Privatizing public education
Shortly before the midterm elections, the NRCC came up with a fairly clever, albeit spectacularly misleading, campaign tactic. House Republicans would dig around for obscure and trivial measures introduced by Dems, which were perceived as nutty, and then insist that they represented the “Democrats’ platform.”
So, for example, the GOP would point to a Dennis Kucinich bill to create a “Department of Peace,” and say, “If there’s a Democratic majority, this is what they’ll work on.” When Dems protested, they used the bill as proof of what was to come. If one Dem proposed something outside the mainstream, then all Dems are responsible for embracing the idea.
With that in mind, let’s consider the latest proposal from Jonah Goldberg.
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.
The 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 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?
Once in a while, a high-profile Republican will suggest abolishing the federal Department of Education, which is a common conservative boogeyman. Eventually, however, GOP pollsters insisted that their candidates stop even trying — voters perceived the calls to get rid of the cabinet agency as being anti-education.
But Goldberg, to his credit, is far more direct — he’s skipping the Department of Education and recommending the abolishment of the entire public school system.
Using the Republican campaign tactic as a guide, I’d like to hear “conservatives want to destroy public education in the United States” catch on as a policy meme. Let’s see how that works out for the right.
I have a hunch Goldberg’s idea would not garner much support. I’ve found that local public schools are a bit like members of Congress — people hate them generally, but love theirs specifically. Indeed, there are plenty of polls asking people what they think of public education, and most show widespread dissatisfaction. But if you ask those same respondents what they think of the school in their area, they’re generally quite pleased.
I suppose Goldberg deserves points for boldness. In 1979, Jerry Falwell published a book in which he wrote, “I hope to live to see the day when, as in the early days of our country, we won’t have any public schools.” For years, Falwell denied ever having written it, though his publisher later insisted that Falwell was lying.
The point, of course, was that Falwell didn’t want to be associated with such a radical idea, so he distanced himself from his own book. Goldberg has no such hesitation.
OK, conservatives everywhere, who’s ready to jump on his abolish-public-schools bandwagon? Anyone?
Let’s define our terms: are we talking about abolishing all government regulation of schools, i.e. standards? Does it include all government education funding, i.e. no vouchers, either?
FWIW, I would propose abolishing the Department of Education and merging it with the Department of Energy into a combined “Department of Science & Useful Arts,” which would be more aligned with its constitutional purpose.
They wouldn’t abolish it.
It would become another political extension of a Republican-occupied White House, where appointees ensure certain companies receive contracts to provide anything and everything from tests, computers, educational “standards,” to toilet paper and mops.
American schools will become a means to indoctrinate the nation’s youth into Intelligent Design/Creationism, corporate welfare, hate (especially against non-Christians and brown people as well as foreigners and speakers of languages other than English), junk science, poor sexual awareness (more STDs and unplanned pregnancy), poor abuse awareness/prevention/treatment (physical, emotional, drugs, alcohol), separation of the sexes (men work, women have babies), poor hygiene and health standards, and generally being more docile/manageable to a big secretive government.
Tell me I’m wrong.
Mostly, it is just a stupid idea since one of the purposes of public education was to provide free education to all. Privatizing the schools will beg the question of who pays for it all and that answer will be that the federal government will have much more to say about what happens via the Dept of Education.
The fact that many school districts screw it up and that a political mish-mash of mandates has arisen will not change if the schools are privatized. There will still be mandates but now from a central governmental department but without the scientific backing that the FDA enjoys. Instead it will be flavor of the day depending on who is in charge at the time. The local school boards will have no say and there will be no local input. There is an upside to the system we have now, after all, we just don’t see it because a lot of the system is incompetent. But if we go to a federally determined universal system run by private entities, you will have universal incompetence since those who get to be the experts in the field are those losers who can’t seem to find fruitful work in other places. (Not that I have a strong opinion or anything.)
