In the latest issue of First Things, Charles L. Glenn argues that religious liberty and educational reform both require the end of the public school monopoly:
[T]he rich diversity and energy that has been the glory of American religious life was, by the early twentieth century, largely suppressed in American K–12 schooling, though it continued at the collegiate level. This was not primarily through the regulatory efforts of state governments—that would come later—but through an emerging consensus among a class of professional educational administrators, part of the Progressive movement, who sought to create what historian David Tyack has called “the one best system.”
Accompanying this development over the course of the later nineteenth century was a growing popular concern about what was seen as the divisive and even subversive effects of Roman Catholicism, associated with immigrants and with contemporary conflicts in Western Europe. The efforts of Catholics to provide their own schools, as was the norm in most of the countries from which the immigrants came, was seen as a refusal to allow their children to become absorbed into American life, and rejection of Catholic demands for public funding of those schools became a winning formula in many elections.
December 19th, 2011 | 5:01 pm
Usually before one makes a radical change, one should ask what exactly do they want to accomplish. Before I junk my working car, for example, I should ask what I’m trying to get out of it? Do I want a new car that’s much nicer than what I’m driving? Do I just want one that’s more reliable? Do I want to finally save some on gas? Trying to avoid this question with fuzzy and vague language often leads to trouble (i.e. ‘transportation reform’ means what exactly?)
So with that in mind let me note that there is no ‘public school monopoly’ and never has been. There are quite a few private schools in the US and always have been. There are few roadblocks to parents using them.
So what do we want to accomplish? Ohh yes, fuzzy words….’religious liberty’ and ‘education reform’. But religion has never been more free than it is today. ‘Education reform’ is always a buzz word but it almost never gets defined well. As a result almost all reforms fail because they never bother to set up an actual metric of success. We start one reform saying ‘test scores must go up’ and several years later demand another round of reform because we have ‘too much standardized testing’.
Just imagine you were running gym at a local high school and the principal came to you and demanded a serious basketball program. He points to some other schools that have alumni playing college and NBA basketball and demands you make the sports program centered on churning out NBA stars. You comply, you make all the classes centered on basketball type skills. You ditch the football equipment budget to add more hoops. Then five years later the school board is crying that the gym program is a failure because it’s not promoting a diversified array of sports……sigh.
Objectively if there’s one thing that’s clearly failed it is the argument that the educational system is a diaster. We hear this claim every decade and every decade the ecoonomy refutes it. I don’t say that there aren’t bad schools, of course there are but the case that the entire educational system is bad doesn’t hold water and that’s evidenced by the fact that the people who make it almost never will stick to one definition of what makes a ‘good system’ and instead insist on changing the goal posts to always have a story of a ‘failing system’.
It’s more sensible to conclude that we have a fetish for flogging ourselves over our ‘failed schools’ no matter what the schools actually do. I think the more interesting question isn’t ‘how do we reform education’ but ‘why do we always insist on talking about reforming education’?
December 19th, 2011 | 5:32 pm
“Usually before one makes a radical change, one should ask what exactly do they want to accomplish.”
This is exactly right, of course, and is the question one should be asking about the public school system. When the current system was beginning to be constructed a century or so ago, what it was expected to accomplish was radically different from what had been expected before, and also from what we expect it to accomplish today. Now we expect every single American to sit in a classroom for 12+ years, until they are ~17 or 18 years old, an expectation that we are nowhere close to achieving, and that it is not at all clear we should want to accomplish anyway. What exactly they should spend those dozen or more years actually learning is never really debated in any serious way either (all the sound and fury is spent on utter trivialities such as sex related issues).
“Objectively if there’s one thing that’s clearly failed it is the argument that the educational system is a diaster. We hear this claim every decade and every decade the ecoonomy refutes it.”
My first reaction is that this is a complete non sequitur. My second reaction is that it pretty much obliterates the argument that we should want everyone to graduate from high school, doesn’t it?
As far as I can tell, the contemporary American school system accomplishes reasonably well what we as a society most want it to, which is to act as a babysitting service for children and younger teenagers.
December 19th, 2011 | 5:42 pm
Well, the argument that the average high school graduate does not read as well as the average high school graduate of 40 years ago, is subject to falsification, and indicates that all that talk of “reform” might not be so hyperbolic after all.
