How to fix public education
When I was a senior in high school – we’re going back fifty-one years, mind you – I attempted to frame a bill on public education for the Indiana General Assembly to consider. I failed in that, largely because I didn’t know the language and format in which bills were actually framed. Nevertheless, I knew what I wanted the bill to accomplish. Simply put, I wanted to end the practical monopoly of the State in public education.
Now, I had a reasonable education from my public schools. I felt at the time that it was kind of mediocre. I also felt there was entirely too much obeisance paid to the Great Goddess Nonsense. But comparing what I experienced and received to what is on offer today, I made out pretty well. Still, my conviction then was, and has remained ever since, that the failures of public schooling – insofar as it does fail (no institution fails at everything, and there are also many fine teachers doing well in a stupid system) – that the failures of public schooling are inherent in its privileged position.
The public schools are a form of monopoly. Nay, more – those who run the public schools form a kind of priesthood, impenetrable to reformers from without even as they are guaranteed funding by the State. Now, I don’t object to priesthoods; I am a member of one such, myself. But a State religion run by salaried and unreformable clergy would give you much the same results as a State education system run by salaried and unreformable teachers and administrators. The genius of America – and the main reason that America remains far more religious than Europe – is that we don’t have an established Church. If you don’t like what’s on offer at Yourtown Methodist, you can go check out St. Whoosis Catholic or even the local adherents of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You can be as religious as you want, to any extreme you desire, but nobody is going to subsidize you. And nobody is going to tell you that you have to put up with teaching that is abhorrent to you.
In a free society, you can be anything you want, learn anything you want. You are not stuck with the limited options given you by somebody else. That, however, is precisely what American public schooling has been about since the days of Horace Mann. Mann created the “Massachusetts Model” of public schools as a reforming institution funded by the State, inherently opposed to the role of supposedly ignorant and bigoted parents. Consider: Massachusetts created reform schools for “incorrigible children,” who could be removed from their parents’ homes and sent there to be “reformed” at the State’s insistence. One of the marks of incorrigibility in children (and by extension, their parents) was not sending them to school. Ah, but the act which created reform schools and allowed this intrusion on parental authority pre-dated the act which required school attendance in Massachusetts. The parents who opted out of State instruction were disobeying no law, but the law allowed the State to take their children from them for not doing what the “experts” thought was in the best interest of those children. Schools have been a hotbed of Besserwissers* ever since. (N.B. not every teacher is an ideologue or a mistruster of parents, but all of them are part of a profession which is dominated by them.)
So I have always been in favor of private schools, charter schools, religious schools, home schooling. Not because these always deliver a better product than public schools, but because the existence of realistic options keeps all of the purveyors of education on their toes. In effect, options to public schooling – especially if they impact the funding of public schools – force public schools to do a better job in order to maintain their market share. Any institution that gets the same funding and perks regardless of the quality of the goods or services it produces will do a poor job in its primary mission and risks being captured by those who have other missions they want the funding and perks to pursue.
The idea that without public schools our children would be uneducated is hooey. A lot of them, products of those same schools, are uneducated now. How could it be worse? Likewise, the idea that only by subjecting all our children (or most of them) to the same set of experiences can we make of them a unified society is also bunk. We aren’t unified now – and if the standard set of experiences includes not only beans and busses but bullies and blowhards, we are insisting that some of them be subject to physical or psychological abuse in order to keep them all together. Make whatever arguments you like in favor of public schools; as long as you keep people from considering options, you merely engage in a form of special pleading. But if everyone is free – truly free, effectively free – to choose whatever form of schooling they want – then the chances that they will get what they’re paying for increases. And that means in the end better public schools as well as better private schools.
*Besserwisser is a German dismissive nickname for those who always claim to “know better” than others. It was particularly applied by the former East Germans to the West Germans after unification.
Now, I had a reasonable education from my public schools. I felt at the time that it was kind of mediocre. I also felt there was entirely too much obeisance paid to the Great Goddess Nonsense. But comparing what I experienced and received to what is on offer today, I made out pretty well. Still, my conviction then was, and has remained ever since, that the failures of public schooling – insofar as it does fail (no institution fails at everything, and there are also many fine teachers doing well in a stupid system) – that the failures of public schooling are inherent in its privileged position.
The public schools are a form of monopoly. Nay, more – those who run the public schools form a kind of priesthood, impenetrable to reformers from without even as they are guaranteed funding by the State. Now, I don’t object to priesthoods; I am a member of one such, myself. But a State religion run by salaried and unreformable clergy would give you much the same results as a State education system run by salaried and unreformable teachers and administrators. The genius of America – and the main reason that America remains far more religious than Europe – is that we don’t have an established Church. If you don’t like what’s on offer at Yourtown Methodist, you can go check out St. Whoosis Catholic or even the local adherents of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. You can be as religious as you want, to any extreme you desire, but nobody is going to subsidize you. And nobody is going to tell you that you have to put up with teaching that is abhorrent to you.
In a free society, you can be anything you want, learn anything you want. You are not stuck with the limited options given you by somebody else. That, however, is precisely what American public schooling has been about since the days of Horace Mann. Mann created the “Massachusetts Model” of public schools as a reforming institution funded by the State, inherently opposed to the role of supposedly ignorant and bigoted parents. Consider: Massachusetts created reform schools for “incorrigible children,” who could be removed from their parents’ homes and sent there to be “reformed” at the State’s insistence. One of the marks of incorrigibility in children (and by extension, their parents) was not sending them to school. Ah, but the act which created reform schools and allowed this intrusion on parental authority pre-dated the act which required school attendance in Massachusetts. The parents who opted out of State instruction were disobeying no law, but the law allowed the State to take their children from them for not doing what the “experts” thought was in the best interest of those children. Schools have been a hotbed of Besserwissers* ever since. (N.B. not every teacher is an ideologue or a mistruster of parents, but all of them are part of a profession which is dominated by them.)
So I have always been in favor of private schools, charter schools, religious schools, home schooling. Not because these always deliver a better product than public schools, but because the existence of realistic options keeps all of the purveyors of education on their toes. In effect, options to public schooling – especially if they impact the funding of public schools – force public schools to do a better job in order to maintain their market share. Any institution that gets the same funding and perks regardless of the quality of the goods or services it produces will do a poor job in its primary mission and risks being captured by those who have other missions they want the funding and perks to pursue.
The idea that without public schools our children would be uneducated is hooey. A lot of them, products of those same schools, are uneducated now. How could it be worse? Likewise, the idea that only by subjecting all our children (or most of them) to the same set of experiences can we make of them a unified society is also bunk. We aren’t unified now – and if the standard set of experiences includes not only beans and busses but bullies and blowhards, we are insisting that some of them be subject to physical or psychological abuse in order to keep them all together. Make whatever arguments you like in favor of public schools; as long as you keep people from considering options, you merely engage in a form of special pleading. But if everyone is free – truly free, effectively free – to choose whatever form of schooling they want – then the chances that they will get what they’re paying for increases. And that means in the end better public schools as well as better private schools.
*Besserwisser is a German dismissive nickname for those who always claim to “know better” than others. It was particularly applied by the former East Germans to the West Germans after unification.