Freedom in education: Slowly but surely

Sometimes an idea's time has come, and sometimes not.

Back in 1985, as a Schenectady Gazette staffer, I wrote a column contending that the quasi-monopoly misnamed "public education" wasn't really the best thing for education and for the country. This wasn't anywhere near a mainstream idea at the time.

I argued, and still argue, on two counts.

First, a government-run education system can't work as a one-size-fits-all institution in a pluralistic society. It can never really be unbiased on beliefs and values. Even something as seemingly non-controversial as mathematics raises the question of how math got to be so orderly and predictable – by chance or by design? And what do you do with such hot-button issues as God, prayer, gender roles, socialism vs. capitalism, fetal life vs. women's choice, morality and sex? Back in 1985 same-sex marriage by legislative or judicial enactment wasn't even on the horizon. Marriage was what it had always been and what God in Genesis said it is. Few people questioned that.

Even silence – attempted neutrality – isn't golden because what's not said can be pregnant with meaning. God has replaced sex as the most unmentionable word in schools even though the nation's founders often called upon or referred to God, as in the Declaration of Independence. When the success of the American Revolution looked very iffy, history shows a lot of people prayed really hard.

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What's actually happened in government-run education is that the most powerful interest groups get to decide what children learn. Fights over evolution and sex education have been battles royal, to name just two issues. What one citizen calls education another calls indoctrination. This is one reason for the exodus of parents into homeschooling and private education.

In the early days of America, life was ideologically simpler. Most people subscribed to some variant of Christianity, usually Protestant. Schools were more locally controlled and inculcated the prevailing values. The Northwest Ordinance of 1789 was enacted by Congress to govern American territories that would later become states. Regarding education, it stated: "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Those days of near consensus are gone. And with that is any hope that government-run schools can keep everybody happy.

The people who benefit the most from government-controlled education are the central planners, whose latest agenda is using schools to make overweight kids thin. Nineteenth-century British philosopher John Stuart Mill warned about this undemocratic tendency in his essay, "On Liberty."

"A general state education," he writes, "is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power … it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body."

My second point then and now is that government's having a centrally controlled quasi-monopoly on education is an anomaly in a free nation that has produced the most advanced and prosperous society in history. It is counterintuitive why a free market in education would be less innovative and effective than monolithic government schools staffed by teachers with guaranteed raises and lifetime jobs and headed by an army of bureaucrats.

Fortunately, unlike 1985, the forces of school choice are gaining momentum. This is being driven not only by the traditional concern about values in education but by dissatisfaction with poor student performance despite trillions of dollars spent.

Rachel Sheffield of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., reports in an article titled "Back to School: More school choice than ever" that school choice is expanding on every front including scholarships, tuition tax credits, educational savings accounts, vouchers and charter schools.

"Forty-two states introduced over 150 pieces of school choice legislation, and 12 states and the District of Columbia enacted plans to broaden school choice," she writes.

Studies over many years indicate that freedom of choice works. For example, Patrick Wolf of the University of Arkansas last year found voucher recipients in Washington, D.C., had graduation rates of 91 percent, compared to the public school average of 65 percent. A recent study in Milwaukee discovered a 94 percent to 75 percent difference.

Competition actually has helped student performance in public schools. Greg Forster of the Foundation for Educational Choice points out that "every empirical study ever conducted in Milwaukee, Florida, Ohio, Texas, Maine and Vermont finds that voucher programs in those places improved public schools."

While federal apparatchiks seem intent on grabbing more power, liberty – in 2011 – is spreading through the land.

Eric Retzlaff is a former newswriter, editor and publicist living in Rotterdam, N.Y. As a registered nurse, he was a freelance medical writer for Albany (N.Y.) Medical Center.