOCATION Embassy Suites Valley Forge 888 Chesterbrook Blvd. Wayne, PA 19087 (610) 647-6700-For directions only forest land is necessary to help our economy and access a needed resource. But it is important to note that about 660,000 of the 1.5 million acres of state forest in the Marcellus Shale play is already available for drilling.

Using the best forest-management practices, the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources not politicians should determine how much acreage is offered for drilling. A better way to raise revenue would be to tax the natural gas from wells that are already leased. Almost every other state where natural-gas drilling occurs levies such a severance tax. To lease additional state forest land without imposing a severance tax would be fiscally irresponsible as well as bad public policy. Legislative leaders are working to produce a final budget document that I and my fellow state legislators will vote on.

When we do, let's remember that Pennsylvania's environment should not be compromised to solve short-term fiscal problems. The proposal would cut DEP funding 25 percent and open more acres for drilling. state forest to raise revenue. Although the specifics remain secret and have changed over time, the possibilities have included offering as much as 100,000 more acres of state forest for Marcellus Shale natural-gas drill ment of Environmental Protection's funding almost 25 percent and offer hundreds of thousands of additional acres of state forest land for natural-gas drilling. In hard times, even important state programs must face cuts, TO REGISTER 1 -866-770-8860 www.spineseminar.comwayne ing this year, and again as much the following year.

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But the disproportionate reduction in the DEP budget from $229 million to $173 million reflects an attempt to cripple environmental protection more than it does a good-faith effort to marshal scarce resources. Even without these proposed cuts, the DEP has been forced to scale back important programs, such as those aimed at eradication of West Nile virus and black flies. In addition, the Keystone Home Energy LSI 11 laser Spine institute Get your life back Greg Vitali is a Democratic state representative from Delaware County and a member of the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee. He can be contacted via www.pahouse.comvitali..