December 19th, 2011 | 6:03 pm
My first reaction is that this is a complete non sequitur. My second reaction is that it pretty much obliterates the argument that we should want everyone to graduate from high school, doesn’t it?
at first glance, the US HS graduation rate is nearly 70%. If you add in people who get GED’s a few years after they “should have” graduated you probably get a much higher rate that’s in the mid 80′s to even 90%. That’s pretty good if your metric of success is just getting everyone thru High School in some form.
As far as I can tell, the contemporary American school system accomplishes reasonably well what we as a society most want it to, which is to act as a babysitting service for children and younger teenagers.
This is not an unreasonable desire. Children and teens tend to get themselves in trouble, and in unsupervised groups they cause a lot of trouble. School does help out by basically keeping this ‘troublesome’ period of growth segregated from the rest of society in an environment where there’s much less chance of causing or doing harm. Or to put it more frankly, why bemoan babysitting? Don’t you think babies need sitting?
When the current system was beginning to be constructed a century or so ago, what it was expected to accomplish was radically different from what had been expected before, and also from what we expect it to accomplish today
I think what they wanted to accomplish was universal literacy, basic math skills and at least some basic knowledge of our common culture. On all three fronts, they were and are successful.
Well, the argument that the average high school graduate does not read as well as the average high school graduate of 40 years ago, is subject to falsification, and indicates that all that talk of “reform” might not be so hyperbolic after all.
Curious, has the consumption of printed text per person gone up or gone down over the last 40 years? Today we seem to be awash in text messages, text blaring at us from web pages, we compose endless emails to each other, even when we watch TV we see little streams of text floating under the talking heads giving us the news. Even a rather ‘uneducated’ show like Nancy Grace has 3-4 different little ‘text feeds’ that bobble under and over her talking head! Remember in previous generations New York’s great tabloid newspapers were designed for people who couldn’t read. Big sensational headlines with even bigger pictures were designed to appeal to a market that had a lot of non-readers. Today a person who cannot read very well seems at a very steep disadvantage in today’s market.
December 19th, 2011 | 6:51 pm
“That’s pretty good if your metric of success is just getting everyone thru High School in some form.”
And why, praytell, is that a meaningful “metric of success”? Heck, if that’s how we judge things, then just pass a declaration that everyone is awarded a high school diploma upon turning 17 (or whatever age you prefer). Voila! Everyone has a high school diploma! O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!
If babysitting is what we all agree school if for, then I for darn sure want salaries for teachers/sitters slashed to the bone, and we should all be able to agree that incentivizing graduate degrees for teachers/sitters is lunacy.
“I think what they wanted to accomplish was universal literacy, basic math skills and at least some basic knowledge of our common culture.”
If that’s what we’re trying to accomplish in 12+ years of public school, I’d say it’s about the most massively inefficient system I can imagine. Plus, it’s pretty darn poor at the latter two, I must say, and has mostly abdicated the last one in the past few decades.
December 19th, 2011 | 8:21 pm
Brian
And why, praytell, is that a meaningful “metric of success”? Heck, if that’s how we judge things, then just pass a declaration that everyone is awarded a high school diploma upon turning 17
You tell me. Arty’s charge was that the ‘average high school graduate’ today is not able to read as well as the average grad. from 40 years ago. There’s a few problems with this metric:
1. The number of dropouts has been going down. See the chart at http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0779196.html. In 1960 nearly 1/3 of students didn’t complete high school. In 1970 it was 15%. In 2008 it was 8%. The proper comparision is not today’s average with 1960′s average but 1960′s average with the top 2/3 of today’s students.
2. The idea that the population as a whole cannot read as well as it could doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny very much. Without bothering to go into hard stats, just think about how much our culture is orientated towards printed text compared to the past. Look at our recreations like Facebook and Twitter, even the low end students these days are ‘textaholics’. Did kids in the 1970′s gobble up 500 page tomes every year like the current generation did with Harry Potter?
If babysitting is what we all agree school if for, then I for darn sure want salaries for teachers/sitters slashed to the bone, and we should all be able to agree that incentivizing graduate degrees for teachers/sitters is lunacy.
Individual babysitters who work for min. wage are highly inefficient hence paid very little. If nothing else being able to babysitter 20-30 at a clip rather than just 1 or 2 justifies much more pay than your typical teen babysitter that you hire when you want a night out.
More relevant, I didn’t say that’s ‘all’ schools are for but that is almost certainly part of it. Just imagine if we could download a whole High School level education ‘Matrix style’ directly into a 11 yr olds brain. we would have a pretty non-trivial problem with large groups of immature teens roaming around during working hours causing all sorts of choas. Of course that’s rarely talked about because no one gets votes or popularity telling parents their precious little angels would happily destroy all civilization if allowed to be totally unimpeded….but those of us who’ve been around *other people’s kids* in groups know this is so true that its beyond debate.
Of course, its an added plus that during this babysitting period the kids get some higher math, read some history and some classic books. But even without that there’s somethings of value in schools that we should enter into the ‘equation’ here.
If that’s what we’re trying to accomplish in 12+ years of public school, I’d say it’s about the most massively inefficient system I can imagine. Plus, it’s pretty darn poor at the latter two, I must say, and has mostly abdicated the last one in the past few decades.
I think this is a symptom of the tyranny of success. A hundred years ago you could make a living off of just being able to read. People would hire you to read and write letters from their family. They would hire you to read the newspaper to them etc. Today people can claim we are horrible readers, yet even in the most dysfunctional areas you’re not going to make a dollar as a ‘professional reader’ anymore.
When everyone gets a car, then everyone becomes a car critic and a road critic. Everyone has TV, they are TV critics. I wouldn’t be surprised if very soon you’ll start seeing people who make a habit of writing columns bemoaning how low quality the internet has become (probably has already happened). Quite often when something has done what you want it to do, your expectations will increase even faster making victory seem like defeat.
December 20th, 2011 | 3:35 am
Surely, one purpose of public education is to integrate children into society; as Thiers said, “to stamp them, like the coinage, with the image of the Republic.”
December 20th, 2011 | 10:25 am
“Surely, one purpose of public education is to integrate children into society; as Thiers said, “to stamp them, like the coinage, with the image of the Republic.””
Forcing children into a system of arbitrary bureaucratized discipline that creates an artificial and often rather poisonous society that does not resemble adult life in the slightest is a dubious way to integrate them into society. Saying school is more effective at integrating them into society then their family and neighbors is equally dubious. Saying they have no touch with society in an internet era is absurd.
December 20th, 2011 | 11:11 am
Happened January 26, 1994.
December 20th, 2011 | 12:19 pm
First Things — all right, the first thing: did you vote in your last school board election?
December 20th, 2011 | 4:38 pm
This discussion of Professor Glenn’s commentary has focused on the academic efficiency of America’s public schools. But it seems to me the core of this discussion over the need for public funding for private schools, here and elsewhere, has really been the moral and religious content of those public schools. Federal courts have repeatedly denied parents’ claims that the ideology of “secular humanism” really constitutes a moral or religious threat to their children’s upbringing. Most memorably, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education (1987) that parents in Tennessee could not claim to be harmed by a textbook series that they felt attacked their religious and cultural beliefs.
(for a discussion of the legal context of the case, see James C. Harkins in the American University Law Review, “Of Textbooks and Tenets: Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education and the Free Exercise of Religion,” [vol. 37: 385, 1988], online: http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/lawrev/37/harkins.pdf?rd=1) (And see the decision: http://www.soc.umn.edu/~samaha/cases/mozert_v_hawkins_schools.html)
Like the Mozerts, many parents and educational activists have attempted to demonstrate that the public schools insist they are morally neutral, when in fact their purportedly neutral ideology—call it “multiculturalism” or what you will—deliberately discriminates against all those who insist on a transcendent moral authority. That is, if you and your children won’t admit that all non-violent values should coexist with one another, you have no moral place in the public schools. Many Americans who believe that there is in fact one source of truth, be it Jesus and the Bible or Muhammad and the Koran, have insisted the purportedly neutral ideology of public schools is instead a crippling moral imposition.
I have discussed these issues on my blog (I Love You but You’re Going to Hell) at more depth, especially in the context of the long struggle over the teaching of evolution and special creation. I invite anyone interested to come check out the longer arguments: See especially “The Cult of Multiculturalism” posts: http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2011/12/12/traditional-education-ii-the-cult-of-multiculturalism/ and “Values…of what?”: http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2011/12/04/traditionalist-education-part-ii-valuesof-what/
December 20th, 2011 | 4:42 pm
This discussion of Professor Glenn’s commentary has focused on the academic efficiency of America’s public schools. But it seems to me the core of this discussion over the need for public funding for private schools, here and elsewhere, has really been the moral and religious content of those public schools. Federal courts have repeatedly denied parents’ claims that the ideology of “secular humanism” really constitutes a moral or religious threat to their children’s upbringing. Most memorably, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education (1987) that parents in Tennessee could not claim to be harmed by a textbook series that they felt attacked their religious and cultural beliefs.
