-Caveat Lector-
WorldNetDaily, 9\10\99
Education meltdown
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
National Public Radio can't stop talking about its new poll on education,
which purports to discover two points. First, while people are happy with
their own schools, they rate the nation's public schools very poorly.
Second, people say they want better schools and are willing to pay for them.
The NPR conclusion is unsurprising: pour more dough into the public schools,
through higher taxes.
They're dreaming. The poll could actually indicate the opposite. First,
people are unwilling to admit to pollsters the extreme failures of
institutions where they have entrusted their children, but at the same time,
they intuitively understand that public schools are no great shakes
anywhere. Second, people's willingness to "pay more" for their child's
education is a case for privatizing the whole system, not raising taxes.
The NPR survey is more interesting for the fact that it was commissioned,
and that state radio is making a big deal out of it. The truth is that the
champions of public schools are panicked. They sense that public schools are
in a meltdown, and they're right.
The evidence is all around. A new study of Department of Education data by
two California researchers shows that one in four students now attend
non-traditional schools. Private schools are in a boom phase, and home
schooling hasn't been this popular since the 19th century. Increasingly,
when people have other options, they take their children out.
Groups like Exodus 2000 and the Separation of School and State Alliance are
urging a no-compromise position. They don't suggest reform or parental
activism to improve the schools. They advocate that all concerned parents
immediately withdraw their kids from the public schools, and this position
is gaining adherents all over the country.
After Columbine, it should be clear that no child can be assured of safety
in the public schools. Indeed, the morally barren curriculum itself
contributes to the rise of public-school violence. Schools can't kick out
violence-prone kids for fear of civil-rights lawsuits, so they compensate by
clamping down on any signs of eccentricity or individualism.
Then there's the continually dumbed-down curriculum. Unless your child
manages to finagle his way into one of the dwindling number of "gifted and
talented" programs, he is stuck in a plan geared toward the lowest common
denominator. The best measure of how well public schools are doing is to
observe the overflowing remedial classes at public universities all across
the country.
The reductio ad absurdum is George W. Bush's Texas public education program.
After the most recent round of reforms, the schools do nothing but drill the
kids to pass the bare-bones standardized test that is the ticket to the next
grade. The experts are wowed at the progress in border towns and inner
cities. But what about everyone else? They spend half the year marking time.
Teachers are permitted no creativity, administrators have no options, and
parents have no input. Students are treated not as individuals but as
collective test takers. Did you pass or fail? That is the only question.
It's a brutal system only tolerated because it makes the government look
good.
Texas is no better or worse than anywhere else, so who's to blame for the
rotten state of American public education? Parents blame the teachers who
blame the administrators who blame the politicians who blame the voters. But
think about it: is there any service provided by the government that is not
a failure?
The most frustrating aspects of life today are all connected with government
service: whether it's the inefficiencies of public utilities and the post
office, the waste and profligacy of the welfare and warfare state, or the
regulatory frustrations associated with running a business. The government
can't do anything right, so there's no reason to expect government schools,
especially those controlled by a central political elite, to be an
exception.
The problem is especially insidious with schools because they seek to shape
the thinking patterns and lives of the young. As Murray N. Rothbard shows in
his classic monograph, "Education: Free and Compulsory," public education,
particularly compulsory public education, began as an attempt to
indoctrinate the citizenry with loyalty to the regime.
In ancient Sparta, the entire city was organized on the model of a military
camp, with the young seized from their parents and indoctrinated into total
obedience. The idea was dropped after Europe was Christianized, but picked
up again after the Reformation, when Martin Luther called for the state "to
compel the people to send their children to school" in order to inculcate
his new approach to religion.
Ever since, the state has used the schools to promote one or another variety
of the prevailing civic religion. This was true for Prussia, Japan, France,
England, and, especially, the United States, although compulsory attendance
laws were unheard of here until the mid-19th century. Originally, the view
of Thomas Jefferson prevailed: "It is better to tolerate the rare instance
of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common
feelings and ideas by the forcible transportation and education of the
infant against the will of the father."
By 1900, government was forcing kids into its indoctrination centers. This
was due less to the influence of John Dewey, as is commonly thought, than
the ideological triumph of socialists Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen.
It was they who first on American soil called for "national, rational,
republican education; free for all at the expense of all; conducted under
the guardianship of the State, and for the honor, the happiness, the virtue,
the salvation of the State."
As public confidence in government continues, thankfully, its free-fall,
people are drifting away from conventional public schools into any
alternative they can find. But it's going to take far more than vouchers,
charter schools, and the like, to solve our problems with education. Indeed,
these are just gimmicks designed to prolong government control.
The model we need to restore is that of the old Europe and the old America:
government should have no role whatsoever in education, neither financing
nor coercing attendance, nor exercising control. Not only would that save
trillions in tax dollars; it would spark a revival in genuine learning,
which has nothing to do with loyalty to the band of thieves in D.C.
-----------
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr., is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute
in Auburn, Alabama. (Murray N. Rothbard's Education: Free and Compulsory is
available through http://mises.org)
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