ESCAPE FROM PUBLIC EDUCATION
The conventional wisdom tells us that public education is the only
way the poor could receive an education. Not so. As we shall see, the children
of the poor were learning to read and write long before government became much involved.
Some years ago, in a school district just outside Los Angeles,
parents found themselves with a problem which was becoming all too common
across the country: an educational system strong on “life adjustment,” but weak
on education. Homework was replaced by such goodies as “practicing telephone
techniques and the social amenities,” graded report cards were eliminated, even
the spelling bee was taboo because of the “emotional tension,” and on and
on. 1
When three school board members sought to amend what they
suspected was arrant quackery, they found themselves eyeball-to-eyeball with an
indignant public school establishment. An “adviser” from the California
Teachers Association was soon huddled with the district Faculty Association. Finally,
amid much fanfare in the local press, the faculty group formally charged the
three board members with violating the “rights of teachers” in thirty-six
specific areas.
Months after this dramatic confrontation it was discovered
that the thirty- six accusations had not been “obtained from teachers
throughout the district” at all, as had been claimed, but had merely been
copied verbatim from an unrelated magazine article. But by this time the three
board members had already been ousted in a bitter recall election precipitated
by these fabricated charges.
While perhaps an extreme example, this episode illustrates a national trend of
several decades' duration. In 1965 Congressman John Ashbrook (R., Ohio) quoted U.S. Office of Education official Carrol Hanson as declaring,
... the
tradition of local control has been used by certain groups to forestall
increased expenditures for education; it has been used to frighten the Office
of Education out of areas where the nation's interest is involved and where the
Office does have a legitimate concern. The tradition of local control should no
longer be permitted to inhibit Office of Education leadership. 2
Today, the issue is settled: control rests with the teacher unions, with
the state departments of education, with the U.S. Department of Education and
with the courts. But not with the parents. And so public education, at one time
the institution closest to the local community and most willingly supported by
it, has joined the Post Office and the Pentagon in being quite beyond the
effective reach of the average citizen.
Today, the public school monolith is widely perceived as
being more remote, more expensive and less effective than ever, with the result
that people are often less interested in “reforming” the system than in
escaping it. An example of this important shift in public attitude is the
tuition tax credit, a measure clearly intended as an escape hatch. A recent tax
credit bill was finally gutted in Congress, but it earned a degree of
bipartisan support which would have been unthinkable just a few years before.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a Minnesota tax credit proposal. In 1998 the
Wisconsin Supreme Court, in a decision of major national significance, voted
4-2 in favor of that state's voucher plan permitting state funding for private
schools, including religious schools.
But
even as people seek to escape the deteriorating public school system the
ultimate question remains: Is there any responsible alternative to continued
support of public education? Without the public schools what about the poor?
Would education become exclusively the advantage of the rich? Would the
nation's youth sink into ignorance, crime, and sloth?
In contemplating a society without a public school
system let us first take a look at the true origins of mass education. We will
find to our surprise that both in England and in the U.S. mass education was
far advanced long before the State became much involved.
THE ORIGINS OF MASS EDUCATION
Contrary to popular wisdom, the first successful
experiments in mass education of the poor came about not through government
action but through the efforts of private individuals. In England one of the
true pioneers of mass education was a Quaker school- master named Joseph
Lancaster who opened his first school in London in 1798. 3 He invited children of miners, factory workers, even of
paupers. To the amazement of observers these ragged children, some barefoot and
hungry, began to read, write and spell. By the time Lancaster was 21 he had
outgrown one temporary accommodation after another and had finally designed and
built his own school building. The sign above the entrance declared, “All that
will may send their children and have them educated freely; and those who do
not wish to have education for nothing may pay for it if they please.”
Incredibly, Lancaster by himself was able to teach a
thousand pupils at one time. Lancaster would teach the fundamentals to a few of
the older boys· then, as soon as one achieved proficiency in the subject he
became a monitor with responsibility for teaching the rudiments to ten younger
children. There were monitors for reading, writing, spelling and arithmetic.