(for a discussion of the legal context of the case, see James C. Harkins in the American University Law Review, “Of Textbooks and Tenets: Mozert v. Hawkins County Board of Education and the Free Exercise of Religion,” [vol. 37: 385, 1988], online: http://www.wcl.american.edu/journal/lawrev/37/harkins.pdf?rd=1) (see the decision: http://www.soc.umn.edu/~samaha/cases/mozert_v_hawkins_schools.html)
Like the Mozerts, many educational activists have attempted to demonstrate that the public schools insist they are morally neutral, when in fact their purportedly neutral ideology—call it “multiculturalism” or what you will—deliberately discriminates against all those who insist on a transcendent moral authority. That is, if you and your children won’t admit that all non-violent values should coexist with one another, you have no moral place in the public schools. Many Americans who believe that there is in fact one source of truth, be it Jesus and the Bible or Muhammad and the Koran, have insisted the purportedly neutral ideology of public schools is instead a crippling moral imposition.
I have discussed these issues on my blog at more depth, especially in the context of the long struggle over the teaching of evolution and special creation. I invite anyone interested to come check out the longer arguments: See especially “The Cult of Multiculturalism” posts: http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2011/12/12/traditional-education-ii-the-cult-of-multiculturalism/ and “Values…of what?”: http://iloveyoubutyouregoingtohell.org/2011/12/04/traditionalist-education-part-ii-valuesof-what/
December 20th, 2011 | 5:11 pm
Adamlaats
So what?
in fact their purportedly neutral ideology—call it “multiculturalism” or what you will—deliberately discriminates against all those who insist on a transcendent moral authority.
So what?
What about those who don’t think there’s a transcendent moral authority? Or those who do think there’s one but not the one you want to push? Either way, someone’s going to not get everything they want. If that’s discrimination then all of life is intolerable discrimination.
But I’m not seeing anything in law that amounts to a violation of anyone’s liberty here. You have a duty to educate your kids, just as you have a duty to house them, feed them, cloth them and so on. The state provides you with the option of an education at not cost but if you don’t want to avail yourself of that either because you want more ideology in your education or what not then you have plenty of private education options.
To use an analogy here, just suppose the state offered free food that was sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of kids. But a portion of the food consisted of meat products, which to a strict Hindu are morally unacceptable as it entails killing an innocent life. Society may be nice to fund a vegetarian only alternative menu to accomodate the Hindu parents but it is under no obligation to do so. Just because meat loving parents would happen to have it easier under such a policy doesn’t mean meat hating parents necessarily have a valid liberty argument.
December 20th, 2011 | 7:21 pm
First of all, sorry for the double post.
@Boonton, I don’t think the only important point here is whether or not parents have *liberty* to choose a different school. A more central question, at least in the judicial tradition, is whether or not religious ideas in public schools create an unconstitutional burden on students’ and families’ free exercise of religion, as guaranteed in the First Amendment. Perhaps most relevant here is the US Supreme Court’s finding in Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), in which the Court ruled Amish families could be exempted from compulsory school attendance laws if the school ideology harmed the pupils’ religious beliefs. In the Yoder case, one of the criteria considered relevant by the Court was the sincerity of Amish religious beliefs.
Historically, as Professor Glenn pointed out in his article, the range of beliefs considered legitimate by both the Supreme Court and the court of public opinion has expanded drastically. At the time of the founding of the public school system in the mid-1800s, school founders insisted that public schools be “non-sectarian,” but by that they only meant they must not discriminate against different types of Protestantism. Catholicism, not to mention other religions such as Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism, were not considered by 19th-century school system advocates to be legitimate beliefs for public schools.
More recently, as in Thomas v. Review Board (1981), the US Supreme Court has insisted that the religious beliefs of individuals need not be “acceptable, logical, consistent, or comprehensible to others” to merit First Amendment protection.
Yet there lingers a sense that only some religious beliefs ought to be given full protection in public schools. As I noted above, conservative Christians have not so far succeeded in establishing the religious nature of the ideology they call “secular humanism.” Nor have their claims that secular textbooks harm their children been recognized by a federal court.
