A society that worships money is a society in peril

The Birmingham superintendent puts it this way. “The Detroit schools need more money. The solution is not to take it from Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills.” And, again, one wonders where else one would take it from if not from where it is.

The Ann Arbor superintendent ridicules what he describes as “simple-minded solutions [that attempt] to make things equal.”

But of course, the need is not “to make things equal.” He would be correct to call this “simple-minded.” Funding and resources should be equal to the needs that children face. The children of Detroit have greater needs than those of children in Ann Arbor. They should get more than children in Ann Arbor, more than kids in Bloomfield Hills or Birmingham. Calling ethics “simple-minded” is consistent with the tendency to label obvious solutions, that might cost us something, unsophisticated and to favor more diffuse solutions that will cost us nothing and, in any case, will not be implemented….More spending on public education, said [President George H. W. Bush] isn’t “the best answer.” Mr. Bush went on to caution parents of poor children who see money “as a cure” for education problems. “A society that worships money…” said the president, “is a society in peril.”

Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities