Thursday night was my first chance to watch the Republican National Convention. I won’t offer another tired commentary about it—with this one exception: a reaction to, and reflection on, Jeb Bush’s speech on schooling and school choice.
By definition, authentic choice cannot exist within a compulsory system. They are antonyms. Any choice worthy of the name cannot be constrained by an institutional system of compulsion. The only real possibility of any serious form of “school choice” then, is only possible after the disestablishment of compulsory schooling.
Sadly, both reigning, mirror-image political parties today accept compulsory schooling as more than a descriptive state of affairs: they seem to endorse it as a normative value in and of itself. There is a disturbing Messianism to the credentialist creed of schooling today.
There’s no such thing as “school choice” in today’s discussion, on either side. The idea that a quixotic “compulsory choice” between home, private, public, or charter schools—all relative equivalents of the same, impoverished assumptions and curricula—is a serious, real “choice” only has traction today because we’ve become so alienated from the reality that schooling has not, does not, and will never have a monopoly over education, real education.
Any school smaller than the world is just too small a place for education.
I may seem to be overemphasizing the need for rejection and denial, while forgetting about the proclamation of the Gospel, the good news. My sense of proclaiming the good news is always in a minor chord, deeply influenced by the apophatic; the via negativa and the via dolorosa: ways toward God that pass through the dark night of absence and suffering. Love hurts. This renders a tragic vision of the world that, I want to argue, is more than truth: it is a dark aesthetic revelation of reality. Tell me not what is true, show me what is real—show us Your face and we shall be saved.
This gets me to a practical challenge: how will this way of seeing reality—the reality of a world both without (compulsory) schooling and within the world as school—educate people in a holistic, authentic way? What is the purpose behind tilting at today’s schooling and senseless credentialism? The classic response to the suggestion of removing the placebo effect created by compulsory schooling always takes the form of nervous cautionary questions, asking what will come next—“If I stop taking these sugar pills, what will happen to me then?”
Here is a more constructive response, inspired by childplay:
My two boys have been playing make-believe with their cousins all morning. Earlier, over coffee, they performed a rather disjointed play in three acts for us. Don’t get too excited: it wasn’t very good—at least I didn’t think so—and I didn’t particularly enjoy watching it. But that was not the point. I didn’t need to patronize them with the virtue of “self-esteem” to truly esteem what they were doing and how importantly real it was. It was not entertainment or amusement.
I could see that their play was serious; it was obvious, with signs of it everywhere. For one: they were extremely self-righteous and bossy about it. “Sit here and watch the play—No! Don’t clap yet. It’s not over. NO! Not yet!” They constantly fought over who was to do what, who should stand where, who was going next, and what they were supposed to be doing in the first place. “And where did Gabe go? Gabe! GAABBE! Where are you?!—I think he went inside.” It was clear to me that they were not taking their make-believe lightly.
Afterwards, I sat trying to resurrect yet another manuscript I wrote during grad school into a proposal to my field’s top conference of the year—the Philosophy of Education Society—I could hear them running around, going about doing even more of their imaginative nonsense. How annoying it was to me! (Reality can be very annoying sometimes.) I did not find their tireless play precious, at least not then; but I did consider it to be the most important thing going on at the moment; so important, in fact, that I decided to write about it instead of working on my still-unfinished conference paper.
While the adults work, the children play; and their play is usually more serious and earnest than our work. If we worked as seriously as they played, the world might not be any better or worse, but life would surely be far richer, more enchanting, and less mediocre.
I never joined them; I didn’t pass out ribbons or stickers or other cheap, external rewards or adulation. For one, I didn’t want to; but more importantly, any such meddling would have been deeply disrespectful to the sacredness of their play. I wasn’t good enough then to play at their level of rigor. I was working.
People often argue that children need to play and go to recess to have “fun.” I don’t see it that way. Fun, to me, is only coincidental. These valiant defenders of fun, I suspect, have never really played. Or they forget that real play, the play I am describing here, usually ends in tears or disappointment or fighting or all three.
Play is not important because it is fun; and I do not think that children are nearly as interested in constantly amusing themselves as we are. The fun is for us, not them. They are being absolutely serious. How strange that nowadays we celebrate children who work and adults who play! (Just contrast elementary school science fairs from collegiate and professional sports.)
My boys and nieces understood and practiced the art of play in all its dead-serious nonsense. The fact that I found it childish and tedious is not important; focusing on that aspect would be losing oneself in translation. The more important, educative reality is that this was sacred time, doing perhaps the most ambitious, important thing that was attempted around here all day.
This is what the school of the world allows us to do and be that the smaller, compulsory ones do not. This is school choice at it’s finest. It goes beyond the consumerist fancy of choosing and picking and ventures into authentic freedom, the only “choice” that really matters: the choice to elect what is beautiful—To whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.
If someone saw them playing and asked why they were not in school—my nieces actually are enrolled in school, but were not required to attend that Friday; my youngest is too young; and the older one is a different story for a different time—I would have laughed and said, “Of course they are in school! Why aren’t YOU in school today?”