But in general, to address your analogy, the public schools HAVE generally been required to provide the ideological equivalent of both meat-free and meaty meals for public school children. Schools have had to accommodate the religious requirements of a variety of beliefs, including those that had earlier been denied Constitutional protection, such as the Amish, and Jehovah’s Witnesses, as in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943).
December 20th, 2011 | 10:15 pm
Accomodation is an interesting word. If your dinner guest does not believe in drinking, you may accomodate him by giving him water or soda or ice tea while others enjoy beer. But if I tell you I only drink the finest wine, you’re not obligated to accomodate my ‘epicurian religion’ by laying out $500 for a bottle of what accomodates my refined tastes.
Claiming ‘secular humanism’ is a religion does not make it so, nor does it alter the fact that as a philosophy it is not taught in any public school in the US. Nor does it alter the fact that secular != ‘secular humanism’. A chemistry textbook that has the periodic table, but neglects to say “Glory to God for the elements” is not the same as a textbook that says “see, we don’t need God when we know almighty chemistry”. The former is secular, the latter is secular humanist (although more abrasive than your typical secular humanist).
Anyway, when invited for a free dinner, you may decline the stronger drink in favor of water but it’s an ill behaved guest who demands his host serve him stronger stuff than has been deamed fit for the menu of the evevning. In other words take the watery textbook with just the plain periodic table, if you must insist on something stronger bring your own bottle to the party.
December 21st, 2011 | 9:27 am
Claiming ‘secular humanism’ is a religion does not make it so
This is why it is important to define religion.
I define it as a belief system that is characterized by:
- based on articles of faith
- explains origins (creation story, big bang, etc)
- tells us how to live (moral code)
- explains the purpose of human existence
- offers a story about what the future holds, could hold, should hold, etc.
By this definition, humanism is a religion.
But whether it’s actually a religion or not, it is still inappropriate for schools to be pushing one set of values and beliefs over others.
A family’s relationship with the public schools is not like a guest’s relationship with a dinner host. For one thing, the family is paying for the dinner, and even more importantly: the people “hosting” the dinner are paid out of the money provided by the family.
What might be inappropriate for a guest in someone else’s house is not necessarily inappropriate when the “guest” is in fact the one paying the “host” for the services provided.
December 21st, 2011 | 9:49 am
As I noted above, conservative Christians have not so far succeeded in establishing the religious nature of the ideology they call “secular humanism.”
Ironically, it is the atheists themselves who are demanding that they be recognized as a religion.
They have already begun to have some success. It will be interesting to see how far they will be allowed to push the idea that they’re a religion when it suits them – but not when it doesn’t.
I first began believing secular humanism was a religion when I read the transcripts of the Dover, PA “evolution trial”. The secular humanist witness explained what “science” is and is not in terms of the community, its leadership, its hierarchy, its shared assumptions (or, as I call them, articles of faith), and its beliefs.
The point of her testimony was to establish that there are certain types of questions that cannot be asked. The idea that a person who wants to know about the world should figure out what sort of evidence is needed to answer a particular question has been turned upside down: a person who wants to know about the world is now expected to figure out what sort of question to ask, based on the sort of evidence that has been defined as appropriate to work with.
The problem for me is that science is still being presented to these students as “the” way to know the world.
If there are limits on what sorts of questions science can answer, then the students need to be taught those limits – that science is unable to address metaphysical or ethical questions, among others. But that’s not what they’re taught. They’re taught, simultaneously, that (a) certain types of question are taboo AND (b) science is “THE” way to know the world.
Which is where it starts crossing into the religious: because it pretends to have the one true answer to metaphysical questions, but that answer is not based on “reason” – it is presented as being based on “reason” but it is really based on faith.
The students need to be allowed to recognize that humanism has articles of faith just like every belief system does, and therefore humanism is not “better”, “more rational”, or in any way demonstrably superior to any other faith.
December 21st, 2011 | 12:30 pm
A family’s relationship with the public schools is not like a guest’s relationship with a dinner host. For one thing, the family is paying for the dinner, and even more importantly: the people “hosting” the dinner are paid out of the money provided by the family.
Actually the taxpayer is paying for dinner, the family may or may not be a taxpayer but those that don’t have kids don’t get excused from taxes. So yes the ‘family’ is enjoying a ‘free meal’ at the taxpayers generosity.