Granted, private schools seem to turn out better students. They have a built in advantage: they don’t have to deal with those who will cause trouble either fiscally (handicapped) or socially (young criminals) or intellectually (those students with parents who don’t seem to care.) But if you privatize everything, you invite government money and government rules to “guide” you which means that there will be one giant NCLB to deal with. After a series of conservative and liberal administrations get through with the system it will be worse off than before.
Then there will be another two tier system of private and “private” schools out there but no local control or mandates. It would be like that old joke defining hell: English cooks, French bureacrats, and German policemen. the worst of every ideology will prevail.
Conservatives who want to get rid of public schools must want to stop kids from reciting the pledge of allegiance- something they do in public schools(!) Also- how can you force prayer in public schools if we don’t have public schools?
The Republican agenda to get rid of The Pledge of Allegiance, and stop prayer must be stopped!!!
Well—allow me to be the first Leftie to jump on that bandwagon….
As I’ve noted before, I have a 9-year-old son who—due to a medical condition—cannot attend public school. The “virtual school” he’s enrolled in is registered with the state (Ohio) as “an online public charter school.” So in a way, he’s still “technically” in a public school.
Now in Ohio, our Governor wants to do away with all schools operated by “for-profit” corporations. Ted Strickland is a great guy, but I’m still having a problem when he says that my son’s “for-profit” school is costing the state money. Ohio pays no more for my son’s “virtual school” than they would pay for whatever public school he might attend. It took a ruling by the Ohio Supreme Court to even make THAT happen, because the “e-schools” used to get about 60% of what the per-student amount was for the “brick-&-mortar” schools. Even then, the e-schools managed to function.
I’m not arguing that we should do away with public education—but what I do need to ask is why we continue to promote an outdated model? My son works with a state-licensed teacher. He uses state-approved textbooks and workbooks. His curriculum meets—or exceeds—Ohio’s instructional standards. A lot of Ohio’s “conventional” public schools don’t meet these standards.
He also gets to work at his own pace (which is why he’s 3 weeks into 4th grade work when his “peers” just finished 3rd grade. He can start at 6 in the morning if he wants; he can work on things at night, or on the weekends. As long as he maintains a modicum of work, it’s his choice. The “pubic” schools maintain a lockstep, one-size-fits-all plan that disrupts individuality, creative thinking, and imagination.
He can do schoolwork in his pajamas if he wants. He can do a week’s worth of spelling in one day—or a week’s worth of mathematics. You can’t do that with a “normal” school.
His school provides him with a free computer; if anything goes wrong with it, he gets a free replacement. The school we pulled him out of had a total of 93 computers available for student use—with only 9 of those machines actually functioning. Most had been in need of service for over a year.
If a “for-profit” company can do all of this, and turn a profit, then I just have to ask: Why can’t the “public schools” do the same thing? It shouldn’t have to be about “scrapping the public schools altogether,” it should be about breaking out of the old mold, and adopting a new model of education.
Then again, I’d be happy to see Jonah laying face-down in a gutter, bleeding out from a large-caliber exit wound
why have Jonah Goldberg at all? Public schools have to take everybody and they still do a good job of educating huge numbers of kids. One improvement would be to reintroduce Civics into the curriculum so idiots like Johah Goldberg won’t be able to pedal their anti-democracy crap so easily.
And Steve, your son has a functioning parental unit. A lot of kids don’t.
A sort of slomo rapture is occuring in the public schools as the religious nuts take their kids out of school to “educate” them at home.
The kids educated in private school here in Texas can’t hack it in college. Private schools learn rather quickly that the people who send their kids to private school expect straight As, and they all get them, then in college, they realize they got to work and know stuff.
I recently found myself raising my 9-year-old nephew, and I find the public school here excellent. The requirements for teaching are stricter, the pay higher, they care more. It’s 95% Hispanic, with most on the free lunch program, but the teachers care and work them hard. The worst part about it is Bush’s stupid TAKS test requirements that have basically handcuffed good teachers, and put the entire focus on filling out scantrons. Now that they’re abolishing that nonsense, they ought to improve even more.
