Children’s Education: Who Should Guide It?

Sunil Laxman had a post recently in which he discussed some results of a survey on childhood education. What he thought was ridiculous was that 42% of respondents did not believe in evolution and that 41% believed that parents should have the final say in what is taught in schools. He seemed to be implying that parents could not be trusted to have a role in guiding their children’s education because they are too ignorant to perform that role.

Now I agree with Sunil that it is sad that so many Americans are ignorant about many things. I am not that bothered about polls about evolution because I figure most Americans just don’t care about that subject and I honestly don’t see why they should. Evolution is not something most people use everyday. Naturally, facts that seem useless are quickly forgotten.

What bothers me is that so many Americans are poorly educated in areas that really do matter. Many Americans are very poor in mathematics and in language skills. Most Americans have very poor knowledge of economics and economics is something every American is confronted with everyday and this ignorance can affect their choices in elections. So a reasonable question is: “Why are Americans so poorly educated in many areas that do matter and what could be done to reverse it?”

Ironically, I believe that much of the poor results of the American education system can be traced to basically the kind of technocrat revolution that Sunil seems to be advocating. Really? Technocrats have been in charge of American schools and still people are ignorant? How can this be?

Long ago, many schools in America were one-room rural schools with a single teacher that taught all grades. Parents were largely farmers and largely ignorant of most subjects in the world, but they knew that if had any concerns about the school and the way that the kids were being taught, they had a lot say about it. They could easily remove the teacher if they didn’t like him/her. The teacher was accountable and this system work reasonably well. My grandmother taught a school like that in Montana.

In my father’s time, the school system consolidated over the entire county. There were economies of scale here and they were able to offer more subjects and more teachers. The parents had less voice in this system, but it still wasn’t negligible. Since there was only one high school for the entire county, parents still had some voice in the system.

When I went to school, the technocrats took over. These high holies of education decided that that education needed to be revolutionized. They brought in a variety of new ideas; almost all of them were bad. The brought in the “new math”: which centered on set theory and Venn diagrams. The parents hated it. They brought in the movie projector: the idea was to replace boring lecture with infotainment. The movies were entertaining, but you don’t learn by watching movies or T.V. They also brought in “whole word” as opposed to phonics. Children really struggled with reading.

Parents were left out of all of this because by this time, most school districts were very large. The population had increased and then number of school districts reduced. This meant that the average parent had very little voice in the school system. They might grumble at home, but why voice your concerns at the school? The school was subservient to the district school board. And no one at the district school board would bother hearing the concerns of the average parent. What would be the chance that that one vote would make a difference in a district of 50,000 students? Voter apathy is so high that most school board members are virtually unopposed. They are accountable to no one.

In this environment, unions could come in. This brought in another dimension of politics into the public schools. Out went the motivated teachers who just wanted to teach the kids; in came the teachers who thought of teaching as a nine-to-five job.

Parents ceased to be involved in the whole education process and children learned that if they parents weren’t concerned, they shouldn’t be either.

Things have gotten even worse: now much of the control of schools in at the state level and the new “No Child Left Behind” is extending control to the national level. More and more, the decisions about what is taught and how it is taught in public schools is left to bureaucrats. And bureaucrats don’t love a kid like a parent would.

The key to good education is to keep the control of the school local and to let parents decide which school is right for their kids. If parents are behind the school, kids will sense that education is important and they will naturally learn more. But parents won’t back a school they had no say in choosing or creating.

This is why I am a big supporter of parents being able to send their kids to private schools. My wife and I send our son to a very nice (and expensive) private school. If more parents were able to send their kids to private schools, I believe that competition would force prices down.

I agree that we need a public education system in the sense that children of parents with low income should still have access to quality schools. This is why the voucher system is attractive and I really wish Democrats would give it a thought. It could really improve the quality of education in the U.S.

But the most important thing is that people should be free to make the fundamental choices that affect their families. Parents should be able to choose their home, their place of work, and their schools. Parents might not know about a lot of things but their instincts are basically correct. A parent would never approve of a kid watching movies all day in school. A technocrat might, and apparently did. Freedom works: trust freedom.