I define it as a belief system that is characterized by:
Curiously many forms of Buddhism would not be counted as a religion by that standard….anyway secularism is distinct from secular humanism in that it’s missing articles of faith, does not explain origins, leaves out even a moral code and purpose of human existence and offers no story about the future.
If there are limits on what sorts of questions science can answer, then the students need to be taught those limits – that science is unable to address metaphysical or ethical questions, among others. But that’s not what they’re taught. They’re taught, simultaneously, that (a) certain types of question are taboo AND (b) science is “THE” way to know the world.
Kindly point to one single standard science textbook designed for public school use that asserts science is able to answer any and all metaphysical ethical questions and has no limits to its scope.
December 21st, 2011 | 4:20 pm
Kindly point to one single standard science textbook designed for public school use that asserts science is able to answer any and all metaphysical ethical questions and has no limits to its scope.
Please stop bossing me around. I find it offensive to be ordered around.
If you think I’m lying, then look it up yourself.
If you dispute my claims, then say so.
If you want something proven or disproven, you can do the research yourself.
December 21st, 2011 | 4:48 pm
I’m unclear here. You have asserted that upon consulting standard public school lessons I may learn this magical ‘moral code’ of secular humanism. I may also learn its creation stories, stories of the distant future and so on.
Why are you unable then to follow through? If I asked a Christian where I may see their moral code, they will point to the ten commandments in the Bible plus Jesus’s Golden Rule. If I asked them where I might see a story that explains creation they will point to genesis. Certainly depending on the Christian, they will likely have additional places where I may view more detailed understandings of those basic questions but they wouldn’t reply that I was ‘bossing them around’.
You made the claim so its fair to assume, if you’re an honest person, that you know what you’re talking about. So please where would an innocent school child find in his public school science texts that assertion that science can answer all questions and has no boundaries?
December 22nd, 2011 | 11:36 am
“Actually the taxpayer is paying for dinner, the family may or may not be a taxpayer”
The homeless family (the only people who do not pay school taxes) is the exception, not the rule. Finding a rare exception hardly changes the point that, generally speaking, “the family is paying.”
December 22nd, 2011 | 12:08 pm
Has your town multiplied your tax rate by a factor of 5 since you have five kids while reducing the tax rate for childless couples? If you go to McDonald’s you pay for more meals than a smaller family, but your school taxes are not computed this way.
Yes most families are also taxpayers (either directly through an actual tax bill or indirectly through increased rent and prices that others charge you to cover taxes) but they are two different roles. The taxpayer is providing the family with an opportunity for free public education. They generally are not providing free cloths for the family’s kids. Even though the same people may play two roles the fact is they remain two different roles. Just because you’re ta taxpayer doesn’t mean when you buy some school clothes for your kids it would be fair to say “the taxpayers are paying for your kid’s clothes”. Likewise those using public schools can’t be fairly said to be paying for them even if they happen to be taxpayers. They are only paying for them if the school is direct billing them for the actual services they are using.
December 22nd, 2011 | 1:58 pm
More importantly, now that we hopefully have finished down on our little side adventure about secularism and such, why not return to my first question. What exactly is the problem that ‘disestablishing’ public schools is intended to solve?
December 22nd, 2011 | 2:12 pm
“Actually the taxpayer is paying for dinner, the family may or may not be a taxpayer”
The homeless family (the only people who do not pay school taxes) is the exception, not the rule. Finding a rare exception hardly changes the point that, generally speaking, “the family is paying.”
It’s a fallacy of composition – confusing levels of abstraction.
The existence of a legless dog does not disprove the statement, “dogs are four-legged creatures”.
The existence of one or more homeless families does not change the fact that schools are supported by taxpayers, and therefore the correct relationship of school staff to taxpayer is employee to employer-shareholder, not “host” to “guest”.
December 22nd, 2011 | 2:17 pm
Likewise those using public schools can’t be fairly said to be paying for them even if they happen to be taxpayers.
What a ridiculous argument.
Of course the people who pay for the schools are the employers. We are also the customers, the clients, the ones who are supposedly on the receiving end of a service that has been paid for. It is for us – for our children. We are supposed to be the beneficiaries.
How amusing that school apologists are confused on that point. They are capable of thinking that parents are the ones with the obligation and schools are the ones with the entitlement? (Do they imagine that the families and the kids exist to meet the needs of school staff, rather than vice versa?)