Monitors ruled paper, gave exams and promoted pupils. Pupils were promoted
immediately and individually upon completion of the required work.
That the poor could be educated at all was surprising to
many, but that this could be achieved quickly and inexpensively was doubly
amazing. Donations from the rich and the famous began to increase, and in 1805
Lancaster was granted an audience with George III which resulted in yearly
contributions from the royal family.
Lancaster's fame spread even to the United States, where
his methods were adopted with equal success. DeWitt Clinton, founder of the New
York Free School Society (and later governor of the state) declared,
When I
perceive that many boys in our school have been taught to read and write in two
months who did not before know the alphabet, and that even one has accomplished
it in three weeks – when I view all the bearings and tendencies of the system –
when I contemplate the habits of order which it forms, the spirit of emulation
which it excites – the rapid movements which it produces – the purity of morals
which it inculcates – when I behold the extraordinary union of celerity in
instruction and economy of expense – and when I perceive one great assembly of
a thousand children under the eye of a single teacher, marching with
unexcelled rapidity, and with perfect discipline to the goal of knowledge, I
confess that I recognize in Lancaster the benefactor of the human race. 4
Lancaster was not without detractors, however. Some church leaders,
angered at his refusal to promote church doctrine, roundly attacked him as an
enemy of the established religion. Yet this conflict was perhaps a blessing in
disguise, for now church groups began to increase their own efforts.
Without benefit of the state, mass
education was becoming a reality. One observer noted in 1813:
From
observation and inquiry assiduously directed to that object, we can ourselves
speak decidedly as to the rapid progress which the love of education is making
among the lower orders in England. Even around London, in a circle of fifty
miles radius, which is far from the most instructed and virtuous part of the
kingdom, there is hardly a village that has not something of a school; and not
many children of either sex who are not taught more or less, reading and
writing. We have met with families in which, for weeks together, not an article
of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned
sum was provided to send them to school. 5
But, unfortunately, this period of progressive, voluntary activity was
soon to come to an end, for education was now attracting the attention of
politicians. Efforts to bring the private schools under government inspection
were at first vigorously rejected, but in 1833 Parliament began to offer
financial assistance, and many schools eagerly accepted – and were thereafter
obliged to submit to government inspection and control. Agitation continued to
grow, however, for still further government activity to “fill in the gaps” in
the existing system which, although subsidized, was still essentially private.
The turning point came with the Education Act of 1870 which established the
first government operated “board schools” supported primarily by direct
taxation.
The board schools had virtually unlimited funds at their disposal,
and the result was such an orgy of bureaucratic extravagance that one observer,
G. R. Porter was moved to comment:
Unfortunately,
expert knowledge of education and expert knowledge of finance are not found in
combination, and the greatest enthusiasm for educating the young is often
accompanied by utter carelessness of the money of the taxpayer .. At present,
there is a vast amount of waste in unnecessary luxuries, in the building of
ornamental palaces, in the multiplication of clerks, inspectors, and so
forth. 6
As taxes to pay for all this went higher and higher, the inevitable
result of state involvement soon became apparent: When people are forced to suppport a government institution, many can no longer
afford to go elsewhere. Accordingly, scores of voluntary schools were now
forced to close, while many others were taken over by the state and converted
to board schools.
By
1900 the transformation to state monopoly was nearly complete. Yet, considering
the amazing progress that had been achieved earlier by men like Joseph
Lancaster, one cannot help but wonder what abundance in educational resources
might have been developed in England had private effort not been forced out of
the market by the politician and the bureaucrat.
MASS EDUCATION IN 19TH CENTURY U.S.
State involvement in education had earlier origins in the
United States than in England, for the Puritan leaders of Massachusetts had
passed compulsory education laws as far back as 1642 and 1647. But in general
state involvement up to the nineteenth century was limited to occasional modest
subsidies to existing private schools. Of course, no two states were alike in
their subsequent approach to education, but New York State may be taken as
representative of the trend.
About the turn of the century private schools were
beginning to develop rapidly, just as in England. Church schools were
commonplace. In 1805, DeWitt Clinton founded the Free School Society whose
schools, as noted above, utilized the methods of Joseph Lancaster.
