Split Personality of the Arizona Republic Editorial Board

email | By Craig J. Cantoni

[hsmomx3]

I know six of the 18 members of the Arizona Republic editorial board. All six are intelligent, logical, factual, even-handed, and not the stereotypical statists of the mainstream press. Yet for some reason, the Republic's editorials on public education are the opposite.

A case in point was the two-page editorial in last Sunday's opinion pages.

The editorial advocated increased spending on public education, including full-day kindergarten, in spite of the overwhelming evidence that a doubling of education spending and a proliferation of top-down "fixes" over the last 30 years have not solved the root problems of academic underachievement. Unfortunately, when the press, politicians and the public hear the word "education," they continue barking the Pavlovian response of "more money and more government control."

The editorial was titled with this profundity: "Education matters." Well, food, shelter, clothing, medical care and good parenting also matter. But just because these things matter, it does not follow, ipso facto, that the government should provide them or increase spending on them. To the contrary, a compelling case can be made that the two most socialized segments of the economy, K-12 education and health care, are the most inefficient and least productive. (For a brilliant debunking of mainstream media myths about the glories of nationalized health care, see the following Cato Institute report: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3627)

The Republic editorial didn't raise a question about why universal education has to be delivered by the government, but it did parrot a platitude about the importance of education in a "knowledge-based economy," a term that is never defined by those who use it to justify increased public education spending. I'll define it for them: A knowledge-based economy is an economy based on knowledge, reason and freedom instead of superstition, mysticism and the diktats of some central authority. The seeds for a knowledge-based economy were sown during the Renaissance, took root during the Enlightenment and bore fruit during the Industrial Revolution.

Those who think that a knowledge-based economy is something new must think that Galileo, Louis Pasteur, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, David Rockefeller, the Wright brothers, Enrico Fermi, Thomas Paine and thousands of other innovators made breakthroughs in science, government and industry through ignorance. Paine's book, The Age of Reason, and Adam Smith's book, The Wealth of Nations, could have been titled, The Knowledge-Based Economy, although both were written in the 18th century, not the 21st.

Ironically, the Republic parroted the platitude about a knowledge-based economy and then proceeded to withhold knowledge from readers. For example, the editorial made no mention of what Arizonans currently pay in education taxes. How can taxpayers make an informed judgment about education funding without this knowledge? They can't, and that's why I'll give them the information here.

The heads of the average household pay a whopping $190,000 in public education taxes over their adult lives. Since the average household has two children, that comes to $95,000 per child - hardly evidence that public education is under funded in Arizona.

The editorial also was silent about three major causes of poor academic performance: out-of-wedlock births, single-parent families and cultural barriers to learning within certain races - all of which is detailed in one of the best books on education, No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning. By not having the courage to headline the sobering findings in the book, the mainstream media lets political correctness trump knowledge and encourages the government to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on educational Band-Aids.

In advocating all-day kindergarten, the editorial said that 77 percent of Catholic schools offer all-day kindergarten but that only 54 percent of Arizona public schools do. However, the editorial did not mention that the Phoenix Diocese educates about 13,000 students at a much lower per-pupil cost than public schools and with a central office staff that is one-fiftieth as large as public school districts of comparable size. Nor did the editorial give the fact that the United States is the only Western democracy that forces parochial school parents to pay double for education in order to exercise their right of religious freedom.

Continuing with its anti-Enlightenment position, the editorial admitted that the benefits of full-day kindergarten have not been proven and then advocated that it be funded anyway. In other words, logic, reason and facts don't matter in the postmodern world of the mainstream press.

Not surprisingly, the newspaper's affection for centralization led it to recommend that school districts be consolidated to gain economies of scale and save money. The recommendation ignored three problems with the economies-of-scale argument. One, there is considerable evidence in the public and private sectors that mergers and consolidations rarely deliver on promised efficiencies. Two, even when greater efficiencies are realized, the gains are often offset by a deterioration in employee morale, customer service, speed, flexibility and innovation. Three, as stated earlier, Catholic schools provide a good education at far less cost, yet the Diocese system is so decentralized that it does not have a centralized purchasing department.

More importantly, government K-12 schools already have a monopoly on classroom thought. It seems counter to the idea of a knowledge-based economy and a free society to solidify the monopoly through further centralization and to make it easier for teacher unions and other special-interest groups to commandeer the system.

In conclusion, it's a shame that when it comes to public education, the editorial board has a split personality. Individually, the members are logical, factual, intelligent, even-handed and not stereotypical statists. Collectively, they are the opposite. ________

Mr. Cantoni is an author, columnist and founder of Honest Americans Against Legal Theft (www.haalt.org). He can be reached at ccan2@aol.com or haalt1@aol.com

[hsmomx3]

Unfortunately, we have a governor who is hellbent on getting kids into govt. schooling as soon as possible.

I heard her say on tv just last week that two hours per day is not enough time to teach these kids letter recognition and letter sounds. Well, I have news for you, Ms. Napolitano. My kids learned their letters, letter sounds, and were reading before they were five years of age. And we spent less than one hour each day learning letters, sounds, and reading!!!!!!!!!!

My kids are not the type with high IQ's but then again, it doesn't take hundreds of millions of dollars to teach kids either.

[Behind Liberal Lines]

For some reason, as I've learned on a few threads here, when it comes to "the children" and schools, even some diehard conservatives go all wobbly.

[hsmomx3]

You are exactly right!!!!

[RJL]

All-day kindergarten is government funded baby sitting.