Putting Parents in Charge

Wed, 01 Aug 2001 00:00:00 -0400

Lincoln warned that the United States could not long survive half slave and half free. To which one might ask, why not? The answer has to do with more than slavery and freedom. It has to do with the contradiction between one institution and the larger society in which it exists. When the institution is private, informal, and small, the inconsistency might be overlooked. But when the institution is pervasive, compulsory, and sanctioned by law, its opposition to the values governing the rest of society becomes more difficult to ignore. Like a foreign disk fed into the drive of an incompatible computer, its script is at odds with the language of its host.

Of course there have been times in our history when contradictory institutions have coexisted, when self—evident truths have been applied selectively or principles have been deemed appropriate for some but not for others—for example, slaveholders signing the Declaration of Independence, suffrage withheld from women, and segregation within a nation of citizens supposedly equal and free. These contradictions may persist for a while, abetted by ignorance, indifference, entrenched interest, or force. But ultimately the inconsistency becomes insupportable. The crossed beams and tortured arguments beneath its weight begin to buckle. Truth, like gravity, exerts its force over time.

Of course, this is not a passive process. Quite the opposite. Wars, civil agitation, protests, speeches, marches—the struggle for equality and freedom has required sacrifice, faith, and willingness to fight. Invariably it is pitched against larger forces, and waged against the odds. But the underdogs have always held one weapon against which their adversaries had no defense: truths which all agreed were true. Principles which, spoken loudly and often enough, morally disarmed those who claimed to subscribe to those principles, even as they clung to institutions that denied them.

Today such a contradiction obstructs the path to improving American education. We live in a society that thrives on democratic capitalism. This is a statement of fact that no one—from Jesse Helms on one end of the political spectrum to Hillary Rodham Clinton on the other—will dispute. Yet we operate our education system by principles diametrically opposed to democratic capitalism.

Democratic means many things, but it means at least this: that people have a say. We trust people to choose their party affiliation, their Congressmen, their Senators, their President—and through these representatives, their laws and government. We trust people not only to select politicians, but to do other, arguably even more dangerous, things. Like driving, for example. We let people have control over multi-ton vehicles—to choose their roads, pass cars, and drive at high speeds vehicles that are potential killers. We let people choose where to live, what to read, how to pray, whether to drink—in short, and within relatively moderate limits, how to live their lives. But we do not let people choose the education they would like for their children.

That’s one contradiction. The second is that America is not only a democratic country but a capitalist one as well. Suppliers compete for the choice, the business, of the individual. In all areas except one: education. As the late Al Shanker, former head of the American Federation of Teachers, observed:

Continue Reading »

First Things RSS Feed - Theodore Forstmann

Putting Parents in Charge