Partisan Free Politics

For my next trick I will attempt to combine two discussions into one. For those of you who may not have read, Rudo, Matt and I have been discussing diversity and affirmative action under the guise of my first Supreme Court posting. Mauritania vs. Orange Shirt Guy, Sam’s blogging debut, has also led to some very interesting discussion on gender issues, consumerism, and beauty in general, with the author, as well as Rudo, Stacey and myself (after having been drug unwilling into a discussion on gender issues) having weighed in thus far. The thesis of my second PFP post is that there is one obvious treatment that would help alleviate each of these problems: education. Racism and sexism are two very natural things, in the theoretical sense. It is downright logical to show a greater trust and consideration to those around and more alike you, and xenophobia and differences in gender roles exist in nature throughout all levels of life. Bigotry, discrimination and intolerance are the sources of the injustices we are talking about and these are not products of nature, but products of ignorance.

Now of course we already have a massive education system (in fact, on average we spend more than $10,000/year on each student) so it falls on me to suggest changes that must be made to produce better results.

America has become too dependent on our schools to fulfill all the educational needs of our children. Consider the word itself: educate, from the latin root educare meaning “to rear or to bring up.” This simply does not sound like an activity that gets done in a six-hour school day. Yet in this age of specialization, with so few stay-at-home parents, most parents expect the schools to educate their kids (it is hard to blame them with the money they are spending, give me $20K a year to educate “my two kids” and see what we can do.) Now through trial and error the U.S. Public School system has had its share of successes, and in a few thousand years of pedagogical philosophy we’ve figured out some pretty reliable methods of instructing in reading, math, and the other sciences, but anyone who leaves a child to be wholly educated in this manner is making a grievous mistake.

The most harmful trend in America today is outsourcing. No, I am not talking about those precious telemarketer jobs, I am talking about the outsourcing of parental responsibility. Parents with increasing demands on their time continually cede more of their responsibilities to any bureaucracy willing to take them on, so that we now see contentious debates raging throughout American school systems over topics as essential to a child’s development as sex education and the creation of the Universe. The task of guiding a child through complex answers to the very primordial questions of life: “how did ‘I’,” and “how did ‘we’ get here, and what does that all mean,” have now been relegated to a government bureaucrat whom the child will probably only cursorily know and that for only a fleeting period of their life. This forfeiture of responsibility is only exacerbated by the moral vacuum caused by America’s growing disillusionment with organized religion and moral philosophy, but that is a topic deserving of its own treatise, so I will only mention it here. Indeed the very school system itself inculcates the idea that the government should take the foremost role in providing for a child’s education. A representative from the government ostensibly chooses where, how, what, when, and with whom a child will learn. They go as far as to tell you when you can eat, and they dole out the authority behind the all-precious hall pass. In fact an entire legal doctrine has been setup around the idea that schools act in loco parentis, or in place of a parent.

The first change we must affect in order to improve the state of education in our society is a structural step: put parents back in charge by instituting a tax credit system to put the money at their discretion and thus allow for each child’s education to be best tailored to meet their individual needs. Such a step would allow the people with the most sincere interest in, and the most intimate knowledge of that child to take charge in directing their education. Additionally, ending the government near-monopoly on education and freeing up billions of education dollars would help to usher in a groundswell of innovation and diversity in pedagogical methods. This student-centered approach allows each child to progress at their own pace in every different field, and follow their own inclinations, desires and aptitudes towards a goal of their choosing. Further, it allows any parent, even one that is unable to personally oversee the day-to-day activities, to provide their child with the whole education that they see fit, all without forcing anyone to fund the expression of any idea they might find objectionable, or forcing parents to remain forever vigilant of community school boards. Now you might point out a flaw or two in such a program, and I admit there surely will be at least one child left behind, so I will assure you that I am working on a perfect plan, but implore that we not wait for it, and assert that for every child that slips through the cracks of a market-oriented system there would be hundreds running through the sieve that is public education.

The second, and more challenging change that we must affect in our society in order to improve the state of education is a cultural and moral one, but as I suggested I will leave the full elucidation of this idea for another treatise. However, it may be alleged that I am really skirting the issue, as this second part is the more integral to answering the concerns of racism and sexism that we were discussing, and so I will provide a brief example to this point: Previously we talked about the virtues of diversity in an educational environment. As I said before I do believe that my time in Atlanta and my schooling in a primarily African-American school has benefited my development as a person, but I must stress that this benefit did not derive from our coincidental presence, and it certainly didn’t come from those endless reports on famous athletes and musicians every February, but instead it came from something as simple as our mutual respectful discourse, which never would have occured if I, or they, had been subjected to role models to fill our heads with ignorance and misinformation beforehand. An education is only as good as the virtues behind it.

Thanks again to all, for the inspiring debate, I look forward to its continuance, after I have had a chance to sleep…