This is a beautiful article by Jennifer Raab, president of Hunter College, which is part of the City University of New York. It appeared in the New York Daily News. When Virginia O’Hanlon attended Hunter College, the City University was tuition-free. In 1976, CUNY began to charge tuition, but it remains far less than private colleges and universities, and many students can piece together aid packages from state and federal funds.
“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.” It may be the most famous sentence in the history of local journalism.
Virginia O’Hanlon of 115 W. 95th St. was just 8 years old when she composed a letter to the editor, writing: “Some of my friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, ‘If you see it in The Sun it’s so.’ Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus?”
Yes, there is, the paper guaranteed her. “He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”
Those in the know must have been shocked to learn that the words came from the pen of veteran journalist Francis Pharcellus Church, brother of the Sun’s editor. Known to colleagues as a hard-boiled cynic, Church had never written so sentimentally. Now he tenderly assured young Virginia: “Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders that are unseen and unseeable in the world.”
Soon enough, thanks to free public higher education, Virginia saw those wonders for herself. Many of today’s newspaper readers know about the editorial. It has been widely reprinted, in the Daily News among many other papers, each year since it first appeared. It has inspired musical pageants.
But few know what happened to Virginia — or that her path in life actually followed Church’s advice to imagine the best.
The daughter of an NYPD coroner, young Virginia soon began harboring dreams that stretched beyond St. Nick’s annual visits. She aspired to teach — and motivate — children herself. So 10 years after writing to the Sun, Virginia O’Hanlon enrolled at Hunter College, which then, as now, educated many of the teachers employed by the New York City school system. Crucially, Hunter offered higher education to women of all races and religions — a rarity at the time of the school’s 1870 founding.
Graduating in 1910, Virginia went on to earn a Master’s and Ph.D., lived through the 1918 influenza pandemic, and taught grade school for decades. Eventually, she became junior principal of PS 401 in Brooklyn, a school renowned for providing an early version of “remote learning” to chronically sick children confined to the borough’s hospitals.
In 1949, Virginia O’Hanlon Douglas returned to Hunter to address students at her alma mater (and of course, retell her Santa Claus story). She retired in 1959, and died nearly 50 years ago, in 1971.
Her life — both the storybook version and the equally uplifting reality — serves as a reminder not only of faith questioned and reignited, but of the opportunities New York public education continues to provide, even now, amid the most stressful and prolonged crisis in city history.
In fact, when CollegeNET recently released its annual Social Mobility Index rankings of America’s colleges, it did not look at all like the usual “Best Colleges” lists topped by Ivy League names. The index, which analyzes colleges’ success at graduating low-income students into well-paying jobs, was front-loaded with public universities. Hunter ranked 9th out of 1,449 schools.
More than a century after Virginia matriculated, Hunter’s student population still offers a springboard to opportunity. Hunter has already served as the launchpad for, among others, Bella Abzug, Martina Arroyo, Ruby Dee, Pauli Murray, Dr. Rosalyn Yalow — and from our high school, such luminaries as Elena Kagan and Lin-Manuel Miranda.
Always, we’ve taken particular pride in students, from here and overseas, who are the first in their families to attend college.
Just look what the most recent graduating class is up to. Elliot Natanov, the son of immigrants who fled anti-Semitism in Uzbekistan, is now pursuing a career in sports medicine. Ahmet Doymaz, who immigrated from Turkey as a child, studies cancer and cell regulation. Evelyn Tawil, daughter of Syrian refugees, is pursuing a graduate degree in landscape architecture. Jennifer Dikler, whose parents fled Russia, won a coveted Luce Scholarship to study trade policy in Asia.
Among recent grads, Margarita Labkovich became a Schwartzman Fellow in 2020 and will spend a year at Beijing’s Tsinghua University before returning to medical school and resuming her career as chief operating officer of Retina Technologies (she already holds two patents). And Thamara Jean, daughter of a Haitian-born synagogue superintendent, now attends Oxford University as Hunter’s first-ever Rhodes Scholar. These remarkable young people are soaring above their circumstances, with Hunter’s full support at their backs — and no debt collectors at their front doors.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus: it’s called public education.
Thank you, Diane. Great article.
Agree. Love the last line: “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. It’s called public education.”
AMEN!
Public schools and public libraries are two of the most significant contributions to a democratic society. They provide young people of all socioeconomic levels access to a world outside of the world in which they live. This is particularly important to poor students that live in homes with few resources.
I enjoyed looking through the SMI (social mobility index). As expected, it is California and New York and New Jersey that provide students with education that enables students to enter careers and decent paying jobs. Louisiana and Texas also provide students with decent paying careers, most likely connected with oil and gas
I taught very poor ELLs for many years in a public school. I was fortunate enough to see the path many of my students took as they often came back to visit. Many of these students moved into middle class jobs in single generation. It was very gratifying to know that I was part of that process. You may not know who Shawn Carter is, but Jay-Z is a household name. He grew up in the Brooklyn projects. He dealt drugs for a time, but his love of language led him to become a superstar rapper. He credits his sixth grade public school teacher for encouraging his love of words.
