Americans in the Right have been exercised about the sad state of American education for decades. While relying on any individual metric is dangerous, as “educational quality” is inherently immensurable, education appears to have hit its peak in the years immediately after World War II and started to slide thereafter. Today it’s a joke. American teens leave high school knowing less, and being less prepared to think for themselves, than at any time since the founding of the nation. The schools largely exist to provide jobs to “educators” and administrators.
The defenders of mass education – note and remember that term, please; its significance will soon be apparent – have all sorts of rationales for it. Remember “basic skills?” Remember “socialization?” Remember “keeping the little monsters out of the labor pool?” No, that last one has never been discussed a lot, but it was among the first of the real reasons for compulsory schooling. The labor unions were big backers.
We in the Right have grappled with all those arguments. Given the abysmal performance of the schools – note this too; with few exceptions, the private schools barely exceed the performance of the “public” ones – we’ve displayed a notable reluctance to break away from the public-education model. Instead, most conservative education activists focus on “reform.” But the notion that one can reform a government-run institution in a significant and enduring way is inherently foolish. Governments and their institutions obey a dynamic wholly different from that of wholesome ones.
Public education and mandatory schooling are inherent to the problem. If we want real, enduring improvement in education, those things must end. Conservatives are steadily moving toward that realization. But the problem doesn’t end with them.
Schooling collectivizes education. Even in its best instances – curricula that omit everything but actual education; teachers who really teach rather than indoctrinate; students who earnestly seek the improvement of their minds – it bends inexorably toward uniformity. Worse, that uniformity gravitates toward the students least ready, willing, and able to learn.
Collectivization is something freedom lovers should know to avoid.
I had a “Mishnory Road” moment a little earlier. A fellow-traveler in the Right was ranting about educational reform. I found that the subject made me unbelievably weary, in that Dear God, haven’t we been here before? fashion. So did my colleague’s prescriptions. All of them were as familiar as leftovers eaten for lunch.
That weariness made me say to myself Why not break the mold? Why not ditch the schooling model instead of trying to make it serve purposes it probably can’t serve?
I didn’t say anything then and there. I just started to think from the premise that the model itself – education collectivized via schooling – is the source of our troubles. The more I thought about it, the more I liked it.
Rather than pursue this further at this early hour, I’ll leave it here for you, Gentle Reader. To think about. What current, widespread practices would have to change were Americans to avoid schooling our kids? Would those changes be beneficial:
- To the children;
- To their parents;
- To their communities;
- To the nation?
Please try to be specific about the costs, benefits, and demerits.
I’ll be back later or tomorrow with my own thoughts. Meanwhile, enjoy your day.
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