The Media
By TOM LITTLEWOOD

The coverage of Chicago's school crisis

THE CHICAGO school predicament was made to order for the kind of knee-jerk anti-Chicago editorial interpretation that has had such a profoundly divisive influence on the politics of sectionalism throughout much of the history of Illinois.

Instead of constructively considering the staggering educational problems of a huge school system in an urban center undergoing social change that is incomprehensible and frightening to most downstate citizens, the downstate press reacted almost in unison: not one penny more from the state treasury.

The Peoria Journal Star saw no reason why the state "should be expected to send a CARE package of money to Chicago."

"Chicago Schools not the State's Problem." headlined an editorial in the Danville Commercial-News.

"It must be Chicago and Chicagoans who 'save' the Chicago school system from a disaster of its own making," echoed the Quincy Herald-Whig.

The Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette compared Chicago school taxes with those in the "highly respected" DuPage county region and commented, "Let Chicago Pay For Its Schools," without even addressing the considerable differences between the school problems in central city and suburbs.

But the prize for illuminating editorial analysis must go to the Taylorville Breeze-Courier, which spoke up for the "harder working downstate people" and dismissed Chicago as "a mess . . . a culprit of unequaled depredation, uncouth, unscrupulous, almost savage, barbarous, lying, cheating, irresponsible."

Of course, Mayor Byrne brought some of this on herself by immediately waving the state Constitution and demanding a solution from Springfield. Down through the years Chicago's representatives in Springfield have exhibited an arrogant provincialism of their own with little thought to what the state interest might be. The typical Chicago legislator thinks of everything south of Park Forest as one big cornfield. The instant Chicago response to about any public problem is: What can we trade away to get more money from the state?

In their own way, Chicago newspapers reflect this lack of statewide perspective. It is interesting to speculate how the politics of Illinois might have been shaped differently (perhaps with less sectional hostility) if there were one or more newspapers that considered public issues with a truly Illinois focus in the way the Register and Tribune of Des Moines do in Iowa.

There were some bright spots in the early coverage of the Chicago school story. Margaret Holt, educational editor of the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, analyzed the Chicago problems and their likely effect on her readers in an enlightening, responsible fashion: "The state role in education financing increasingly is becoming one of guiding money to those districts that cannot afford to do the things other districts can. By those standards most northwest suburban districts do not need help."

The Bloomington Pantograph asked its readers to "remember that Chicago students, many of them poor and underprivileged, are citizens of the state whose lives will be our eventual reward or burden. Education for Chicago's youth is a statewide concern."

The Bloomington Pantagraph's editorials are consistently thoughtful and informative even though the newspaper could be and should be much better than it is. Illinois is fortunate in having the editorial insight of a journalist as witty, urbane and wise as Harold Listen, editor of the Pantagraph.

The Chicago school crisis is an appropriate occasion for saluting another editor, Robert Hartley, the former leader of the Lindsay-Schaub newspapers based in Decatur. The Lee newspaper group, which acquired the Lindsay-Schaub papers last year, could not find a place for Hartley in its far-flung organization, and he is now executive editor of the Toledo Blade in Ohio. Because of his move to Ohio, we missed having a piece of writing that would have been more than a complaint. School finance was the type of subject that the old Lindsay-Schaub news service liked to dig its teeth into. It is a complicated issue, given to wildly differing interpretations. It is a subject crying out for reasoned in-depth clarification and leadership, and Hartley's analysis has been missed.

Talking recently to a group of interviewers about Hartley and the old Lindsay-Schaub crew, Gov. Thompson remarked that it's easy for the press and elected officials to become elitist about what's good for the people. "It's a fine line," he said, "between leadership and knowing what's good for the people because we're smarter than they are and we'll tell them what we're going to do with their tax dollars."

In the end the state's responsibility for education in Chicago is a political decision, and examining the full social dimensions of the Chicago school problems is hardly a display of elitist. The news media of Illinois can either help lead the way to a reasonable resolution that is in the best interests of all the people of the state, or they can fan the flames of sectionalism by conjuring up images of the big city on the lake as a cesspool of sloth and venality.

34/April 1980/Illinois Issues