A public school system was first established in New York
State in 1812. These schools, called “common schools,” were supported only in
part by state funds and local taxes, however. The largest single source of
revenue was the “rate bills,” i.e., fees paid by the parents.
Even though the common schools were not free, education
during this period was virtually universal: a report in 1821 by the State
Superintendent of Education declared that of the 380,000 children in the state
between the ages of 5 and 16, 342,479 were attending school. Mass education, it
appears, was already an accomplished fact.
Yet, in spite of rapid progress in this predominantly
voluntary system, agitation was increasing to abolish the rate bills, thus
making support of the public schools entirely compulsory. Spearheaded by public
officials and teachers, this campaign soon bore fruit. The rate bills were
abolished in 1849, reestablished in 1851, and then abolished for good with the
Free School Act of 1867. The public schools were now 100% tax supported. Or, to
put it another way, the individual no longer retained any measure of choice as
to whether or not he wished to support a state system of education.
As noted above, voluntary schools cannot readily compete with tax
subsidized public schools, and by mid-century the voluntary school population
was beginning to decline. (DeWitt Clinton's Free School Society held out for a
time, but finally merged with the New York City system in 1853.) This trend was
not viewed with any sorrow by the public school enthusiasts, however, who had
been generally hostile to the voluntary schools all along. The State
Superintendent had declared in 1849,
Private
schools ought not to receive the encouragement of the state, or the support of
the community. “They are usually sustained by those who have the ability to
employ competent teachers, and the common schools are weakened by the means
applied to their support. Our district schools may be so elevated (by more
public expenditure) that those who seek superior advantages for their children,
can find them only in the common schools. 7
Influential Horace Mann (an ardent admirer of the Prussian state school
system) was especially irked that private schools competed for the better
teachers:
If
teachers look for more liberal remuneration, they abandon the service of the
public, and open private schools ... While we pay so inadequately a salary at
home, many of our best educated young women go south or southwest, where they
readily obtain $400, $500, or $600 a year ... Others of our best educated young
women become assistants in academies, or open private schools on their own
account. 8
Back in 1812 the first common schools had been established merely to
“fill in the gaps” in an essentially voluntary system, but by now the goal of
public school leaders was not to supplement the voluntary sector, but to
supplant it.
The methods of Joseph Lancaster, incidentally, were in use
in some of the common schools as well as in many private schools. But
opposition began to grow, especially among teachers, an increasing number of
whom were products of the state teacher institutes. Some evidently regarded the
monitorial systems as an affront to their own authority and resented being reduced
to the supervision of “transient, ignorant and unskilled monitors.” 9
Lancaster's methods gradually fell from favor, and in New York
City the monitorial system was banned by the Department of Education in 1846.
And
so evolved education in the state of New York; primarily a voluntary
undertaking at the beginning of the century and virtually a state monopoly at
the close. Yet, contrary to popular opinion, mass education was already an
expanding reality many decades before that monopoly finally became established.
What might the educational facilities of this country be
today had private, voluntary effort not been preempted by state force? In
considering this intriguing question one might ponder this highly significant
fact: the goods and services provided today on a voluntary, free market basis –
automobiles, entertainment, food, clothing, etc., - are available in abundance
at steadily declining (real) cost, while the goods and services provided by the
state are in chronic short supply and the taxes to pay for them go up and up.
Indeed, present experience as well as past history suggest that we would have
better and more abundant educational facilities today for rich and poor alike
had education never become a concern of the state.
THE INNER-CITY SCHOOLS
A variety of studies available on the internet
indicate that K-12 private schools are providing a superior education at less
than half the per pupil cost of the public school: roughly 4 thousand dollars
per student compared to 10 thousand dollars or so in the public schools. Of
particular interest is the inner city private school.
The principal argument in behalf of public education
is that it “educates the poor,” but it is in precisely this area that the
public schools have failed most thoroughly. In fact, children of the poor were
receiving a better education in 1798 with Joseph Lancaster than they are
receiving today in many of our inner-city public schools.