Schools are employees, no different from garbage collectors, police officers, and every other public servant. They are not providing us with anything from their own pocket. They’re being paid to provide a service, and we have every right to expect that the service will be provided both to our needs and to our satisfaction.
December 22nd, 2011 | 2:35 pm
by this logic, welfare and food stamps are paid for by those collecting them and the adminstrators of those offices work not for ‘taxpayers’ but for those getting the benefits…hmmm…
I’ll say it again. Unless a school direct bills the parent who sends their kids there, the school is being paid for by taxpayers, not parents. If you want to deny this then tell me why am I paying nearly $10,000 a year in school taxes when I have no kids?
When ‘octomom’ walks into McDonald’s and buys 8 happy meals for her kids, she pays 8 times as much as ‘unomom’ with her one kid. McDonald’s supplies private meals to families hence I as a taxpayer have no say in that transaction. ‘Octomom’ does not pay 8 times for her kids’ schooling unless she is paying for private school.
December 23rd, 2011 | 6:05 am
I’ll say it again. Unless a school direct bills the parent who sends their kids there, the school is being paid for by taxpayers, not parents
And the schools are still the employees of the parents.
And the parents are still the taxpayers.
The schools are providing a service. The parents are the ones who are supposed to be receiving a service. The parents, not the schools, are the ones who are ultimately the kids’ guardians, and responsible for the decisions and values that affect the children.
December 23rd, 2011 | 6:54 am
BTW I see the above “guest/host” analogy as problematic for three reasons.
1: the schools have already reached and passed the point where teachers are spending so much time “teaching” their own political-religious agenda, that it has cut into the time available for the actual teaching that schools are supposed to be doing. Teachers have misappropriated so much of the available time and resources turning the kids into Democratic party line voters that they have neglected their real job. There isn’t enough time to both teach Unitarian Universalist values and teach the things that schools are actually supposed to be teaching, and so as a result the kids are failing miserably at history, reading, composition, math, science, civics, etc.
2: It’s neither rational nor reasonable to trust anyone who proselytizes other peoples’ children. It’s a misuse of resources (see above) and an abuse of trust. Schools are not “entitled” to have at our children; we entrust them with the care of our children. Last I checked, polls confirmed what common sense suggests: nobody in their right mind actually trusts these people – and the fact that they behave inappropriately with what isn’t rightfully theirs is a big reason for that.
3: Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this is the precedent it sets.
Example: if taxpayers are perceived as being responsible for serving the public servants – rather than the other way around – what is that going to mean when Obamacare goes into effect? Are patients going to be lectured on the importance of being good “guests”, when our “hosts” force upon us treatments that are neither wanted nor appropriate? Are we going to be expected to be grateful for things we experience as destructive?
December 23rd, 2011 | 7:46 am
This is getting stupid…
The schools are providing a service. The parents are the ones who are supposed to be receiving a service. …
Technically speaking the kids are getting the service. I already know algebra. But he who olds the purse commands the tune. The taxpayers hold the purse and while many parents are taxpayers most taxpayers are not parents (or not parents with kids in school).
Food is a good analogy here. Suppose taxpayers opted to open ‘feeding stations’ where a parent could bring their kid to be fed food sufficient for their nutritional needs at no cost. Are you seriously going to have us believe there would be no difference between this and the way most parents buy food for their kids from stores with their own money? Why not? Parent’s are taxpayers too right!
Yes if you insist you can say that the ‘food stations’ serve parents and children as a type of ‘customer’ but the reality is the program is set up by taxpayers. If the feeding station doesn’t serve organic chicken, a parent doesn’t have a right to complain about it in the same manner as a parent who buys chicken from a market with her own money.
The parents, not the schools, are the ones who are ultimately the kids’ guardians, and responsible for the decisions and values that affect the children.
Indeed, but like the ‘feeding stations’ the parents duty is to get their kids educated and fed. If a parent honestly believes anything other than organic chicken is unacceptable for their kid, then ultimately its their responsibility to provide it. If the ‘free feeding station’ happens to have organic chicken, that’s great. If not, though, then the parent has to decide whether its really important enough to spend her own money on it or if maybe the regular chicken will maybe do.
Like the dinner guest, the parent has no right to demand the station buy more expensive organic chicken. She has the right, as a citizen, voter, taxpayer to lobby for upgrading the feeding station’s budget, having it buy more organic chicken and less processed chicken, but that right isn’t in the role of the parent but as the citizen/taxpayer. I, with equal rights, can argue that people should feed their own kids and the feeding stations’ budget should be minimial to just help out those families who may be suffering hard times and not more than that.