Poor students, more than middle class students, need qualified human teachers to guide and serve them. We need to fight to keep humanity in education as it is one of its greatest assets. The cost cutters are breathing down the neck of public education. We must push back against another doomed “innovation in the name of reform.” https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/jay-zs-first-inspiration-was-his-jewish-sixth-grade-teacher/
We need a Secretary of Education who PROTECTS students, not USE THEM.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-23/education-secretary-should-curb-standardized-tests
Education Secretary’s First Task: Curb Standardized Tests
Miguel Cardona will need to address public school inequities by making better use of federal aid.
I hope Cardona does not turn the federal charter school slush fund into the personalized learning slush fund. I hope he will not buy the same cyber garbage he bought for Connecticut. States are hurting from the pandemic and no federal relief. There is a huge temptation for them to go cyber and privatize education from the inside out.
Sadly having graduated the CUNY system in 73. I saw the the Shock Doctrine applied to the free City University of NY only a few years later(76) . Tuition that had been free to me and free for over a Century even through the Great Depression, was raised . Never waste a good crisis to reverse social progress.
The City’s Housing crisis caused the City’s Financial Crisis . The burning outer boroughs made the City the Landlord of last resort for hundreds of thousands of NYC residents whose Land Lords were abandoning or burning their buildings for insurance . The loan burden bankrupted the City.
One of the first casualties became free Tuition at CUNY . As the Economic Crises tied to the Pandemic unfolds and NYC high rise Commercial Real-estate takes a massive hit;, the lost tax revenue will become another Shock / reason to raise Tuition at CUNY.
The poor will still have subsidies. It will be those slightly better off in the working class who get hammered . Their wages may seem high on a National basis but in a high cost area like Metro NYC they are struggling and they will bear the burden.
Some will say tax the rich . Well I have no problem with that ; except that wealth is mobile and as Don the Con has demonstrated he can flee NYC. We need a National Program of free Public College Tuition and more subsidies for lower and middle income students attending private institutions.
We need a change in ethos back to those of the 60s when the guy who knocked on the door said ” I am from the Government and I am here to help.” And person on the other side of the door said, Thank You
Merry Christmas
Thanks, Joel. Because of the pandemic/inspired fiscal crisis, Cuomo imposed a 20% budget cut across the CUNY system. This was devastating, following on years of underfunding.
My first reaction was if my parents told me Santa had already given me my present and that it was public education, I would not have been a fan. It didn’t take the article long to put a new spin on that title. Sounds like a worthy gift for “Santa” to pursue again.
WOW!!!!! Reposting!!!
Since Public Education is Santa Claus, then publicly-funded private Charter Schools, vouchers, and online education are Scrooge, Trump, Betsy DeVos, and the Grinch working together to ruin and destroy what Santa Claus represents.
“He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”
Reading this post gave my life some high beauty and joy. I’m Jewish but you’re going to have me believing in Santa before long! Ha. Beautiful. I never met Santa, but he seems like a solid dude. Many of my students this year have not met me, you know. They have all at least seen and heard me in Zoom on their computers and phones, many met me when they were in my class last school year since I teach multiple grade levels, and most have seen me waving hello at them on my way to the basketball courts during lunch, last school year, even if they weren’t in my classes. But for many, I have never given them that important knowing look in the eye when they wrote something insightful in class. Many haven’t been handed one of the brand new books I bought and told the only reason they must return it is because I trust them. I have not given many of my students anything other than words in 2020. They believe in me anyway. Ha. Beautiful.
Speaking of believing and of meeting people, I am beginning to believe we students and teachers might meet in person before the school year ends. I am excited. With the vaccine, there is light at the end of the tunnel. With funding and better crisis leadership, it could happen. When I go back to class, I need to spend time connecting and reconnecting with students. Not doing SEL curriculum or using “21st century blended instruction best practices” gobbledygook, but just being together. I am so excited about it, and I see so much potential, such an opportunity to make this school year almost mythically magical because everyone is so anxious to go back to school that, after some get some proper food, medicine, and trauma support, we will all be our best when we return, I am starting to lesson plan for springtime. Ha. Beautiful.
California teachers are supposed to get the first vaccine dose in February. We could maybe be going back to school around April, right about during — the testing window. We cannot go back and just take tests first thing. We cannot reopen and just take tests first thing! If we go back to school and the first thing we do is put the students back on computers doing standardized tests or Pearsonalized learning, the opportunity to salvage the school year will be lost, ruined. Testing this year would be a catastrophe. Every year we test, we lose instruction time, but this year is different. If we test this year, we could lose a once in a lifetime chance to revive students. To revive education.
Does truly high quality education exist without being quantified by test scores and algorithms? “As certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, as you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.”