But where the bureaucrat performs so poorly private effort
once again shows the way. A LOS ANGELES TIMES article from 1980 described the
importance of private schools to the black community of that city:
... A
number of churches run pre-school programs. The Lutheran church-Missouri Synod
alone operates four elementary schools in the black community, with a
significant percentage of non-Lutheran students. Black students from South
Central and other areas also are bused to the Walter A. Maier Lutheran High
School in Burbank, which has a 45% black enrollment. Baptists also have long
been involved in the area of private schools, and the Association of Christian
Schools International, run by a group of evangelical protestant denominations,
operates 16 elementary schools in black areas of the city as well as
Brethren High School in Paramount, with a 50% black enrollment of its 540
students. 10
A major contributor to black education in Los Angeles is the Catholic
Church with 20 elementary and a half-dozen high schools in the heart of the
black community. City-wide more than 10,000 black children attend Catholic
schools. Msgr. John Mihan, superintendent of
elementary education for the Los Angeles Diocese declared in 1980, “I think our
commitment is very strong. We are so strongly committed to keeping our schools
open in the inner city that we are not building any new schools in the suburbs.
The whole thing was thrashed out about five years ago, even though we realize
there is a large percentage of non-Catholics among our black student
population.11
Today, in the Los Angeles archdiocese, a large majority the 70,000 elementary students,
and of the the 30,000 high school students are Latino, black or Asian.
Non-church schools are also proliferating in the inner city. One of the better
known efforts in Los Angeles is the Sheenway School,
founded in 1972 by a Los Angeles physician and surgeon, Dr. Herbert Sheen, and
his daughter, Dolores Sheen-Blunt. The school is run by his daughter, an
accomplished musician who also holds a black belt in Karate. With an enrollment
of 70, the school has a “country store,” where the children learn how to keep
inventory and write bills of sale, and a darkroom where children from
kindergarten through 12th grade learn photography and film processing.
Aside from the basics
the students are taught everything from ballet to diction. The girls wear plaid
jumpers or skirts and the boys wear brown cords and white shirts. In the
classroom the children rise when a visitor enters. The annual budget is around
$178,000, about 65% of which is covered by tuition.
Regarding the public school system Dolores Sheen-Blunt comments, the public
schools are designed for failure. For one thing, they are drowning in
paperwork, and teachers just don't have the time to provide children with
individual attention. But the more unfortunate thing about the public system is
that it diminishes in people a sense of responsibility for their own lives and
their own children. This huge bureaucracy is in our midst saying “We're in
charge here,” and as a result people are encouraged to become dependent on this
outside political institution rather than on the resources within their own
community. This is very unfortunate.12
Perhaps the best publicized inner-city effort in the nation was that of Marva Collins, whose Westside Preparatory School was
located in the rundown Garfield Park area of Chicago. Her school received the
sympathetic attention of 60 Minutes and was also the subject of a made-for-TV
movie, The Marva Collins Story.
The daughter of a black Alabama businessman, Marva Collins taught in the Chicago inner city public
schools for fourteen years before leaving in disgust in 1975. She explained,
“All we were doing was creating more welfare recipients.” With $5000 of her own
money she opened her school in one room of an old brownstone. The 200 or so
black children, ages 5-12, are drilled vigorously in the basics with an
emphasis on reading and writing. She starts the five-year-olds on Aesops Fables, while assigning myths, novels and legends to
the more advanced students. She asks, “Who can say that the classics are too
hard for eight-year-olds? Why spoon-feed them until the choke on an overdose of
boredom?”
Her approach seemed to work. Many of her students jumped
from well below to well above grade level. One eight-year-old, who had been
assigned while in the public schools to a class for the mentally retarded was
soon reading at the tenth-grade level.