Example: if taxpayers are perceived as being responsible for serving the public servants – rather than the other way around – what is that going to mean when Obamacare goes into effect? Are patients going to be lectured on the importance of being good “guests”, when our “hosts” force upon us treatments that are neither wanted nor appropriate?
Since the essential structure of ‘Obamacare’ is you buy your own health insurance its more analgous to vouchers where the gov’t gives you money and you decide how its spent.
Even so your analogy is off. If you don’t like the food a person serves then you don’t accept his dinner invitation. In the case of public schools you would have to provide for private education of your kid. In the case of ‘feeding stations’ you would simply have to buy the food you want from the supermarket.
Teachers have misappropriated so much of the available time and resources turning the kids into Democratic party line voters that they have neglected their real job.
More news dispatches from Blake’s Imaginary Universe. Amazing how this works, isn’t it? I mean huge areas of the country are pure Red State areas where a liberal Democrat could never win. Yet amazingly all these areas somehow elect *local school boards* who hire principals who hire teachers to do this and no one ever gets upset….except Blake. But none of that invincible lock the Democratic Party supposedly has never translates to a lock in national elections.
I’m opening this discussion with Blake up to the community here. I don’t think he has anything to offer so I won’t respond to any more points of his unless he can find a single person here to come forward and say “yes he has a valid point that’s worthy of a response”.
December 23rd, 2011 | 11:15 am
“Technically speaking the kids are getting the service.”
No, the law says that kids must receive 180 days of education from (in this state) ages 8 to 17. The public schools provide the service of allowing the parents to comply with this law. If the public schools did not provide the service, the parents would have to provide for the legally required education in some other way.
So the schools are providing the service of enabling the parents to comply with the law at minimal direct expense and less trouble than providing the education themselves. Legally speaking, the function of the public schools is not to educate the kids (otherwise there would be grounds for lawsuits in many cases) but to enable people to comply with the compulsory attendance laws. However, the parents have an interest in demanding that they do a good job of educating in the process.
And as for the taxpayer thing, the food stamp/welfare parallel doesn’t work, because most people who receive those benefits do not pay the taxes that go to support them. 99.9% of families that have kids in school are paying school taxes, directly or indirectly, so yes, they are “paying for it.” They are not the only people paying for it, but they ARE paying for it.
December 23rd, 2011 | 2:14 pm
But Pentamom 99% of taxes for schools are not beared by the parents of the kids in school. If they were the parents with 5 times the kids would pay 5 times the tax and so on. Most taxpayers do not have kids in the schools they are supporting.
You admit this yourself when you assert that public schools allow parents to comply with the law at minimal direct expense. Sorry but this cannot square with your previous assertion that ’99.9%’ of families with school kids are paying taxes for schools. I’m sure they are but they aren’t paying 99% of the cost of the schools. If they were there would be no ‘minimal direct expense’ savings for them.
Legally speaking, the function of the public schools is not to educate the kids (otherwise there would be grounds for lawsuits in many cases) but to enable people to comply with the compulsory attendance laws.
Then we go to ask what are the function of compulsory attendance laws…hmmm… Anway the ‘grounds for lawsuits’ assertion is cute in a snarkey way but has yet to withstand any real scrutiny here. My assertion remains that the US has never before enjoyed such an educated population as it does now.
A lot of this free form ‘reform education angst’ is not born of any concerns that are objectively defined but actually a subjective emotional obsession we all seem to have (and it comes on both sides of the political spectrum). Sort of like how many of us worry about there being ‘more and more germs’ out there when the reality is undeniable that the human race has never achieved a level of germfreeness that it enjoys today.
So let’s ask it again, what exactly is the problem that reformers here will purport to solve with their various suggestions? What exactly will tell us whether or not their ideas are successful or failures? The refusal to answer that while upping the rhetoric “disestablishing schools” hint that we are not dealing a serious issue here. To the degree that this is just an emotional rant, something to tell your bartender as you toss back another cold one, we can just let it be but if someone here actually seriously wants to enact something then they have an obligation to be serious.
December 28th, 2011 | 11:00 pm
[...] “Disestablishing Our Secular Schools“, by Charles L. Glenn. (HT) See also [...]
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