In the last few weeks, there has been a vigorous debate in letters to the editor over the Douglas County school district’s pilot voucher program. Predictably, people have chosen sides, which is symptomatic of the politics of public education. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, unless you believe that one size should fit all.
The views of voucher opponents underscore the conflict of visions and irreconcilable differences between the two sides. One critic invoked the mid-19th century egalitarian ideology of Horace Mann as the model for public education, “instilling common values and culture to all children,” as Mann put it. That’s a disqualifying premise to conservative education reformers to whom Mann is not an education oracle.
He was a disciple of Robert Owen, a utopian Welshman known as the father of modern socialism. In 1825, Owen created a commune in Indiana, renamed New Harmony, marked by “a community of common property,” in which individualism and private enterprise were regarded as destructive. Students in the common school would be indoctrinated accordingly.
By 1827, New Harmony failed and was disbanded, being incompatible with the human nature of the adults. Owenites, like Mann, concluded that indoctrination of the young must start earlier and be universal as a stepping stone to socialism. His “achievement” as secretary of the Board of Education in Massachusetts was the creation of a centralized, state-controlled public school bureaucracy.
Scolding Dougco voucher supporters, one letter-writer declared, “If the conservatives of Dougco are dissatisfied with current public education, they should work with the rest of us to fix the problems.” But there’s no collective “us” that comes close to a consensus on public education policy. You can’t “fix the problems” if you fundamentally disagree on what they are. To Dougco critics, common values are their own liberal values, exploiting public schools as laboratories for social engineering, replete with seniority-based collective compensation and little accountability for unionized teachers.
There is a consensus that public education should be publicly funded. Vouchers do that, allowing dollars earmarked for educating children to follow them to the school of their parents’ choice — public or private. But public funding doesn’t require delivery in a monopoly of government schools. Defending that monopoly and opposing vouchers in their own self-interest are the government employees of the teachers unions. Highways are publicly funded, but the construction work is done privately. Medicaid is publicly funded, but doctors, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are still mostly private.
Vouchers offer academic diversity in public education. Different parents want different approaches and philosophies in educating their kids. The “rich” can already afford that. Vouchers make that opportunity possible for lower- and middle-income parents, too. The Dougco school board has the confidence to make choice available as an alternative to its public schools.
A majority of conservative voters in Dougco elected a school board that shares their vision on public education, just as liberals in Boulder routinely elect school boards that reflect their vision. That’s as it should be. Dougco conservatives have no need or duty “to work with” their detractors in other school districts dominated by liberals married to the status quo and the teachers unions that dominate. They and their agenda reside somewhere else.
In Colorado, statewide standards and testing coexist with local control in public education. But local control through elected school boards is a bedrock principle. Increasing federal government encroachment is troubling. There’s nothing the bureaucratic geniuses and politicians in Washington or the national educratic establishment have to offer about curricula or pedagogy that we can’t do better right here. And we certainly needn’t defer to their progressive agenda. That’s why there’s so much pushback on No Child Left Behind and Common Core. Many of the same people who champion those things oppose vouchers.
Freelance columnist Mike Rosen’s radio show airs weekdays from 1 to 3 p.m. on 850-KOA.
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