Collins had little regard for the expensive gimmicks so
dear to the hearts the public school bureaucrats. She said, “If you gave me
$20,000 worth audio-visual equipment I'd leave it out on the sidewalk.” She
charged around $150 per month tuition and had a waiting list of hundreds. She
did not seek federal money declaring, “I don't want any experts telling me
what's good for these kids or telling me how to teach.” 13 Marva Collins was a living rebuke to the Chicago Public School System, and a monthly
newspaper published by public school teachers denounced her as a “hoax” who was
“carefully constructed as a media event” aimed at “further crippling public
education.”14
Finally, in spite of her remarkable success, Marva Collins was forced to close her doors in 2005. The
burden of competing with the tax-subsidized public schools in a tough economy was
too much. But the achievements of Marva Collins will
remain a striking rebuke to the public school monolith.
The
public school establishment was no doubt happy to see the Marva Collins school disappear. The public system has always been hostile to private
effort. As the New York State Superintendent of Education declared in 1849
(quoted above), “Private schools ought not to receive the encouragement of the
State or the support of the community.” But sour grapes aside, private
effort once again demonstrated its superiority over compulsory political
institutions. Marva Collins and Dolores Sheen-Blunt
and Msgr. John Mihan and thousands of others are
doing what the public school system today is incapable of doing – they are
providing inner-city children with a decent education at reasonable cost.
HOME SCHOOLING
Like motherhood, public education has been for years an
institution above reproach. People may have criticized some aspect of the
public system but rarely the underlying principle. Today, however, the idea of
state directed “unity” is no longer receiving the uncritical endorsement of
just a few years ago. Indeed, to the extent that the public schools have been
promoting the collective rather than the individual – and the compulsory rather
than the voluntary – they have been eroding precisely the values on which a
free and progressive society actually depends. In any event an increasing
number of parents are removing their children from the public school system
precisely because of its socialization aspects. To the chagrin of public school
officials they are choosing instead to educate their children at home.
An article in REASON appropriately entitled “Home
Schooling: Up From the Underground,” told the story of a couple in Amherst,
Massachusetts who elected to keep their eight-year-old child out of the public
schools. A warrant was issued for their arrest. But instead of running for
cover, the couple went on the offensive, initiating a suit against the school
authorities.
The couple could hardly be dismissed as negligent or
ignorant parents. The father has a PhD in biochemistry, and his wife was a
student at the University of Massachusetts. Objecting to what they regarded as
the public school “hidden curriculum” of conformity and anti-intellectualism,
they simply believed they could do a better job of educating their own child.
But school authorities argued that state law requires that
educational alternatives be the equivalent of public education, and that home
schooling, by its nature, could not satisfy this criterion. The judge, however,
supported the couple, declaring that parents had the right to seek educational
alternatives for non-religious and well as religious reasons:
Parents
need not demonstrate a formal religious reason for insisting on the right to
choose other than public school education since the right of privacy, which
protects the right to choose alternative forms of education, grows out of
constitutional guarantees in addition to those contained in the First
Amendment. Non-religious as well as religious parents have the right to choose
from the full range of educational alternatives for their children. 15
The court went on to declare that the school had no right to force its
socialization upon a family:
The
question here is ... not whether the socialization provided in the school is
beneficial to a child, but rather, who should make that decision for any
particular child ... Under our system, the parents must be allowed to decide
whether public school education, including its socialization aspects, is
desirable or undesirable for their children. 16
Courts elsewhere have been striking down the notion that “equivalent” education
requires state certification of the teacher. The Kentucky Supreme Court
declared in 1978, “It cannot be said as an absolute that a teacher in a
non-public school who is not certified ... will be unable to instruct children
to become intelligent citizens.” In a Michigan case the district court judge
declared that “the state ... has failed to produce any evidence whatsoever on
the interests served by the requirements of teacher certification and the
defendants' experts to the contrary demonstrated that there is no rational
basis for such requirements.”
Home schooling is an issue which cuts across ideological boundaries. A few
years ago, when Louisiana school officials began proceedings against a couple
who were educating their four children at their home-based Christian Academy,
the Legislature passed a bill deregulating all non-public education in that
state. For once, liberals and conservatives were united. Explained the bill's
author, they “agreed to disagree on many issues, but they all accept that
parents have the primary right and responsibility to educate and care for their
children in the manner they deem fit.” After years of wrangling, home schooling
finally became legal in all fifty states in 1993.
