Often when a discussion of educational problems begins, the excuse offered for shortcomings becomes "it's a cultural change."

True enough, there have been many cultural changes over the past 50 years and behaviors that were totally unacceptable 50 years ago are now either considered "tolerable" or acceptable.

Sadly many of these changes have not been positive for education.

Recently I received an e-mail from a correspondent demeaning the effects of the media on any serious discussion of education.

There are certainly evidences that would support his contentions.

Prime time shows, watched by our youth, certainly have not portrayed taking time for serious learning in a very serious light.

In fact terms such as "geek," "nerd" and "dork" have been used to demean those who have applied themselves to what has long been considered "book learning."

In the past 50 years we have seen secondary schools focus much more upon "socialization" and "entertainment."

Courses offered in these schools have become "student driven" instead of knowledge driven.

Parents now seem to be more concerned about their children being "satisfied" than being "educated."

While there have been recent studies about who does well in school that suggest that "serious" students do better than "happy" students in our "child centered" environment, we tend to overlook this.

Unfortunately in much of the rest of the world there isn't such compassion for youth, and the results are pretty clear.

Have there been any "cultural changes" that have improved society for most of us? Not many that I can recall.

There is one outstanding example of a "cultural shift" that does stand out for me.

New York City

I worked there in the late 1960's, and thought that the city could not continue on its present course without a total collapse.

Graffiti was everywhere; hulks of cars were on the expressways every day, subway violence, and violent crime was everywhere.

The decaying buildings and infra-structure made everyday a new challenge with streets buckling in hot weather and snow removal problematic.

Several mayors had promised "reform" in campaign promises only to preside over more decay.

I have often said I considered my exit from New York City to be one of my best accomplishments!

About five years ago I was asked to attend a sales conference in New York City and I agreed, somewhat reluctantly to go.

It was chance to "extend" the trip to visit my home town and to take a vacation on Prince Edward Island after the meeting that made it attractive.

I was astounded by some of the changes that I observed in New York City!

Subways were clean, with no graffiti, traffic moved expeditiously, crime rates seemed to be lower, and some of the atrocities that made national news in the late 60's and early 70's didn't seem to be present.

What made this change possible?

My analysis, which may be challenged, is that it was one "leader" who was fed up with what he saw and took some very, some may say draconian, measures to halt some of the "social practices" that were contributing to the decay of the city.

Rudolph Giuliani, mayor from 1994 to 2001, was a former prosecutor in the city who had seen the decay from a very close association with the court cases that resulted from many of the situations that had lead to decline of the city.

Mayor Giuliani's approach to "change" was to "deal with the small stuff" in the hopes that if an appropriate behavior at the lowest levels was addressed, larger issues would not develop.

Jumping the turnstiles in a subway, graffiti, window breakage, etc, were treated as chargeable offenses, and the youth of the city were put on notice that age was not an excuse for bad behavior.

"Do the crime and serve the time," might describe Mayor Giuliani's motto.

The results of this Republican, elected in a very Democratic city, are hard to argue with.

In the case of education, the mayor embarked on trying to change the schools without the same success.

He struggled with the unions, the school board, and the administration and did succeed in gaining some control of the situation prior to leaving office.

The current Mayor, Bloomberg has continued his attempts to improve education in the city.

What does this illustrate?

Leadership, with a vision, can make positive changes even if the change is painful to some of the established "structures."

Youths, unions, and many other groups were uniformly opposed to most of what the mayor proposed, but that didn't stop him.

He was convinced that a return to observation of rules and traditional conventions would improve the city.

The results are pretty impressive.

What might this suggest about education?

I think that there are a great many similarities between the situation in New York City in the 1960-70's and what we now see in education.

"Rules" are "negotiable," focus on learning is problematic, and we have seen a decline in the level of knowledge skills of our youth.

If the rules of learning haven't changed, and I haven't heard of any mutations that might suggest this, then it must be time for a "Giuliani" to appear if we are to rejoin the newly developing world.

In the State of Washington this only requires a few school board members to have this passion.

When is "enough, enough?"

Charlie Hoff is a former member of the Board of Education for Federal Way Public Schools. His weekly column will appear in upcoming issues of the Federal Way News and online at www.federalwaynews.net.