If a “for-profit” company can do all of this, and turn a profit, then I just have to ask: Why can’t the “public schools” do the same thing?
I may be oversimplifying, but I believe a lot of it has to do with this:he “virtual school” he’s enrolled in is registered with the state (Ohio) as “an online public charter school.”
So this virtual school does not have to pay for a big building to hold students and does not have to maintain that building. Also, the virtual school has students who can stay home during the day and have parental supervision(I assume). You’re right, why can’t public schools act the same way? There’s got to be some difference here, almost can put my finger on it…
Goldberg sounds like the kind of person who would overthrow a government with no plan to replace it. When are these assholes going to be discredited?
Steve, I agree with you. I think the public schools are really missing the boat with the whole home school phenomena. They want all the kids possible in school full-time, so they provide little to no assistance to kids who are educated at home. My son is home schooled as sending him to public school would be a disaster for him. It’s hard to explain why, but basically he has semi-uncontrollable large body movements whenever he gets bored or excited. His classmates would utterly humiliate him and I don’t think his teachers would be wild about having him in their classroom. He was in public school for K and 1st grade, but has been much, much happier at home. However, he is now entering his freshman year and there are some subjects for which it would be better for him to go to a public school. For example, lab sciences. My wife has struggled getting him to write papers so would love to enroll him in a writing class. However, in our state it is an all-or-nothing affair – either you are a full-time student or you are not.
Jonah Goldberg is too big of a fat moron to know how fat a moron he is.
As Clarence Darrow put it, “I have never killed a man, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure” – I look forward to fatassed mouthbreathing Jonah’s demise with the same “great pleasure.”
Steve and Dennis_D,
I appreciate your particular situations and I see them as the exceptions and not the rules. Schools, in part, help socialize children. It is not all about book learnin.
People are free to remove their children from public schools, home school them and ship them off to Regent University (fast track for a good government job). In cases, such as you describe here, it sounds like accomodation for students with different realities than most is the strength of public schools. Private schools keep only the best, brightest, and wealthiest.
As for Jonah Goldberg TTTHHHHOOOOPPPPPTTTTTTT!!!!!!
***So this virtual school does not have to pay for a big building to hold students and does not have to maintain that building. Also, the virtual school has students who can stay home during the day and have parental supervision(I assume).***
I’m interpreting this to mean that my son’s virtual school is not a glorified babysitting business, housed in a magnificently-overpriced edifice commemorating the once-embraced practice of public workhouses, county orphanages, and child labor.
Let’s try a novel concept here. If two Nobel laureates can communicate with each other, in real time, on opposite sides of the planet, courtesy of an Internet connection and a computer equipped with a camera and a headset—then why not a teacher and a student?
Now, ramp this up just one notch. A teacher has a room in her home that’s equipped with a “heavy” computer and a wall consisting of 15 monitors. At the other end of this communications concept lie 15 individual computers—each duly equipped with the necessary ancillary devices (camera and headset) and each duly assigned to a specific student. As technology exists today (and has existed for at least the past 6 or 7 years now), the teacher can conduct an interactive, all-inculsive series of lessons with these 15 students. The teacher doesn’t have to be in the same room—or even in the same hemisphere—as the students; the students can be spead out to the four corners of the planet. Or for the sake of maintaining a social experience, the teacher and students could all live in the same neighborhood. I can imagine a lot of neighborhoods where this would work—not having to send the kids walking through the local crack district on the way to school and back really isn’t such a bad idea.
That’s for the price of 15 student computers and 1 beefed-up (‘heavy”) computer system for the teacher. Compare that to the physical construction and maintenance costs for a brick-&-mortar classroom, and you should see the angle I’m driving at. You run this thing through a state-operated website, and the state can monitor the activities of the classroom to prevent the abuses of a teacher trying to promote theology as science. A “Principal” can step into the classroom and observe without ever interrupting the class or creating a distraction from the teacher/student pedagogical connection. So could a student teacher—or a parent. The “classroom” becomes something that’s just a URL and a few mouseclicks away.
