So. Betsy DeVos will be our new Secretary of Education. Every
educator I know is freaked out about the fact and what it portends for public
education in this country. Will she use her power to divert public moneys to
private and religious schools? (Definitely.) Will she preside over the complete
dismantling of the Department of Education? (Who knows?) Will her actions bake
racial and class segregation even more deeply into our educational system?
(Probably.)
Freedom of individual choice does not sit comfortably alongside
equality. We value both, but they often work against each other. The more we
enforce equality of inputs and resources, the more likely we are to constrain
individual choice. The more we empower individual freedom, the more likely we
are to end up with un-equal outputs. It’s a difficult balancing act.
Democracy is hard because we are maddeningly inconsistent. We
talk about the importance of individuality, freedom, and choice, but our
advocacy kind of depends on the thing we’re choosing. The Right believes firmly
in individual choice when it comes to guns, schools, and health care, but
stands firmly against personal choice when it comes to things like family planning.
The Left is exactly the opposite.
Individual liberty is obviously an important part of what
makes us Americans. But where to put the boundary between the rights of the
individual and the needs of society has been a tricky issue. It’s something our
founders thought hard about, and it’s something that has troubled thinkers and
authors through the ages. John
Stuart Mill, writing in 1869, said:
As soon as any part of a person's
conduct affects prejudicially the interests of others, society has jurisdiction
over it, and the question whether the general welfare will or will not be
promoted by interfering with it, becomes open to discussion. But there is no
room for entertaining any such question when a person's conduct affects the
interests of no persons besides himself, or needs not affect them unless they
like (all the persons concerned being of full age, and the ordinary amount of
understanding). In all such cases there should be perfect freedom, legal and
social, to do the action and stand the consequences.
This is why the rights to and limits of individual choice are
moving targets. There are personal decisions that, in 1869 or even 1939, would
have affected no persons besides yourself--which, today, would absolutely
affect other people. We force every driver to wear a seat belt and buy
automobile insurance. We didn’t used to. Why are those limits to free action
necessary now? Because today we are so pressed up against each other that every
stupid action any one of us makes in a car will have consequences that affect
other people, either directly (you hitting me) or indirectly (my rates going up
because too many people are terrible drivers, or my taxes going up because too
many people in too many road accidents have no insurance and have to go to the
emergency room).
Individual freedom to make choices about children’s education
was severely limited in the middle of the 19th century, when compulsory
public schooling was introduced. At the time, some children went to school;
some did not. Some children were educated at home by parents or tutors; some
simply went to work. Some girls were taught the same things as boys; some girls
weren’t taught how to read. It was very much a family-based decision, based on
the values and needs of the family. The government decided that the needs of
the industrial revolution and a rapidly diversifying population required some
kind of Assimilation Machine that would spit out functional, employable Americans,
regardless of what was fed into it. Which is why some families greeted the
introduction of compulsory schooling with a snarl and a shotgun. They weren’t
fighting to maintain their children’s ignorance; they were fighting for the
right to make their own choices. Bad choices, you might say. Choices motivated
by fear, racism, and xenophobia, you might say. But still: their choices.
A hundred and fifty years later, astonishingly, the fight
goes on. Many parents want to send their children to private schools, religious
schools, home schools—whatever kind of school they want-- and they want public
moneys to pay for the choices they make, so that educational decisions aren’t just
a privilege of wealth. Some of those choices are motivated by a fierce devotion
to a good education and the feeling that their current options are limited and
sub-standard. And some of those choices may well be motivated by things like
fear, racism, and xenophobia.
So: their children; our society. Who gets to make the
decisions?
It’s a tricky question, isn’t it? On the one hand, we know that public
schooling in this country has been a great equalizer, a way for children from
different backgrounds, nationalities, and cultures to some together and become
One People. On the other hand, our current generation values diversity and
individuality over conformity, and many people fear the whole idea of
assimilating into some “norm,” whether it’s a capitalist, consumerist,
media-soaked kind of norm or a secularist, humanist, one-worldist kind of norm.
On the one hand, a public school is a
place to inculcate the core ideals and values of a culture. On the other hand,
families have their own core ideals and values, and should have the ability to
protect their children from ideas they don’t believe in.
Or should they? Where is the line between public and
private? The shrinking of our world makes it a very complicated problem. A
hundred years ago, you could grow up thinking and believing any wacky thing as
your parents might want you to believe, and it would have limited public consequences.
Basically, your education would affect just you, and perhaps a small group of your
friends and co-workers. Now, with social networking and with people changing
jobs and home cities, you and your ideas may touch and affect hundreds, perhaps
thousands or millions of other people. To what extent should government care
about the effect of weird, bad, diverse schooling on the public at large?
And to what extent should government care about you--little old, individual you? When
you are a minor, your parents get to make choices about your life. Should there
any limits to that, for your own protection? Should you, as a minor, be
protected from your parents’ bad choices? And if so, who gets to say which
choices are bad?
When I was teaching in New York City, the department of
education created a wide array of magnet middle and high schools, to provide
some measure of choice without succumbing to charter schools or handing out
vouchers. Every parent got a thick book in the spring, listing every possible
school. Parents made their choices, and some computer algorithm figured out who
would go where. But some parents chose not to choose. They let their children
go to their regularly zoned, neighborhood school. And what happened? The better
students went to small, magnet schools, all over the city. The students with
more educated parents went there as well. The students with engaged, activist
parents went there. The students whose parents paid attention and cared went
there. And, by and large, whoever was left over ended up at the zoned school.
And who was left over? The kids whose parents chose not to
choose, or didn’t know how to choose, or were too busy, distracted, or
un-informed to know that the choice mattered. Choosing not to choose was
unmistakably a bad idea; the old, zoned schools became depositories of the
least motivated, hardest to educate children, staffed by teachers who lacked
the seniority to transfer elsewhere.
Is that all right? In a system where parents get to choose
what’s right for their children’s education, is there any role for
“nanny-state-ism,” any role for the government—local, state, or federal—to say that
certain choices are off the table because they will harm the child—for his own
sake and on behalf of the larger society of which he will someday be a part?
From the most brutalist, Libertarian, Ayn Rand position,
you’d say No—there is no role for government. If you’re too stupid to make good
choices for your children, then they will fail and you will fail, and good
riddance to the whole bunch of you. Excellence and strength should be allowed
to rise, and weakness should be culled from the herd through its own bad
actions. It’s the same position Jerry Seinfeld referenced when joking about
motorcycle helmet laws.
This is the position that values individual freedom to act over pretty much any
other social good, because it sees extreme individualism as the greatest social good. It’s an extreme position, and you can
easily imagine more moderate versions of it.
From the most collectivist, social-welfare-oriented
position, you’d say Yes—there is a role for government to put forth rules and
set legally binding and enforceable limits on behalf of the health and welfare
of minors. This is the position that values equity and the health of the
community over individual freedom. For the good of all of us, individuals have
to be protected from their worst impulses and decisions. This, too, has extreme
and more moderate versions.
When we’ve worked well as a society, we’ve found ways to
move to the middle and honor both sides of the equation, providing choice but
also accountability to standards of what Good looks like. Unfortunately, we’re not
in a very moderate or understanding frame of mind, these days. We’ve come to
believe that the life of the republic is a zero-sum game; only one side can be
right, and each side, thinking it’s allied with God, must fight the forces of
evil to the death.
That is a lie, and it is nonsense, and it will eventually destroy
us. That much seems obvious to me. I wish it seemed obvious to more people.
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