Thomas O'Connor

A professor of history at Boston College, O'Connor is the author of Building a New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal 1950 to 1970 (Northeastern University Press, 1993).

Forty years ago, when the Boston Redevelopment Authority was founded, and work began on creating what we have come to know as the New Boston, the problems were mainly physical, including such things as a deteriorating infrastructure, the lack of highways, the lack of parking, the lack of outside investment.

Today, the problems of Boston are less physical and tangible. Our problems deal with education. They deal with morality. They deal with drugs. They deal with violence. They deal with civil rights. I would like to see the city put together a task force that would consist of leaders in the community who are involved in these problems. You've got to have people talking not about whether the high-rises are important, or whether the artery/tunnel is going to be fixed on time. You've got people dealing with that. But what are we going to do about education? Or what about violence? What about teenage suicide?

If I were to do one thing, it would be to substantially upgrade the public school system of the city. We can't just sit back and allow some kids to get a good education, and be inspired by the arts, and culture, and so forth, and have other kids just spending time in some dilapidated schoolhouse where the books are out of date, where the classes are crowded, and nobody gives a damn. It just doesn't seem right. The most depressing things that I find are when these youngsters, 10, 12, don't really have any regard for life. It's just a blank spirit there. They don't seem to have any sense that they have a future. If they don't end up on a slab, they're going to end up on welfare, and it doesn't make any difference anyway. I find it so sad.

I was just reading the autobiography of Harry Ellis Dickson, the second-in-command of the Pops. He went to the public schools in the West End, was in the school band, and learned his music that way. There are too many critics who feel that education consists of only the three R's, and that all this other stuff is a luxury, frosting on the cake. I would submit that in terms of the totality of a citizen's education, culture and the fine arts are essential ingredients.

I would like to see Boston as a center of civility, of culture and good taste -- maybe the one place in the entire country where people can go and get this sense of a community of well-read, well-behaved, polite, culturally literate people. And I mean this across the whole socio-economic board. So that the people living in the neighborhoods -- I'm thinking of places in Italy, for example, where the guy who cuts fish is singing an aria. People say, "Well, you're elitist." But I don't happen to regard that as elitism.

Great societies are remembered by what they contribute to the culture of the nation. And I think Boston is in a position to do this, to restore its reputation as the Athens of America. But we have to be conscious of it, and I don't think we are.

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