« Morning Shots | Main | Will Strickland's Proposal to Cut the EdChoice Program Pay Off? (Adam Schaeffer) »
March 29, 2007
The collectivist argument against choice
An anthropology professor by the name of Greg Laden has been studying the pros and cons of homeschooling on his blog and summed up his arguments against the practice (and parental choice in general) in this post, which I discovered by way of the Homeschool Cafe (hat tip to Alasandra, who is also hosting this week's Carnival of Homeschooling). I zeroed in on one part in particular.
Home schooling is a way of cheating the system.
Home schooling and private schools both have this characteristic. There is a small subset of families that can afford the money it takes to send their kids to private schools. When this happens, an important part of society withdraws from the public, collective endeavor to educate our children. [emphasis from the original post]
"Our" children? So who do they belong to, precisely? As I've said elsewhere, this sort of language is very interesting; it seems to say that children belong to everybody, which tends to mean nobody is responsible for them. (More on this particular wording later.)
This can have many implications. Even something as simple as the funding of a class field trip serves as a microcosm of a broad array of effects, many less obvious but probably very important. My daughter attends a school that has a very ambitious yearly field trip for one of the grades, in which the children go away for three days and two nights. It is a little expensive (cost per child) but there is a guarantee that every child can go. Fund raising activities are carried out, and the surplus funds are set aside to subsidize any child who’s family can’t afford the fee. Chaperons (parents) pay their own way as necessary so as to not increase the cost of the trip.
This happens to be an outstanding public school, so there is a full range of economic levels represented there, so only a small percentage of the kids need some help paying for the trip. But imagine if 10 or 20 percent of the parents pulled their kids out of this public school, sending them to private school. Suddenly, the marginally poor and middle class would be responsible for funding the much less fortunate on this trip. It may become impossible and have to be dropped as a program.
But as Laden admits later in the post, homeschooling actually saves districts money since they end up paying for services they don't use and frees up more money to be spent per pupil. And other forms of school choice can also save districts money: as Mike Antonucci pointed out in a prior Communiqué, per-pupil spending in Ohio public schools has increased thanks to widespread charter schools in that state (because charters spend less per pupil than public schools, the schools the charter students came from had money left over that they were able to spend on their remaining students).
However, to be fair this really doesn't address what he's bringing up as he's talking about a field trip paid for independently of the school budget. In response, I'll be blunt: complaining about the possible loss of a field trip is fiddling while cities like Detroit--with a mere 22 percent graduation rate and where 48% of its adult population is functionally illiterate--burn.
I'll use the next passage of Laden's post as a springboard for my broader point.
There is a correlation between wealth and ability to invest time and energy into a school via the PTA, as a school volunteer, and even in terms of helping the children at home with their homework, etc. There is a correlation between wealth and educational level, and in turn, there is a correlation between educational level of parents and the educational success of the children. All the students gain by increasing the number of involved and available parents, and all of the students gain by increasing the educational success by even a proportion of the children, by raising expectations and providing positive interactive experiences. Society as a whole gains by all of this.
When a large number of parents send their children to private school, society as a whole pays the cost of benefits reaped, and sequestered, by the few.
That is an indictment of private schools. But a similar argument can be made of home schooling. In many cases, home schoolers may not be able to home school because of wealth, but they can because of available time. One way or another, home schoolers are able to do this because of differential distribution of resources, and the act of home schooling, like the act of attending private schools, contributes broadly to a lowering of quality of experience for everyone else.
This is America. The American Ethic allows for such selfish behavior. But it should be understood to be what it is..
As an aside, let me say that I appreciate Laden's candor. Really, I do. It's refreshing for me to see a school choice opponent finally have the honesty to indict parents for making what he or she regards as the wrong choices.
That said, consider the galling injustice of what he is proposing. Millions upon millions of parents are being taxed to support a system that simply doesn't work. Laden would tell those parents that not only must they stay to wait for the system to right itself, but that they are responsible for helping fix the problem--and goes so far as to call them selfish for wishing to leave! If I buy a car that turns out to be a lemon, I can go to the manufacturer to either demand a refund or a car that works. Based on Laden's reasoning, the manufacturer could require that I help work out the design flaws and build the replacement.
Laden raises the importance of parental involvement in education as a principal reason for restricting choice. But does he really think restricting parents from doing what they believe to be best for their children is somehow going to make them more devoted to a system out of a motivation for the good of all? Look, forget vouchers, charters, homeschooling for just a minute. Does he seriously believe that he can tell a parent, "Look, I know you think private school is best for your child--but you're forbidden from leaving, because the group is more important than your kid"--and that the parent in question is going to be sold on the system? As Eduwonk put it:
...the idea that we restrict the choices that parents have in the alleged service of the greater good just doesn't fly in a society like ours. One inescapable theme of the last 40 years of school reform is that if unsatisfied parents can walk, one way or another, they will. What's different now is that low-income families can increasingly walk through ideas like vouchers. That ought to discomfort public school supporters more than it apparently does. Essentially, saying that a good public option like KIPP [or private schools, or homeschooling, or any other choice option--ed.] is skimming the "best" families so we shouldn't have it, is saying to these families that they should forgo something that might be in the best interest of their kids because of a potential abstract good for all kids. That's not exactly how you build brand loyalty and it's not what we ask more affluent people to do and not what they do. To beat a dead horse some more, the way to build support for the public schools is not to give parents fewer choices in the public system but to give them more.