The abolition of compulsory schooling is not (only) the disestablishment of schooling institutions; it is also a return to a school of the world, a curriculum of life. When the school is destroyed, everyone goes back to school. No exceptions. No choice other than the only one that really matters: the choice to imagine the real. No more work. Only play. No more fun or amusement, only what is most serious: love.
Samuel D. Rocha is an assistant professor in the educational foundations and research graduate program at the University of North Dakota.
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Comments:
By definition, authentic choice cannot exist within a compulsory system.
— is necessarily true or required (compelled?).
If it were true, then no choice could ever exist because we are always under some compulsion or another — ability, age, location, intelligence, etc. Natural Law would compel certain behavior, not to mention physics.
Even if *state* compelled education were ended, would not the school of the world have its own compulsions? If one went out into the world blithely (or, say, naked), wouldn't that be corrected fairly quickly by failure (or the local constabulary)?
In fact, the play among the children was quite compelled — Don't do that, Sit here, etc.
Overall, an awesome piece with many excellent points. I was totally with you on the section on play, on the primacy of love ... but the starting point is weak.
What is wrong is the orwellian implication that public schooling is not in fact conscripted labor at no pay. It may be less onerous labor then many adult occupations. But doing things like assuming as the UN declaration does, that compulsory education is a "right" is doing violence to language and is sanctimonious propaganda to keep people from remembering that public school is in fact a labor tax.
Two quick further points:
Parents who send their kids to private schools should taxes that support public schools for the same reason childless people should: they share in the benefits of having such schools.
Education benefits children and the adults they become as well as the state. Indeed, in the modern world it is necessary for the full expression of autonomy and freedom. That's why it's a right and not "conscripted labor."
I regret not being able to respond in detail to all of the astute comments, but would like to note one common issue they all seem to share: mistaking schooling for education.
Education, as I understand and study it, is not confined to school. Education surely goes on in schools, this is true; but it also takes place everywhere. (Even in “theory.”) It is ubiquitous. I do not want to seem petty: using the WORD 'education' as a synonym for the WORD 'schooling is one thing; conflating the THING that education is with schooling is quite another THING entirely. If the conflation is merely terminological, as in the former case, then there may not be a substantive disagreement between us, just a different use of WORDS. However, if the conflation is of the latter, phenomenological variety, then I suspect that we see THINGS quite differently. My interests are in things, not words (unless we are considering the things that words are.).
The point to my work in the philosophy of education, and the point of this essay is, at least in part, trying to reappropriate the language of schooling under the (religious) primacy of education, the first thing in this discussion. The political issues and policy implications come second or third, at the earliest. To mistake one for the other is tantamount to a certain disorder that has become quite common in the rather lifeless and vapid so-called "educational" discussions nowadays – including Jeb Bush’s speech at the RNC.
With this concern for the order of things, implicit in the namesake of this publication, I think my essay might make itself better understood -- for better and for worse.
SR
"Parents who send their kids to private schools should taxes that support public schools for the same reason childless people should: they share in the benefits of having such schools."
Likewise, childless couples and those who send their children to public schools share in the benefits to the commonweal made by the private schools. Ergo: a charter system to support competitive schools is in the public interest and would have the additional benefit of fostering more efficiency in the public schools too through the benefits of competition.
To be fair, Mr Rocha is on much solider ground, I would say, in his comments on childrens' play. I think this supports the ideal, which is that a child should not be sent to school too soon, but rather left at home with its mother for as long as possible.
"Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play."
-Heraclitus
Mr. David M. does not seem to realize just how important child’s play really is. What they play at now, they will work at as adults. Child’s play is not autonomous. They act out what they see on television, read in books, observe in grownups, and experiences they have at the store or zoo. Some of the lessons children learn while playing include: negotiations, compromises, and learning to stand up for what you believe to be right. Dr. Rocha is quite right in dwelling on it, since it emphasizes his point about the world (real or fictional) being their educator.
My eldest daughter has just turned 5, so her schooling is a topic I am often asked about. I chose the word "schooling" very deliberately. Her "education" started the day she was born. Dr. Rocha is spot on when he says "Any school smaller than the world is just too small a place for education." Education does not equal bookwork in a classroom. Rather, education encompasses all of life!
This is not to say that learning math or reading or history is unimportant, but it is foolish to think that learning only takes place when a child is "in school" or "reading textbooks" or "doing worksheets." My children are learning fractions by using measuring cups in the kitchen and science by experimenting with what will take a blueberry stain out of clothing. (Cold water, in case you wondered.) History is best remembered by listening to stories and learning to read is much more comfortable when sitting in a favorite easy chair with Mom or Dad.
Mr. Taylor has a valid point when he notes that calling compulsory education a "right" is doing violence to language. If you are obliged to do or have something, like own a television or use an umbrella, it ceases to be a right, and to call it a right is misleading at best, and an outright falsehood at worst.
However, I seriously doubt that the abolition of compulsory schooling would result in large numbers of well-educated people. Most people do not have the self-discipline to educate themselves, even if they have the whole world at their disposal, and few parents would desire to undertake such a laborious task if it were not compulsory. Post-lapsarian human nature being what it is, man does not do what he ought, even if what he ought to do is to his own benefit. More fiber anyone?
