We Don’t Need No State Education
Rethinking school.
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! –Rogers Waters, Pink Floyd
Someone recently said that a particular elementary charter school is a big improvement over government schools because the kids have longer days there and are already thinking about college. I wonder if that’s really an improvement. Kids spend too much time in the authoritarian classroom environment as it is. Homeschoolers are proud of how little time they have to put in to cover the state-required subjects.
And the “everybody must go to college” doctrine is hardly a blessing. How many young people are delivering pizzas with a diploma on the wall and a big student loan keeping them up at night? It’s true that the watered-down, increasingly worthless bachelor’s degree today is expected for nearly every job, but let’s not fool ourselves: For most grads it’s little more than a signal to potential employers that they had the perseverance to get up early four years running and jump through all the required hoops. That tells a human-resources (that term!) director enough about an applicant to separate her from a rival who didn’t do those things. It doesn’t say anything about what she knows or can do.
Charter schools and vouchers are much talked about, but they are objectionable on multiple counts. For one thing, they accept the premise that taxpayers should pay for schooling and that cross-subsidization is something government should compel. These things open the door to government control of private, independent schools. Yes, private schools are already regulated by every state, but they are not as regulated as the government’s own schools are. If the voucher plan is ever embraced in a big way, we can expect elaborate criteria for determining which schools may accept vouchers—and which may not.
Advocates of school choice ought to take seriously what some statists have long recognized. The Democrat Leadership Council pointed out some years ago that “A public school is not defined by who ‘owns’ it, but rather by two features: universal access and accountability to the public for results.” Therefore it matters little “whether public schools are run by a local school board, a group of parents, a teachers union, a Fortune 500 company, or the Little Sisters of the Poor.”
In other words, once “public money” is flowing to private schools, they are no longer really private. The government’s hooks will be firmly set, in the name of “public accountability.” “Follow the money” is not a bad piece of advice, but in this matter a better one is: Trace the money back to its source. That will provide good a indication of what to expect of its recipients.
Competition and Entrepreneurship
As long as politicians, bureaucrats, and anointed education experts control the money, competition and entrepreneurship will never reach full blossom. Competition, Hayek taught, is a discovery process, so until entrepreneurship can operate without political inhibition, we won’t know what we are missing. Providers of educational services — must they be schools? — should be accountable not to bureaucrats but to customers — parents and their children. Yet the various “school choice” plans maintain the State as the ultimate judge.
When education entrepreneurs need worry only about actual and potential customers who are laying out their own money — and not State functionaries — the political inhibitions will be gone, or at least will begin to fade. (As for the poor, see this.) Creativity will be unleashed and children’s individuality respected. Joseph Priestley, the scientist, classical-liberal political philosopher, and religious Dissenter wrote in An Essay on the First Principles of Government, and on the Nature of Political, Civil, and Religious Liberty,
[I]f we argue from the analogy of education to other arts which are most similar to it, we can never expect to see human nature, about which it is employed, brought to perfection, but in consequence of indulging unbounded liberty, and even caprice in conducting it…. From new, and seemingly irregular methods of education, perhaps something extraordinary and uncommonly great may spring. At least there would be a fair chance for such productions; and if something odd and excentric [sic] should, now and then, arise from this unbounded liberty of education, the various business of human life may afford proper spheres for such excentric geniuses.
The last thing we should expect from carefully guided “school choice” plans delivered by legislators and education experts is “unbounded liberty, and even caprice.”
It is only once education is free of the State’s yoke that we may begin to rethink the whole idea of school. It certainly needs rethinking. In the nineteenth century a Prussian-trained elite set out to take education away from parents so that children could be molded into homogeneous “good citizens” ready to take their designated places in the factories, bureaucracy, and military. Schools were correctional institutions. Things have changed little since then. Today the rationale for control by an elite is to prepare children for the competitive “global marketplace” that America’s leaders are constructing and determined to lead. (It’s hardly a bona fide free market.) The current White House occupant lectured the children last September that if they do poorly in school, they let their country down. (Conservatives applauded that message, relieved that Obama didn’t pitch his health care plan.)
From the beginning the government’s schools were dressed in the mantle of science. But as philosopher Bruce Goldberg wrote in Why Schools Fail, it is pseudoscience:
What one finds in schools is, not scientifically justified activities, but an assortment of tasks based on various educators’ subjective views of what knowledge is “worthwhile” or “nutritious” or “civilizing.” Those views are then transformed into scientific truths by labeling them as such. And, finally, the claim is made that children are being shaped, for their own good, by a process that has been shown scientifically to be indispensable for proper mental development. In every one of its guises that claim — and the authoritarian treatment of children based on it — is false.
But its falsity did not prevent huge, impersonal schools bureaucracies and dehumanizing schools from being built, mills for which our children are little more than grist. Finally ending the State’s monopoly — which means taking away the money — will let us bring education back to human scale, with all the respect for individuality that this implies.
Comment by QC Watchdog on 19 February 2010:
Great article. Do one thing in your life son… and do it well and you can’t go wrong. Education teachs too much junk and not enough of what really matters.
Pingback by We Don’t Need No State Education - Reboot The Republic on 19 February 2010:
[...] We Don’t Need No State Education Posted by admin | Filed under Liberty | Feb 19, 2010 | No CommentsFrom The Freeman [...]
Comment by Matt on 19 February 2010:
I dont necessiarily agree that the institution of public school vs the private school is what needs to be questioned and revamped. I also dont know wheather or not private educations are anything but an extension of the madness you speak of in your article.
