Public Education and the Liberal Way of Conflict

Our public schools, liberals teach us, are a foundation of democracy. Without a socialization in which every child partakes of the democratic culture of the public schools we would divide into warring classes and subcultures. That is the liberal line. But some have dared to question it.

In Market Education: The Unknown History, Andrew Coulson suggested an alternate narrative.

Back in the old days, say about the time that Tocqueville was marveling at Americans and their voluntary associations, Americans educated their children in what we would now call diverse ways. There were public schools. There were charity schools. There were city academies. Schooling was a complete mish-mash, but Americans were about 90 percent literate, and parents could educate their children at the school of their choice.

Then along came Horace Mann with a better idea. He persuaded the people of Massachusetts to centralize and rationalize their schools into a state-run system.. His idea would help unify the people and it would cut crime, he predicted. In fact, according to Coulson, it set the people at each others' throats. When there is only one system of education then people must enter the political arena to fight for their beliefs. And too often politics is winner-take-all.

Christopher Chantrill

The article, while unfortunately meandering toward the end, makes some excellent points on why public education is a flawed concept. We spend too much time and too much money trying to "fix" the system when it is not the system that is broken. It is the very idea of government-run education that is completely and irreparably broken.

Education never occurs on a group level. While there are synergistic aspects of a group that make it attractive as an environment in which education can occur, learning is an individual endeavor. Setting aside even the usurpation of parents' fundamental right to educate their children as they see fit, government education must always operate at the lowest common denominator, making learning virtually impossible for all but one or two members of the group. It is the political herd setting described by Chantrill that is at work in making the above a reality. It is the short-sighted "good intentions" of liberals that deprive many a child of the opportunity to reach their full potential.