Is Your Child a Pot Roast?
“A well-educated mind will always have more questions than answers.” (Helen Keller)
Do you want more choice in where you get your baby potatoes or your baby’s education?
I have a brilliant idea! Let’s create a system of government-run grocery stores. The government will run them according to majority-approved philosophies of food. Everyone will have to accept what the government considers best practice in food, because that’s how democracy works. We’ll subsidize these government-run grocery stores in order to provide free public nutrition.
Private grocery stores won’t be able to compete on price, but there are always niches. Health-food co-ops and splashy gourmet destinations could cater to hippy weirdos or the wealthy.
However, no government “vouchers” should be useable at private grocery stores. That steals dollars from public nutrition.
Oh wait, my brilliant idea is really dumb.
Yet, the description does apply to a real case of how our society meets a fundamental need. Substitute “schools” and “education” in the proper spots above, and you have our system of public education.
Choice matters when many possibilities exist and your destiny is at stake. The connection between education and destiny requires no explanation. Here’s a sampling of the many possibilities in education:
• Benchmark-free education
• Assessment-heavy vs. assessment-light
• Lots of student choice
• Lots of group-work and cooperative learning
• Lots of individual work (hey, there are no group transcripts)
• More philosophy, less literature and social studies (a study by the British Education Endowment Foundation found that teaching philosophy in elementary school improves language and math scores).
• Subjects emphasized according to economic importance, i.e. math, science, reading
• Less emphasis on subjects: described variously as phenomenon-based, interdisciplinary and holistic; aimed at understanding events and phenomena. (Finland has done this for years, and regularly tops international test scores while providing more vacation, more play, and less testing.)
• Subject specialization: arts, performing arts, science, engineering, language-immersion, etc.
• More–much more–music and language in early childhood, because children learn those subjects best. (The German Socio-Economic Panel finds: “Music improves cognitive and non-cognitive skills more than twice as much as sports, theater or dance….[kids who learn an instrument]…have better cognitive skills and school grades and are more conscientious, open and ambitious.”)
• Hands-on vs. abstract
• Skills vs. creativity
• Responsible for the whole child vs. responsible for academics
• Lots of recess and play (recent Harvard study officially discovered the obvious: “Play is one of the most important ways in which children learn.”)
• Really strict
• Single-sex
• Multi-age classrooms
• Traditional humanities (emphasizes innovation and history of ideas, but also political power and heroes– “dead white males”).
• So-called “socialist” humanities (lives of women, marginalized groups, and the working class; might use A People’s History of the United States or Lies My Teacher Told Me as a textbook.)
• Direct instruction vs. inquiry-based or constructivist instruction
* The purpose of education is to preserve a culture, “….to teach our children the values and the virtues handed down to us by our families, to have the courage to defend those values and the willingness to sacrifice for them.” (Ronald Reagan)
* The purpose of education is to challenge a culture, “…. to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not…..to examine society and try to change it and to fight it.” (James Baldwin)
Some specific examples:
• Montessori
• Playworks
• Waldorf
• Kipp
• Other cultures
There’s no reason to financially penalize families for choosing any of these educational philosophies. Any reasonable approach to education should be allowed to compete for students as an equal (to suggest otherwise is a wee bit totalitarian). Nor should we penalize non-government providers of these philosophies.
Objections to school choice are rhetorical and narrow.
Typical propaganda is that vouchers and charter schools “steal” money from public education. That falsely equates public education with government-run schools. The common-sense meaning of “public education” is just the education of the public. A child doesn’t cease to count as a member of the public because she goes to a private or non-profit school. Private schools educate the public.
Another common criticism is of particular cases, rather than the underlying idea. It may be true that many implementations of school choice are corrupted by politics. But, that’s like arguing all socialist ideas have been refuted, because, you know… Stalin. Showing that Betsy DeVos is wrong is not the same as showing that school choice is wrong (not that I’m comparing the Trump administration to Stalin, or anything).
School choice is not inherently conservative. Much government-run education in America features portraits of the President, a flag in every classroom, and weekly recitals of the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s meager fare for families wanting a school on the James Baldwin model. Since governments represents majorities, reducing government control empowers the margins, source of society’s most interesting thinking.
