Letter Winners

During the first 25 years after World War II, Americans lived in a virtual employment paradise. Most of the economies of Europe and Asia had been devastated and even some of the “winners” like Britain found themselves bankrupt and depressed.

In those immediate post-war years, the U.S. economy produced more goods and services than all of the other nations of the world combined. Under the rules produced by these unique circumstances an American worker, even without a high school diploma, could find basic industrial employment at wages that permitted him to buy a house and a car, modern appliances and still make investments for his children’s education. This, with only one parent, usually the man, working outside the home. All that was required was a strong back, some manual dexterity and a good attendance record.

With that kind of affluence available to even the minimally educated, it was not unusual for blue-collar workers and their families to live in the same neighborhoods and educate their children in the same schools with doctors, lawyers and other members of what we now call the upper middle class.

Widespread availability of high-paying jobs also worked to suppress crime which is predominantly a product of poverty and social isolation. This happy situation could not, and did not, last.

Our laudable efforts to assist in rebuilding other nations’ economies produced competition from abroad. Low-skilled work could be done much more cheaply in developing countries.

The “old” economy began to migrate overseas. In its place has come a new economy based predominantly on computer-assisted manufacturing and professional and information services. In order to take part in this new economy and to reap the material benefits that flow from it, the American worker must be much better educated and must bring multi-dimensional skills to the economic table.

More often than not, a high school diploma will assure you of nothing more than a minimum-wage job. Even a college degree promises its recipient no more than the opportunity to compete for high-skill, high-pay positions in the new economic order.

Those people with the requisite education and work ethic to compete effectively reap the ever-greater material awards available. Those people who have failed to acquire the requisite education and skills to compete are economically vulnerable and fall farther and farther behind their better-educated peers. The economic paradise of the ‘50s and ‘60s has become the fool’s paradise of the ‘80s and ‘90s.

More than individual economic success is at stake here. The increasing wage disparity between the haves and have-nots is rapidly producing a class society with the better-educated and therefore better-paid people becoming more socially distant from their poorer brothers and sisters.

The well-off now live in their own suburban communities. Their children are educated in the better elementary and high schools. There is less interaction between members of the economic classes which inevitably leads to social isolation and, worse, a we-they society.

If this unhappy situation continues to grow, we may well end up like Brazil, where the very wealthy live in a gilded cage, drowning in wealth but living forever in fear of the mob which views them with hatred, suspicion and envy.

This grim future must not, and need not, occur, but to avoid it each American community has to make a fundamental shift in perception and priority. Good grades can no longer be seen as the province of “eggheads.” Academic success has become, almost literally, a matter of life and death for everyone and that message needs to be sent and reinforced by all of us.

The solution begins at home. Parents cannot kiss their children goodby in the morning and assume that our schools alone will bear this burden.

Only so much can be done in the classroom. Home study is vital. Parents need to be intimately aware of their children’s progress and spend time working with and encouraging them.

Mastering academic fundamentals requires drill and persistence. It may not be fun, but it is absolutely essential and parental involvement in the process, or the lack thereof, sends a clear message to the child about its importance. A parent who fails as a teacher fails as a parent.

Academic success also needs to be valued and celebrated. We have made the adulation of sports stars and entertainers a national pastime while the accomplishments of our scholars, young and old, go largely unrecognized. Our skewed priorities are creating a culture where simple notoriety is more attractive and profitable than genuine accomplishment.

In the face of such a culture, it is well to remember that is was our minds that got us out of the caves, not our physical prowess.

It is to redress this perceptual lunacy that the Spokane Scholars Foundation was begun. Since 1992, the Foundation has identified, honored and awarded over 500 of the very best high school students in Spokane County. Thanks to the commitment and generosity of hundreds of businesses, professionals, charitable foundations and private citizens, the Foundation has been able to award over $100,000 to our “best and brightest.”

At our annual spring banquet, these magnificent young men and women are presented to their community and given the kind of public recognition previously reserved for our top athletes. Our efforts have not gone unnoticed. Most of the public and private colleges and universities in this state match our awards for the student winners who attend their institutions.

The activities of the Spokane Scholars Foundation have made Spokane unique. In the entire country, Spokane is alone in providing community recognition for academic excellence.

This effort to enhance the status of scholarship should be duplicated in every home in every community in the country. Until it is, we are sowing the wind.

MEMO: Spokane attorney Louis Rukavina is the founder of the Spokane Scholars Foundation whose annual awards banquet will be held April 17 at the Spokane Convention Center. For information, call 459-3200.