The state saves a lot of money, which offers the opportunity to (1) reduce taxes—perfect for conservatives—and (2) invest huge sums once spent to maintain now-obsolete buildings on other social programs. Actually, the savings could be enough to satisfy both sides of the political aisle—and unite both Liberals and Conservatives in a way that would deny these nasty little “neocons” from ever crawling out of their primordial ooze.
Ever.
Forever and Ever
And then some.
As for what to do with so much leftover money? Free comprehensive national healthcare, anyone? Care to measure the societal benefits of building a billion dollars’ worth of decent housing every year for low income families—in each and every state of the Union? Or maybe full funding for a crash program to develop clean, safe alternatives to our oil addiction?
The possibilities are endless, if we only have the courage to properly (as in “good for everyone; not just the ideological few) embrace the technological ideal….
MNProgressive, I am a big fan of public schools and I want my son to go to one. I just don’t want him to go full-time. Unfortunately, that’s not a choice. I think it should be, as homeschooling is a pretty big movement and I think it is just going to keep getting bigger.
I really don’t see the point of private schools. My impression of secular private schools is that they are incredibly expensive and don’t provide a better education than public schools. My impression of religious private schools is that their teachers are not nearly as well-trained as public school teachers and their teaching suffers accordingly. I was surprised to find that 11.6% of school kids go to private schools – I thought it would be a lot lower.
As I’ve heard repeatedly on this site, Tier 4 schools produce inferior product. So why support Tier 4 schools at any level?
For the record, I support public schools all the way through PhDs.
Steve, apart from some overheated rhetoric, you make a good argument. But what about Rambuncle’s point that many kids wouldn’t be able to take advantage of virtual schooling because they don’t have a parent at home to supervise them? I’d guess the majority of parents of school-aged children work outside the home.
What do you do with the kids from single-parent families in which the parent works, or even two-parent families in which both parents work?
There was some talk about abolishing the public school system in Alabama in about 2000. Some genius noticed that the state constitution does not mandate a public schools. They were going to use the money for tax cuts. At least, this was the rumor in Alabama at the time….
Why stop at public schools, Jonah?
Why not apply this to other government functions?
Inadequate police department? Privatize it.
Shoddy fire department? Privatize it.
And what about the fact that the US military is unable to meet readiness levels?
It’s obvious that the government doesn’t know how to run this country’s national defense, so let the private sector have a crack at it.
Steve and Dennis_D post good reasons for the existence of alternative public and private schools. But none of those reasons is strong enough to support dumping the public system. The type of school Steve describes could easily be a public school or a not-for-profit effort.
Also, I would be interested in hearing from Steve about the financing of his son’s education. . .specifically if any public school monies are transferred to the virtual school as a function of Steve’s attendance.
As for Jonah Goldberg, there is a better case for abolishing the public schools than there is for paying him any attention at all.
Jumbo,
Remember that fantastic phrase that the Pentagon started bandying about a while back about the need to increase troop levels in Iraq? They had to “double down.” There’s absolutely no reason whatsoever why the parents in a neighborhood couldn’t do the same thing. I could easily put 4 kids around our dining table in such a way that no one can see any other’s work; each with a laptop, a camera, and a headphone set. another parent down the road could do the same thing. a third across the street, and a fourth on the next block. 4 parents just covered for 16 kids.
And I’ll always have a hard time believing that entire neighborhoods are without adult occupancy during the day—unless you can show me a neighborhood where all the houses are being broken into on a daily basis….
reidmc (#19)
i’d be willing to bet that steve’s son’s schooling is paid for (at least in very large part, if not entirely) by his local school district. public law 94-142 (later known as IDEA – the Individuals with disabilities education act) requires a “free, appropriate public education” for all children and requires the local school district to foot the bill.
2manchu (#18)
the private sector is having its crack at national defense. it’s called iraq.
His school provides him with a free computer; if anything goes wrong with it, he gets a free replacement. The school we pulled him out of had a total of 93 computers available for student use—with only 9 of those machines actually functioning. Most had been in need of service for over a year.
