Welcome back. Today begins another semester in the higher echelons of that failed experiment improperly called public education. Not to indict education, but government education is neither for the public’s benefit nor its education. It is inextricably mired in the same ideological roots that brought this world "the specter of Communism," Nazism and other variants on collectivist philosophy. More importantly, it seeks the same end: the subordination of the individual by a collective.
Careless critics of government education – some of whom are equally enslaved to the idea of home schooling – malign Horace Mann as founding today’s rotting education system. But the idea of public education – education available to all – has existed since ancient times, and government education in America existed at the town level since the mid-17th century.
Thomas Jefferson supported government education, writing in his Notes on the State of Virginia in 1784, that all Virginians should be "entitled to send their children (to government school) three years gratis, and as much longer as they please, paying for it." Less pleasing to modern advocates of government education are his notions whereby the "residue" of the schools will be "dismissed" and how "the best geniusses (sic) will be raked from the rubbish."
Inflammatory 18th century vernacular aside, Jefferson’s support of government education is mistaken in several respects. Jefferson, truly a child of the Enlightenment, views education as one of the highest goods – note, not rights – available to mankind. Indeed, it is necessary to avoid tyranny, for, as James Madison agrees, "Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."
Jefferson and Madison mistakenly assume, though, that once education becomes the province of government, the goal of the populace’s education will be achieved and one more threat of tyranny averted. In providing education, however, a coercive government yields the same rotten fruit found in countless other industries in which it intervenes: high prices, low quality and overproduction.
In other words, too many students who are neither qualified nor desire to receive an education are admitted to universities, and there is a proliferation of too many degrees unjustified by corresponding demands from future employers or usefulness in the marketplace. Add in myriad monopolistic and cartelistic relationships to associated industries, such as textbooks, and you get constantly increasing costs.
More forgivably on the founders’ parts, they seem to think of education in part as a public good. The benefits to society cause individuals who choose to pursue an education to choose less than would be optimal, since the individual is hypothesized not to perceive the full benefits.
The notion is forgivable, since public goods had not been identified in a scholarly way, partial recognition surfacing in the mid 19th century.
Education is strongly correlated to average state wages and is also correlated to various individual benefits such as health, long life and happiness. Although these benefits contribute to a better society, this does not positively prove the existence of social benefits.
Even further removed from proof is relying on social benefits to justify stealing from Sally to pay for Joe’s kid’s education – especially when the cost is so high. Gary North writes that it is possible to provide quality education at a much lower cost than 80 percent of institutions. He decimates the idea that government education is necessary because of cost of provision and cost to students, professorial compensation and quality of academic study, for example. Only for a few areas of study would the extant educational model seem more appropriate to North.
Furthermore, in light of degrading quality of education because of government control, an Aug. 13 article by Charles Murray in the Wall Street Journal calls for more alternatives to the bachelor’s degree as a method of certification and signaling proof of competency to future employers.
By the time Horace Mann, then president of the Massachusetts State Senate, was appointed in 1837 to the first State Board of Education in Massachusetts, the foundations for the atrophied edifices around us had already been laid, and methods for their institutional decay set in motion.
The destruction of education in America lies in Mann’s ideological overhaul and the explicit implementation of creating individual subservience to the collective.
More on Mann, next time, comrades. Until then, rest assured that education will always be an inherently individual endeavor, fueled by your own curiosity and thirst for truth.
Granger, a political science senior, can be reached via [email protected]
