CALIFORNIA'S THIRD WORLD EDUCATION SYSTEM By David A. Chodack It is ironic, yet at the same time,  appropriate and symbolic that a majority of Californians voted for Proposition 187, which was aimed at denying the children of illegal immigrants - most of them presumably from Third World countries - a public school education. It is ironic because California is rapidly developing an education system worthy of and appropriate for, an impoverished Third World country.. In most Third World countries, Civil Service pay is a joke. No one seriously expects  Police or judges, or teachers, to live on their salaries. For those with money, this system has two benefits. First of all, they don't have to pay high taxes  to support realistic salaries for civil servants. Secondly, they have the money to pay bribes and this gives them the power to influence those underpaid civil servants and buy themselves privileges which those of lesser means do not enjoy, including an education for their children. It is not only Police and judges and government ministers who use the power of their positions to supplement their official incomes. In Thailand, this Summer, parents protested that school children were being forced to buy overpriced school lunches of inferior quality. Those who dared to bring their lunch from home were beaten for their crime. The principal, meanwhile defended the practice as necessary  and denied only that the lunches were inferior. What does all this have to do with California and the state of our own public schools?  Unfortunately, much too much. A recent article in the "Sunday Chronicle-Examiner" described the plight of teachers in the Bay Area. Not only is buying a home in the Bay Area out of the question on a teacher's salary, even renting a decent apartment is a luxury many teachers can not afford. Newly hired teachers are forced to cram three and four people into one and two  bedroom apartments and of course, the idea of ever owning their homes is out of the question. It wasn't always this way. 20 years ago,  the average home in the Bay area cost about twice the amount of a starting teachers salary, maybe three times a starting teacher's salary for a really nice home. Teaching was a viable career and people could expect to raise a family and have a normal life on a teacher's salary. That was then. This is now. Today, the average Bay Area home costs 10 to 15 times the average starting salary for teachers and six to 10 times the salary of an experienced teacher at the top of the pay scale. But it is not just the cost of housing which is making  life increasingly difficult for teachers. The cost of a college education has also soared and many if not most young teachers are starting their careers deeply in debt. This has not yet lead  to corruption in the schools with teachers taking bribes to give students good grades just so that they can supplement their inadequate salaries. However, it is forcing many of them to take second jobs and creating an unequal educational system for students, in which those with more money get a better education, because their families can afford private tutoring. Teachers who used to have time to stay after school to help those students who needed individual attention and extra help, now have to run out the door to get to their second jobs. Even older, better paid teachers or those with working spouses who don't have to work second jobs, feel overwhelmed by paperwork and the increasing demands being put on teachers. They have less time and energy  to give students  individual attention, during or after class. As a result, we are experiencing a serious gap in  educational opportunities which I call the "Tutoring gap" and this is what really qualifies California's educational system as being worthy of a poor - and poorly run - Third World country, rather than what used to be considered the most advanced state in the most advanced country in the world. It is no coincidence that as teachers feel more pressured and the public becomes more and more disillusioned with the state of the public schools, private, after school learning centers and in-home tutoring companies are becoming a major growth industry. Many of these private companies hire only credentialed teachers and they count on two things for their growing success: parents who feel the need to supplement the education their children are getting (or not getting) in the public schools and  teachers who feel the need to supplement the salaries they get for teaching in those public schools. Those children whose parents can afford $25 an hour and more for after-school learning centers and/or in-home tutoring, get the individual attention they can no longer get in school and so they have a distinct advantage over those who are less fortunate. This is the classic pattern in  Third World countries, but is it really the type of education system  that we want  here? If parents felt their children were getting an adequate education in the public schools, the private tutoring services would not have many clients. If teachers felt they were being paid a living wage in the public schools, then these tutoring companies would have trouble recruiting  qualified teachers. Public schools are in trouble and private tutoring companies are thriving all across the country, but in California, the problem is particularly acute for several reasons. California used to be at, or  near the top, when states were ranked according to the amount of money they spent per pupil. Now California is 49th out of 50 states and the average salary for teachers lags behind other states too. At the same time, California expects more from its public school teachers, since it has an increasingly diverse population with students coming from all over the world. In the New Haven school district in Union City, for example, students speak 87 different languages besides English. California also requires  an expensive fifth year of college education just to get a teaching credential. In most states, prospective teachers qualify for a credential in four years, while they are getting their undergraduate degrees. In California, getting a teaching credential can cost thousands of dollars extra, on top of the cost of a college degree. All this for a job which won't even pay the rent. Is it any wonder that more and more teachers are selling their services privately to the highest bidder? After all, that's the way it's done in most Third World, underdeveloped countries. 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