John F. Covaleskie
1993-2003
Northern Michigan University
jcovales@nmu.edu
I was born in 1947 in Brooklyn, NY. I was educated in the city's
catholic schools system -- eight years with the Sisters of Saint Joseph
and four years with the Jesuits. The typical characterization of this
sort of education as rigid and confining seems more of a charicature to
me; it did a great deal to foster my curiosity, and served me well, I
think.
I did four more years of Jesuit education in college, just post Vatican II, which
was an interesting time to be in a Catholic College. The climate in the
school at that time was more moral than religious, as one of my peers
once described it. My major was history, my minors were philosophy,
theology, and education. I think I never wanted to be anything but a
teacher from the time I passed the presdient and doctor phase of growing
up.
In this. I was fortunate; I wanted to be a teacher, I think, because my
parents made me certain that I would go to college. I never comnsidered
not doing so. And I never had any idea what else one could do with a
college degree. No one in my neighborhood, let alone in my family, had
ever gone to college. It was quite literally terra incognita, as was
the world beyond that would be opened for me.
I began teaching right out of college, and have never really done
anything else. I have been an assitant director of admissions, a
principal, and a regional curriculum coordinator, but what interetes me
about each of them was the teaching part. I have taught in every level
of the public school system, from kindergarten to college, and have
enjoyed every year.
My commitment to public education as a public function developed over
time. It seems to me that a public commitment to public schools is part
of what it meas to be a democratic society, rather than just a market
one. And this seems to me to be the most significant policy issue of
the nineties. For the first time there is a serious effort to change
education from a good that is partly public and partly private, one that
is partly discuessed as a political question and partly as an economic
one, into a fully private, completely market commodity. I am afraid
that school privatization and marketing is a bad idea whose time has
come. This is the area of my current work -- what is the value of
treating education as a political and civic function.
I was married in 1969, divorced in 1977, and am planning to remarry on
June 21, 1997. I moved to Marquette, MI, in 1993 to begin teaching in
the department of education at Northern Michigan University. The place
is the most beautiful in which I can imagine living, the severity of the
winters notwithstanding.
I have two daughters. Deirdre Anne, 25, works in management at
TGIFridays in Atlanta, GA. Kristin Marie, 21, is a kindergarten teacher
in the Baltimore City Schools. They are too far away from here, and I
miss them, but I am awfully proud of them both.
John F. Covaleskie
Assistant Professor of Education
113 Magers Hall
Northern Michigan University
Marquette, MI 49855
906/227-2768
JCOVALES@NMU.EDU
If you want truly to understand something,
try to change it—
Kurt Lewin
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