Sorry for your troubles, but the state is still paying for your son’s education. If he has one computer and a bunch of students had only nine then he’s using up 10% of the computer resources. Believe me the state is not saving a bunch of money.
The point, Dale, is that the state can afford to pay for him to have a personal computer, but they could “only afford” 9 functioning units and84 pieces of scrap for nearly 500 kids. The e-school makes a tidy profit; the brick school is bleeding from the throat. The e-school provides new textbooks, student workbooks with instructions that are written to the student’s level of understanding, and “teacher’s manuals” for the parents; the brick school won’t let students leave the classroom with a textbook, and all the kids ever bring home are photocopied worksheets (affectionately known as “makework”).
I’m not tryoing to point out that the wingnuts are right about this; they’re not—alternatives to conventional schooling should not be used as a weapon to replace reality with someone’s “divine vision.”
But it is absolutely pathetic that Liberals and Progressives have been so willing to abandon a concept that could revolutionize the way we teach our children, providing them with a better education, real-time access to technologies, and for less money—just because the wingnut brigade got there first. Such a defeatist attitude would suggest that Dems really do not want to take back the Republic from the likes of George W. Bu$h and his cacophony of malicious misfits—and it would further suggest that the whining little wanker commonly referred to as Jonah Goldberg is right on the mark, and that it’s completely acceptable for kids to have “non-functioning parental units.”
I will never be willing, or ready, to contemplate letting that become the norm….
Steve,
Your solution may be good for you, but, as others have noted, it would not work for most families. There are not that many full-time stay-at-home moms any more. Sad, but true. In today’s economy, most families need two paychecks to get by. And in single family households they need at least one.
Your solution of having one parent watch over four kids…..well, is it really realistic? Do you expect folks in the neighborhood to give up all their free time to school your (or someone else’s) child? And, once you create these mini-schools, can your kid still work at his own speed, in his pajamas? Or will there be regimentation, set meal and work times, etc.
Schools exists in their current form for a reason–it is most convenient for society and it helps in socialization. They aren’t right for everyone, like your son, for example. There should be other options, and there are.
But the reason that your home schooling company can make a profit is simple–much less overhead (no buildings). And, if there are few buildings to pay for, or support staff (custodial, counselors, nurses, secretaries), it’s easy to get a cheap computer for each student, and even replace it if it goes bad. This is just basic economics.
Then again, when these kids gets older, how will this work? Will they need to build a chemistry lab in the basement, or dissect frogs and cats on their own? What about sports/gym?
I have several wonderful teachers in high school, whith whom I remain friends(thirty years later). They inspired me, and helped make me the person I am today. It was the pesonal touch that made the difference–the informal chats over a cup of tea, long discussions about the wrold beyond what I had experienced. Somehow, a disembodied voice over a computer just wouldn’t have been the same. Children need adult role models besides their parents, and schools provide this.
And then there are the friends you make–people outside of your own neighborhood with whom you share interests. I have friends from high school who remain dear to me. I would neve have met any of them sitting at home and working with a computer.
To each his own–but not many would want your solution, I expect.
There was a large NEA NH presence at the NHDP convention recently and they were givng out these wonderful red T-shirts with white letters. Front logo of kids silouettes and A Child is More Than a Test Score, and back Great Public Schools are a Basic Right for Every Child. Wonderful.
Schools exist in their current form—which is little different from the form applied in 1850—because people are denied the opportunity to contemplate change. That denial is effected through negativity and fear—hallmarks of Neoconservativism.
Cheap computer? I can buy the same machine at a Best Buy—for $800.
Chemistry class “lab work” exists to give the student a 1-to-1 ratio with the results of the experiment—easily accomplished through a video segment (these things “are” available online now-a-days).
Dissection is a practice that was created to provide visual proof of the inner workings of a biological subject. Professional medical schools now employ videorecordings, rather than physical dissection of human corpses. Actual contact and interaction with the human physiological structure is necessary only if the student is studying medicine. Are you proposing that we “prep” public school school students for this?