But I think the real problem is not if school should be compulsory, but rather, if as Christians we ought to consider education itself an unquestionable good. In as much as it guides us toward the greatest good (God), or teaches us how better to love our neighbors, it is good. Since God saw fit to make Himself know in part by the written word, we ought to learn to read so we can know what He requires of us. Also, since we live in a society in which it is essential to read, write and do basic math in order to support oneself, not learning such basics makes you a drain on your neighbors, which is not the best way to love them.
"The idea that a quixotic “compulsory choice” between home, private, public, or charter schools—all relative equivalents of the same, impoverished assumptions and curricula—"
Is the author really that ignorant of the fact that there are plenty of people who entirely resist the established theories of education in both home and private schools (e.g. Montessori, Waldorf, classical education, literature-based education, unschooling) not to know that calling every possible option a "relative equivalent" of public school assumptions and public school curriculum is nonsense?
It's true that the overwhelming majority of schooling options, including home schooling, it merely a version of the same thing, with more or fewer modifications in various cases. But it's completely untrue that there are no alternatives at all when it comes to assumptions or methods.
1. I am not trying to argue that choice and compulsion (or freedom and authority) cannot coexist anywhere. My claim is intended to be much more specific: I am interested in SYSTEMATIC or INSTITUTIONAL (I believe I even use the expression “institutional system”) forms of compulsion. In one sense we might see anything as a system, like an ecosystem, or an institution. But I think that the system of compulsion I am referring to via schooling is not of the same variety as those that occur more or less naturally. Therefore, my claim should be clarified to say that real “choice” cannot exist within a compulsory system that allows no room for something like “exit rights”—the hallmark of our compulsory schooling system (this is why the UN calls it “universal”). If the restaurant doesn’t allow me to go eat elsewhere or to willfully starve like Melville’s Bartleby, then, my choice isn’t much of a choice, so I claim. The problem this creates is metaphysical (reminiscent of Plato’s cave): the menu become horizon of possibility and we forget about everything else within the reality. Proposing real choice is rejected as impossible and even dangerous. Our society once thought another system of compulsion was impossible to abolish too by the way: slavery. Slavery certainly is alive and well in the world today, but the institution of slavery no longer exists in its previous form in our land. Which brings me to my next point:
2. It certainly does not follow to say that the abolition of the institution of compulsory schooling would necessarily bring an end to schools and schooling, sending children to grandma’s house or to (continue) being educated by their television sets and other sorts of glowing rectangles. To say that one can choose to cook one’s own meal, eat down the road, or starve is not to say that restaurants are going out of business anytime soon. Again, the point and its impact are metaphysical.
3. Finally, I am very aware of the alternatives to schooling and in many ways I admit to feigning ignorance of them here, for the sake of the wider majority. I am quite fond of Illich, Holt, Postman, Gatto, and the rest. But, more audaciously perhaps, I also fear that they all, as far as I know, share metaphysical company with the schooling models they try to depart from, even when their method are so intentionally distant. Insofar as the issue is metaphysical, then, we cannot assume that a new-fangled practice will solve and cure the fundamental problem. At best these options are palliative in nature. That some part of why I suspect that the assumptions and curricula continue to share company even when my claim is allowed to be more comprehensive.
4. Oh, and David’s advice to get back to work is very well taken. Touché!
SR
That is the only way I can make sense of your point, but it seems a rather large claim.
I suspect the answer I can provide here won't be wholly satisfactory, but allow me to try and begin.
If the issue is genuinely metaphysical, then, yes, there are no easy escapes from the assumptions and false foundations. I do not think I possess any positive metaphysical insights about this yet, and I doubt I will soon or ever, but I do think I have a negative sense of the matter that is perhaps absent in the rest of the literature.
I am not, however, making this claim casually or lightly and I hope you realize that, beyond the philosophical gravity, this is my life's work. In that seriousness, I consider myself to be an ally to you and all those who sense and struggle with questions of education that go much deeper than the present superficialities of schooling.
SR
There might, though, be a chance of getting real choice among competing school systems if we support the Republican position. Back in the 1950s, Catholic schools educated about 10% of American kids and did it well....despite 130 years of Governmental hostility to the Catholic Schools that started with Horace Mann and the public school movement and continued with the Blaine Amendments and culminated in that anti-Catholic bigot Hugo Black's 1947 Everson ruling.
What ultimately undid the Catholic schools' credible challenge to the Governmental Monopoly, though, was the inability of Catholic schools to compete with the monopoly's offering when Catholics migrated from city to suburb in the 1950s and 1960s. Forced by the local school boards' monopolies to pay relatively higher properrty taxes whether they wanted to avail themselves of the public schools' monopoly offering or not, Catholic parents succumbed to Governmental fiat and the monopoly of education in the suburbs could only be feebly challenged. As a result of that demographic migration and resulting inability to maintain the fine system of Catholic schools in the City, Catholic schools are now just a shade of their prior strength.
School choice could restore competition to this vital product market but only if we focus on what really is going on and not be distracted by theoretical flights of fancy.