Home - Vermonters for Better Education Home - David Kirkpatrick's pages Index

 
Two recent reports paint widely differing visions of the public schools.

One is "Why We Still Need Public Schools: Public Education for the Common Good."  From the Center on Education Policy, (online at www.cep-dc.org.)  It says the public schools missions consist of six main themes:

1. To provide universal access to free education
2. To guarantee equal opportunities for all children
3. To unify a diverse population
4. To prepare people for citizenship in a democratic society
5. To prepare people to become economically self-sufficient
6. To improve social conditions"

Putting aside the not minor point as to when the public adopted, or agreed to these missions, let's assume there is agreement that these are at least worthy goals if not exactly agreed upon missions, That still isn't sufficient.  Because most people might say one of their goals is to be happy, does not mean but there can't be a chasm between that goal which, after all, is only words, and the reality of what, if anything, is ultimately achieved.

To take but one "mission: To improve social conditions.  Horace Mann attempted to sell Massachusetts on the desirability of public schools with his version of this mission, predicting that once universal schooling (not the same as education) was established for a few decades, or at least generations, the need for prisons would disappear.  Today, some 160 years later, the need for prisons seems to continually outgrow their existence and there is a constant need to build more.

It can be, and often is, suggested that while the six themes are worthy goals, not one of them has ever been achieved.  This more than a century and a half of experience should make it clear they are not achievable by the public schools as presently structured.

Which leads to the second report, "Why We Fight How Public Schools Cause Social Conflict," by Neal McCluskey, from the Cato Institute (also on line at www.cato.org.   Entering "Why We Fight" In the "Search" box at the upper left corner of the home page gives a link to the publication but also related ones, including objections to his presentation).

  This, as the title indicates, avoids mere rhetoric and looks at the reality of the schools in just the 2005-06 school year.  He finds a far different environment than the six missions might suggest, circumstances that have existed from the beginning, when the general public objected strenuously to what Mann was proposing.  That he to a large degree triumphed over public opinion doesn't thereby prove he was right.

The 59-page report is thoroughly documented with 206 footnotes.  Its Executive Summary states

"It is too often assumed that public education as we think of today–schooling provided and controlled by government–constitutes the ‘foundation of American democracy.'  Such schooling, it is argued, has taken people of immensely varied ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds and molded them into Americans who are both unified and free.  Public schooling, it is assumed, has been the gentle flame beneath the great American melting pot.

Unfortunately, the reality is very different from those idealized assumptions. Indeed, rather than bringing people together, public schooling often forces people of disparate backgrounds and beliefs into political combat. This paper tracks almost 150 such incidents in the 2005-06 school year alone. Whether over the teaching of evolution, the content of library books, religious expression in the schools, or several other common points of contention, conflict was constant in American public education last year.

Such conflict, however, is not peculiar to the last school year, nor is it a recent phenomenon.  Throughout American history, public school has produced political disputes, animosity and sometimes even bloodshed between diverse people. Such clashes are inevitable in government-run schooling because all Americans are required to support the public schools, but only those with the most political power control them.  Political–and sometimes even physical–conflict has thus been an inescapable public schooling reality.

To end the fighting caused by state-run schooling, we should transform our system from one in which government establishes and controls schools, to one in which individual parents are empowered to select schools that share their moral values and educational goals for their children."

     # # # # #

"Literacy reached its zenith prior to the 20th century. In that earlier time, American children attended small common schools for only a few weeks each year, with attendance beginning at some point between the ages of 8 and 12. The remainder of their education took place at home." p. 63, Raymond S. Moore, "It Depends on Your Aim," pp 62-64, Phi Delta Kappan, Sept. 1985

         # # # # #

Copyright 2007 David W. Kirkpatrick
108 Highland Court,
Douglassville, Pennsylvania 19518-9240
Phone: (610) 689-0633