To quote Lt Col Frank Slade “Still worthy of being a ‘Baird Man.’” What the hell is that? What is your motto here? “Boys, inform on your classmates, save your hide” — anything short of that we’re gonna burn you at the stake? Well, gentlemen, when the shit hits the fan some guys run and some guys stay. Here’s Charlie facing the fire; and there’s George hidin’ in big Daddy’s pocket. And what are you doin’? You’re gonna reward George and destroy Charlie.
Adise from that, rather I think its the entire approach to education (that is the real issue at hand here, isnt it?) that needs to be reformed. Americans need to view differently education (public or private). Look upon it not as the primary means to teach your children, but rather as a supplement to the education they recieve at home. We as parents should not look upon the school to teach our children but to expand what we teach them ourselves. Schools do not exist to educate! That is a known fact. A schools main role is to support the interests and livelyhoods of the faculty it employs, education is only a secondary byproduct of the system. This is easily proved by examining the structure of our educational institutions (any level). The longer you work the more you make and less you teach. The best teachers are rewarded by being taken out of the teaching and being relegated to publishing articles on teaching!
I digress
Comment by Daniel Shapiro on 19 February 2010:
This video explains the most important reason we don’t need no state so-called “education”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6dq-n8LlUo
Comment by Dr Steve on 19 February 2010:
John Stossel’s show this week was on this very problem and should be viewed. While doing away with the notion of tax payer funded education would be great, a start would be having the money follow the kid, wheresoever that may be. He pointed out in D.C. the kids allowed to have “scholarship” funding that was half the public education outlay per pupil did better. Close ALL D.C. public schools, cut the budget in half and start over in private schools. Where better to cut the federal red tape that the federal town?
Comment by John Thomas on 19 February 2010:
But how are we supposed to control the kids, babysit while both parents work their jobs to buy that big house and borrow and borrow to fill it with stuff made in other countries if we do not teach them early and often how to be good little consumers?
Pingback by Brains » School Daze : on 19 February 2010:
[...] And finally Freeman talks about rethinking school. [...]
Pingback by We Don’t Need No State Education « Robert A. Teegarden's Blog on 19 February 2010:
[...] Filed under: Uncategorized — by Robert @ 4:15 am Sheldon Richmond gives us pause (http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/tgif/no-education/). What is this thing called schooling all about? What are its [...]
Comment by jack on 19 February 2010:
This is why I teach in the public schools! Sure I get paid, but more and more of my fellow teachers are doing the same thing I am, using the system to educate students about what is really going on and that they do have choices, I think I’ll have my students read this article.
Comment by Rocky Frisco on 20 February 2010:
I think it’s difficult to really understand the problem unless you are familiar with the information contained in “The Underground History of American Education” by John Gatto. Everything you need to know is in this book, written by an expert. I consider it to be one of the most important books in my library.
Comment by Steve Hogan on 20 February 2010:
I used to be puzzled by the lack of recognition by most Americans about the predictable failure of government schools. After all, the government is utterly incompetent at everything else it touches. Why would education be the exception?
And then I realized that most of these people are themselves graduates (or drop-outs) of this very system. Once you grasp this important point, it all makes perfect sense.
In one respect, I guess I have to say that the statists have succeeded beyond all expectations. Their school system has made the average American ignorant, intellectually lazy, and incapable of an independent thought. Our betters in Washington must be laughing at how pliant and gullible we’ve become.
Comment by Alex Davidson on 22 February 2010:
The situation in NSW, Australia is grim. There the government has decreed that “environmental education” shall be integrated into the teaching of each subject for all students from kindergarten to year 12.
What is this “environmental education”? Well they spell it out in some 200 pages of pdf documents available at https://www.det.nsw.edu.au/policies/curriculum/schools/envir_educ/PD20020049.shtml.
It’s none other than the collectivist’s – some would say communist’s – UN-sponsored Agenda 21. Young impressionable minds are to be taught how to “participate actively as global citizens in protecting the environment”, and to acknowledge the “spiritual focus” of environmentalism.
Naturally private property rights don’t enter into it all – not a single mention. It is all written as if the government owns everything, and is quite free to impose any sort of control over citizens, as long as it can be somehow tied back to “protecting” nature and the environment.
Comment by Rocket Man on 24 February 2010:
Typo – 2nd paragraph – “That tells a human-resources (that term!) director enough about an applicant to separate her from a rival who didn’t to those things.” Thought-provoking article overall. My wife is a masters-degreed educator and had many years teaching experience before the birth of our two boys. Yet we homeschooled both boys. One is now a very successful Junior in the best college in our state/region and the youngest is a very successful senior in high school. Where it is an option for a family, homes education should be seriously looked into by parents. It’s not a guarantee of success but at least many of the obstacles are removed or minimized.
Comment by Sheldon Richman on 24 February 2010:
Thank you, Rocket Man!
Pingback by More Hand-Wringing over Education | The Freeman | Ideas On Liberty on 30 September 2010:
[...] I wrote about this earlier this year: “We Don’t Need No State Education.” [...]
Comment by Raj on 29 October 2010:
The KJV 1611 – bible teaches Christians to teach THEIR own children. How and why parents who claim they love and deeply care for their children and admantly teach them not to speak or do what strangers tell them – THEN go and send their children to a biuling called a ‘school’ where total stangers teach thier children and their children are in the ‘care’ of total strangers – parents who are meant to care for their children base these action on ‘trust’ of people they neither know, nor understand, or have ever sat at their kitchen table or will ever likely meet. Why are people so dumn…teach you own children, the BEST teacher of the child is the mother and the child learns best in a homely protected evnviornment in thier parents company and protection.
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