However, what disturbs me most of all is the notion indicated in the subheading from Greg's post: that pulling one's children out of public schools "cheats" the system. In response, this statement comes to mind:
The fundamental theory of liberty upon which all governments in this Union repose excludes any general power of the State to standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only. The child is not the mere creature of the State; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.
Who might that be? Some Bible-thumping fundamentalist? Actually, that's a passage from the U.S. Supreme Court's opinion in Pierce vs. Society of Sisters, a case directly relevant to this discussion. In the mid-1920s, the enlightened legislators of Oregon passed a law that expressly prohibited parents from sending their children to private schools and required them to enroll their children in public schools. Thankfully, it only took SCOTUS a matter of weeks to strike the law down by a rare 9-0 vote.
In a sense, some things never change. Eight decades removed, the arguments against non-government schooling are pretty much the same. By his own admission, Laden holds fealty to the system above all else. Individual needs or preferences just don't appear on his radar. Anything that might distract from or get in the way of the monolith is, in his book, unacceptable. And those were some of the same justifications behind the Oregon law: that a government monopoly on education would be most conducive to society, that private schools were somehow damaging to the social fabric. And I'm not taking anything out of context here; consider the title to this section of Laden's post, where he says homeschooling (or any form of school choice, really) "cheats" the system. He speaks of the "collective" endeavor to educate "our children," a statement that in a way channels a spokesman for the state of Oregon who defended the law before the Supreme Court:
"As to minors, the state stands in the position of parents patriae, and may exercise unlimited supervision and control over their contracts, occupations and conduct, and the liberty and right of those who assume to deal with them."
I'm quite pleased to take the other side of that argument.
One last thought. If parents who enroll their children in private schools are selfish and "cheat" the system, I wonder what Laden would say to those public schoolteachers who opt for private school for their own children.
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.edspresso.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/1327
Comments
I'm not against school choice. The point of my blog was to articulate the range of concerns that people with a certain perspective have regarding home schooling. This has resulted in a small amount of conversation about these concerns and a number of wild and woolly ad hominem tirades.
What I have discovered about home schoolers, not just in the conversation related to the post you cite but the totality of several different conversations on my web site is that home schoolers are much more diverse in their interests (why they home school) and approaches than I had previously thought (having not thought about it too much previously, to be frank).
This has been a very interesting learning experience for me.
Most of the very vocal home schoolers ... those that have posted the most on my site to be exact, not necessarily the most vocal ... have made drastic assumptions about me and my point of view, and seem almost incapable of understanding anything I say because the "know" what I'm "thinking" in such detail.
Indeed, you found my post through a site that is hosting the blog carnival that refused to include one of my posts! What next, blog burning???? :)
I myself am not a product of the traditional education system. I went to traditional school for three years before starting on my PhD. The rest of the time I followed an educational path that would take the breath away from most home schoolers.
I'm a little disappointed that my questions and critiques have mostly been met with foaming at the mouth. Yet, among the couple of hundred comments across these various posts there is some really good information, and some interesting and enlightening perspectives. Someday in the medium future I hope to summarize much of this ...
I think I might scream, though, next time I read "What Laden is Really Thinking is....."
But I do appreciate your perspective, and I probably agree with about 65% of what you say here.
Cheers,
Greg Laden
Posted by: Greg Laden | March 29, 2007 07:16 PM
Evidently, what Laden thinks is not necessarily what he writes on his blog. A good summary of what he's written, and a good takedown.
FWIW, I'd have let him post if I were hosting the CoH. Comedy is always welcome.
Posted by: Daryl Cobranchi | March 30, 2007 01:14 AM
Greg IS a frustrating person to discuss this topic with. He seems not to have done much research into hsing but has strongly held opinions about it. Lovely.
Strangely enough, other than this topic, his blog is actually quite good, imo. Maybe he should stick to subjects he has actually researched.
Nance
Posted by: Nance Confer | March 30, 2007 07:52 AM
Laden is not alone. Check out this post I wrote in response to a comment on a Townhall.com peice by Phyllis Schafly
http://mattjohnston.blogspot.com/2007/03/looney-democrats.html
Posted by: Matt Johnston | March 30, 2007 09:45 AM
If Greg had submitted a post to the CoH when I was hosting it I would have included it. And if he wants to send his post to me now, I'll link to it. The only post I didn't include was an advertisement that really didn't have anything to do with homeschooling and wasn't from Greg.
Posted by: Alasandra | March 31, 2007 06:12 AM
