Posted on 06/13/2007 4:04:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
Here's a good question for you: Why have public schools at all?
OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.
he problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run nearly all of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run the vast majority of the schools - particularly when it gets terrible results?
Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil ($12,979) but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar go to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.
In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's teenage kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days ... for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.
A standard response to such criticisms is to say we don't spend enough on public education. But if money were the solution, wouldn't the district, which spends nearly $13,000 on every kid, rank near the top? If you think more money will fix the schools, make your checks out to "cash" and send them to me.
Private, parochial and charter schools get better results. Parents know this. Applications for vouchers in the district dwarf the available supply, and home schooling has exploded.
As for schools teaching kids about the common culture and all that, as a conservative I couldn't agree more. But is there evidence that public schools are better at it? The results of the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress history and civics exams showed that two-thirds of U.S. high school seniors couldn't identify the significance of a photo of a theater with a sign reading "Colored Entrance." And keep in mind, political correctness pretty much guarantees that Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are included in syllabi. Imagine how few kids can intelligently discuss Manifest Destiny or free silver.
Right now, there's a renewed debate about providing "universal" health insurance. For some liberals, this simply means replicating the public school model for health care. (Stop laughing.) But for others, this means mandating that everyone have health insurance - just as we mandate that all drivers have car insurance - and then throwing tax dollars at poorer folks to make sure no one falls through the cracks.
There's a consensus in America that every child should get an education, but as David Gelernter noted recently in the Weekly Standard, there's no such consensus that public schools need to do the educating.
Really, what would be so terrible about government mandating that every kid has to go to school, and providing subsidies and oversight when necessary, but then getting out of the way?
Milton Friedman noted long ago that the government is bad at providing services - that's why he wanted public schools to be called "government schools" - but that it's good at writing checks. So why not cut checks to people so they can send their kids to school?
What about the good public schools? Well, the reason good public schools are good has nothing to do with government's special expertise and everything to do with the fact that parents care enough to ensure their kids get a good education. That wouldn't change if the government got out of the school business. What would change is that fewer kids would get left behind.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online.
democracy is not a guarantee of freedom (democracy is two wolfs and a sheep voting on what’s for diner).
Great line and worth repeating. In fact, I may steal it for a tagline.
***
If you do use it, spell it “wolves.”
....actually you may be on to something there, more than you think. The state I teach in, Virginia, does not require teachers to join the NEA, NFT, or any union. We are a ‘right to work’ state. Teachers are required to join unions in ‘at will’ states. It would make an interesting study to see if schools in ‘right to work’ states produce better graduates than schools in ‘at will’ states.
Is what I wrote untrue?
The truth is that some people don’t really care about their kids’ education, and so their default is to just send them to government schools. If you know your logic, you’ll see that I’m not saying that everybody who sends their kids to government schools is careless.
A->B is not the same as B->A
As I wrote, my wife was homeschooled, and we’re homeschooling our daughters. In general, homeschooled kids are better socialized than government-schooled kids. I’m not knocking homeschooling. I’m emphatically pro-homeschooling.
I *am* saying that perhaps spelling bee winners aren’t the best representatives of the homeschooling movement, and that it’s fine in theory that our government provides educational opportunities for those who for whatever reason aren’t able to be homeschooled.
Looks very interesting. Read later.
I understand that. It seemed from the article, though, that he thought government funding to be a good idea in general, rather than a workable transition.
The problem might just be my quick reading of the column! There's always a child nagging to use the computer :-).
Thomas Jefferson is said to have written that there was no greater tyranny than to take a person's money to propagate ideas which that person hates. Jefferson did not consider the still worse tyranny of using the money to warp and contort the minds of his own children often without even his knowledge. Or the wonder of gummint skewel satraps taking little thirteen-year-old Susie off to the local abortion mill so that her parents will not interfere with her social life.
Imagine what gummint skeweled kids are taught by their leftist indoctrinators as to guns, family, taxes, gummint spending, matters military, foreign policy, the old soviet union, and so many other matters.
Gummint skewels: Shut down each and every one as immediately as can be arranged and separate schooling and state. Auction off the real estate to show there is no going back. Burn the leftist texts: ditto.
The president who can see to it that the National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers are in the same boat where Ronaldus Maximus put the Professional Air Traffic Controllers' Organization will be the greatest president in American history.
BTW, unlike a number of folks here, I still DO believe in the melting pot and it is not at all facilitated by subjecting children to the gummint skewel sociological experimental stew.
America is not as great as it used to be but it will be back when we destroy these tax-funded temples of hostility to God, country, civilization and actual learning.
I agree. The government does more than anything to divide people and perpetuate or create hostility among generations, ethnic groups, and socioeconomic groups.
That was a courtesy ping to you.
I don’t see social skills as most 7th or 8th graders forte.
It’s a double whammy, they’re geeks and they’re junior highers. I can forgive them for not feeling comfortable in front of a camera and not knowing exactly how to act, and I don’t see that as out of the ordinary for that age group.
Get the tax money out of gummint edumakashun and “costs” will drop like a five-pound lead sinker dropped from the stratosphere, unions or no unions.
If the results are negative to unions, I would expect to have that information quieted or all out blocked from the public.
No, neither do I. Some of my sons' friends are more socially adept than others, but it doesn't correlate noticeably with whether they're homeschooled or attend school.
I am more for vouchers for private or public school. Since it’s our tax money anyway, I think in CA as an example, the voucher should be worth going to whatever public school you can get enrollment or a $4000 voucher toward a private school.
“Gummint skewels maade Amur’ka grate”
Yah—so explain the first 100 years (or so) between the emancipation from the King and the advent of the public school...
For a group of kids who generally still think farting with their armpits is funny, any amount of poise on TV or under that kind of pressure says a lot FOR them.
A better and more feasible idea will be if, instead of the government ending public education, that the people stop using the public schools, causing them to fade away? The best way to end public education is for the public to stop using it. That is the grass roots approach.
mulch the books, recycle them, whatever to get the green weenies off the global warming thing. That, and book burning reminds people of Hitler and his ilk. Burning books in general is bad juju. However, there is a guy who up to recently owned a used book store and had to resort to book burning en masse because not even the local libraries would take the books in donation.
Good point.
My Bill turns purple if anyone speaks to him in front of the family. (I think we embarass him!)
“Goldberg presumes to build a case against public schools throughout the rest of the country.”
DC was used as an analogy. You could substitute just about any major city in America for DC and make essentially the same argument. Even the allegedly “good” government school systems.
“Public schools are what makes America great.”
Government schools in the U.S. served their purpose until about the 1950’s. Since then, they’ve devolved into a national disgrace.
“Public schools are the very essence of our incredibly successful melting pot.”
Government schools are an incredibly successful melting pot only in the sense that they’ve brought our educational standards down to the level of many third world countries.
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