Suppose all so-called “public schools” are abolished. Public education is provided by the free-market and publicly funded. In other words, everybody gets “education stamps”, i.e. vouchers. In medicaid, families with more expensive needs get more assistance. The same would be true of education, in the case of learning disabilities.
Such a scenario does not reduce money for public education, i.e., the education of the public. It’s merely a different model.
How would it be better? First of all, a reasonable libertarian position (maybe the only one) places the burden of proof on authority. Advocates of government monopoly, not their opponents, should have to go first and prove their case. Nonetheless, here are some good reasons to consider a subsidized, free-market approach to public education.
Less government means less politics.
Education is traditionally very political, and that harms it. The aforementioned propaganda is a typical example, and it’s trivial to imagine other ways damage is done when education is politicized.
Suppose you and other families want a type of education not offered by your district, say, a lot more music in early childhood. How would that work traditionally? First, you would take your idea for a music-immersion school to the proper government agency. You would meet with an “education administrator”, a type of politician, who would nod politely and understand your feelings.
Since having your feelings understood was not your goal, your fellow parents and you are outraged. Since you are outraged, you make a lot of snarky Facebook posts and gain an audience with the superintendent who nods politely and understands your feelings.
You might go to a teachers’ union, but they see vouchers as a threat to “public education” (by which they mean, unionized education). You could probably wrangle a meeting with a labor leader who would nod politely and understand your feelings.
Eventually, a reporter nibbles at the cheese of many outraged parents, and your issue assumes its place in the natural order as a source of ad revenue for Google.
In general, more choice means less bickering about everything. It’s harder to blame the government for the lack of a music-immersion school, if the public can readily enroll in such a school without financial penalty yet no one has taken the initiative to start one.
We keep hearing that education in America is broken, and international test scores prove it, and it is broken because it puts too much weight on test scores. Rather than engage in these illogical and endless arguments over whether “schools” (what schools? some schools? all? most?) emphasize testing too much, too little, or just the right amount, we should simply let parents choose whether they want a test-oriented school, or not.
Of course, maximizing school choice doesn’t mean lowering standards. The food supply is regulated and subject to standards, yet allows a free-market level of choice. You have to spend food stamps on real food, and you should have to spend vouchers on real education. Schools should not be allowed to censor evolution, promote religion, or teach respect for President Trump. The pursuit of truth has a few bare minimums.
More choice means better data for research.
We have farmer’s markets, food co-ops, Walmart, and Whole Foods, as well as organic, conventional, local, and free-range because people have both a) different philosophies about food, and b) the ability to choose. Choice is what creates opportunities that the free-market fills, and the opportunities provide information about what people value and what works.
Equal funding for all legitimate philosophies of education means more kinds of schools. It means more tests of hypotheses about education, and that advances the science of education.
Maybe, by offering more choices, we meet more needs, and graduate more students. Maybe maximizing kinds of education maximizes human potential.
The bottom line is that teaching is an art, just like raising a child is an art, and there are infinite ways to paint, sculpt or play music.
Monet serves one purpose, and Pollock another. They may serve the same purpose for different people, different purposes for the same person, or the same purpose for the same person at different times, and all the possible combinations in-between.
Usually I shop at my locally-owned health-food store. Sometimes I want Safeway. Costco is just Walmart for liberals, and Whole Foods is so pretentious. Nonetheless, they all serve a purpose or they wouldn’t survive, and having a choice of whatever flourishes when everyone has choice is good.
A true free-market in education, actually identical to how we obtain groceries, is probably unworkable. Math is not a banana. (For one thing, kids like bananas.) The thought-experiment aims to sharpen thinking about schools and freedom, and especially to increase awareness of stereotypes and propaganda. Charter schools and vouchers do not “steal” from public education: they educate the public, they are public education. School choice is not conservative or religious in principle. It is anti-dogma in principle, valuing the relationship between school and student, asserting the validity of many paths. More school choice means less politics: more tests of hypotheses about schools, more science in the exploration of education, and more honesty.
Choice in education is morally equivalent to choice in how to live your life. If your life begins as a blank canvas, then your brushes and box of paints are your education, and everybody deserves a free choice of tools as they paint their masterpiece.
The triangle-heart combination seems a bit awkward, as a matter of graphic design. A friend suggested the pink triangle had a negative historical connotation, since it originated with the Nazis, although I think the gay community has completely reappropriated it.