Phys Ed? Have you visited a Phys Ed program recently? I can get a better workout from a video that kids get from “fizzled ed” programs these days. I’ve seen high school kids who cannot do a pushup—or a pullup—or a situp.
Recalling favorite teachers does not cover the argument, either. These e-school programs still require the use of professional, licensed instructors as part of the matrix. It is not the “parent/child duet” of traditional homeschooling. Your wonderful teachers would still be wonderful teachers; working from home to provide the same meaningful experiences as in the brick-&-mortar classroom. The rigors of physically being in the classroom would be diminished; we could keep our best teachers in the sadle for a few more years, rather than filling the gaps with “kids” who are fresh out of a teaching program with a 2.5 GPA—which equates to a 2.5 GPA from a student “being a good grade.”
It would prevent the further “dumbing down” of the Republic, and that dumbing down is what helped to put a shrub and his maniacal VP in charge of the United States of America.
Jonah Goldberg graduated from the Dwight School in NYC. The Dwight School is famous for accepting rich kids who are too dumb to make it to other private schools such as Spence, Chapin, Brearley, etc… Paris Hilton also went to Dwight…
This says it all.
Steve,
I highly suspect that Shrub had a huge part of the home- and private- schooled demographic vote. Home schooling does not necessarilly provide a well-rounded individual; more often than not, students are home schooled because parents want to protect their offspring from contact with “bad” influences. Like me.
And, sorry, contact via computer is not the same as personal contact. An hour or so may be fine now, but what do you do when your child is older and has multiple subjects to cover? Will you expect the same sort of time investment from each of his teachers?
And you didn’t respond to 1) socialization or 2) how are we going to afford for one parent to stay home with a kid to school them. They can’t really be left home alone, and I don’t see your small neighborhood collectives working in this country.
Also, I suspect schools existed before 1850, and in a fairly similar form–teacher and students in a room–smaller, mind you, if local, but then, many fewer people were educated or even literate. Home tutoring was more common for the rich, but even they sent children to schools or university eventually. (Or do you propose to make college a home schooling experiment as well?)
It is the mass application of public schooling that has allowed literacy to increase greatly in the last century and a half, and contributed to an American identity and some diminution of class and ethnic divisions. (Countries such as England, which give government support to religious and other private schools, rather than having a wider spread public education system, have more of a class division, less class mobility, and less acculturation and assimilation of immigrants.)
BTW, it behooves us to offer all children a good science education in this country. Half of Americans don’t believe in evolution (the basis of modern biology), and there is a significant portion of the population (10% I think in a poll a few years ago) that is still not sold on heliocentrism. That’s why pseudoscience gets away with so much, and a large part of the reason that global warming has been successfully ignored by the current government. I think all American children need a much more rigorous science and math education than is being offered now, including a thorough understanding statistics and risk (although that might cause Vegas and the state lotteries to go out of business).
Watching someone do an experiment is not the same as doing it yourself. You learn scientific techniques, and probably learn more by making mistakes than by doing things perfectly. Dissection gives you a first hand understanding of anatomy that you just can’t get from a textbook, even if it is just a frog. This is not a pre-med thing–in my junior high school, every single student did dissection in their required science class.
Sometimes you have to step back from the computer, get your hands dirty, and experience reality, not just watch videos on the glowing screen.
But, as I suggested in my previous post, different strokes for different folks. When it comes to forms of teaching, what is good for one child may not work for another. Options are important. If you feel your system is great, and works for your son, all the better; but the “brick and mortar” school system works for many people, and should not be completely disparaged or abandoned.
(Re: dissection in medical schools. Those that can still use cadavers, as there is no better way to learn anatomy. There are not enough cadavers being donated, though, so some schools have had to turn to other methods of teaching anatomy–necessity, not choice. Doing a dissection makes you really understand how things fit together, how much natural variation there can be, and how things aren’t often as cut and dried as in a book, or even in a lovely plasticine model. And, out of curiosity, are there any “amateur” medical schools?)