With around 1.5 million children now being taught at home,
the home schooling movement can no longer be dismissed as a fringe phenomenon.
Home schooling books, newsletters and mutual aid organizations abound. Groups
of like-minded parents in a neighborhood can band together to share the
teaching chores. In fact, families could unite to establish a church and then donate,
tax exempt, up to 50% of their incomes to it. The church could then establish a
well-funded private school. One home schooling newspaper, THE LINK, claims a
national circulation of 25,000 and is packed with ads for hi-tech educational
programs of every description, from history to math, and from the bible to
anatomy.
Entire curricula are now available on VCR or CD ROM,
bringing to the home a quality of instruction competitive with the best the
public schools have to offer. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC, for example, now offers its
108 years of publication on CD ROM. One of the fastest-growing segments of the
personal computer industry is software for home schooling programs. Technology
is rendering the public school system obsolete. Home schooling is not for
everyone, but it becomes an increasingly viable alternative for those parents
who reject the homogenized values of a failing public school system. Home
schooling is now a significant national trend, and has even been the subject of
a respectful cover article in a 1998 issue of NEWSWEEK.
CONCLUSION:
The popular notion that mass education came about
only through government action is simply a myth. As we have seen, mass
education was on the way long before the state became much involved. Subsequent
state monopoly, by squeezing private effort from the field, has undoubtedly
retarded rather than advanced the cause of education. In fact, children of the
poor were receiving a better education under Joseph Lancaster 190 years ago
than they are receiving today in many of our public schools.
State education has been its own worst enemy. Tax
supported, it has been insulated from the public feedback by which the errors
and excesses of the past might have been corrected. Current attempts at reform
will be equally fruitless. Based on compulsory taxation, the public school
system is immunized against reform.
In a word, state education is a bad idea gone wrong - escecially for the poor. Compulsory support should be
ended, and freedom of choice restored to the parent. (The tuition tax credit
might be a step in the right direction.) In education as in all other areas of
social concern, the key to abundance is not government, but the diverse and
voluntary efforts of a free society.
If education could be returned to the marketplace, the
effect would be profound. A myriad of alternatives would emerge. Proprietary
schools would flourish, from pre-school to college and from trade schools to
the professions. Alternatives of every description would proliferate: home
schooling, private schools, industry sponsored schools, church schools, Black
Muslim schools, left-wing schools, right-wing schools, storefront schools,
community action schools.
Perhaps the methods of Joseph Lancaster would once again be
used with success. Perhaps, like Marva Collins, many
of the better teachers who now feel trapped in the public system would find in
these voluntary schools a challenge, a freedom and a satisfaction which they do
not presently experience. Indeed, if education could be freed from the dead
hand of government, all would benefit in the end.
***
FOOTNOTES
1 From GUIDANCE HANDBOOK FOR TEACHERS, Wiseburn School District, around 1960.
2 Cited in NATIONAL REVIEW BULLETIN, March 2, 1965.
3 Described by Erica Carle in "Education Without Taxation," The Freeman," March, 1962.
4. THE LIFE AND WRITINGS OF DEWITT CLINTON (Baker and Scribner, 1849) p.318, cited by Carle.
5 James Mill in Westminster Review, October, 1813. Cited by E.G. West, EDUCATION AND THE STATE (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1965, p. 136.
6 Ibid., p 154.
7 Ibid. p. 121(From the 1849 Annual Report of the New York Superintendent of the Common Schools)
8 Ibid. p. 115. (from the 1846 Annual Report of the Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Education)
9 Quoted by Carle, op. Cit.
10 William Overend, “Alternatives To Public Education, LOS ANGELSES TIMES, June 26, 1980.
11 Ibid.
12 From discussions with Ms Blunt.
13 “Westside Story, An Inner-City School That Works,” TIME, Dec. 26, 1977
14 Paul Gigot, “The Effort To Tear Down A Teaching Hero,” WALL STREET JOURNAL,March 15, 1982.
15 Gerald King, “Home Schooling: Up From the Underground,” REASON, April, 1983.
16 Ibid.