Academic Freedom; J. Wilke

The only meaningful academic freedom is the basic right of an in stitution's board to determine all conditions of education in the school under its management. That's why real academic freedom 1976 ACADEMIC FREEDOM 111 will be unrealized until educational institutions are.· free of govern ment financing and control. If a board is sUPPo$ed to repre sent the interests of all the tax payers, the result must be chaos. How could it be otherwise? The public hody is. a hodgepodge of in terests, ideas and beliefs, all with a legitimate claim on a public sys tem. It is the tax base of education that gave one taxpayer the power to remove prayer from the schools. It was the tax base that justified bringing. prayer into the schools in the first place .. It is the tax base that justifies busing~. and also antibusing activities. And invit ing Communist speakers to cam puses. And protesting against Communist lecturers ...And teach ing sex in tne primary grades. And removing sex from primary class es. And fighting over·. textbooks.

And all the rest. This pushing and pulling at the school system. frustrates everyone and accomplishes nothing but dis ... ruption. All education requires a point of view as to content,. methods, direc tions, .and .the like. No point of view can be taken without offend ing someone. The nothingness that results from trying to accommo date all points of view could be called non-education. It's the essence of socialized education. It is the government control and en forcement of "equal opportunity" that has inevitably driven educa tion to its lowest, most ineffective level. That's education under the pub lic imperative. And what is the al ternative? What is the private im perative? With private funding, schools must deliver the kind of education parents want for. their children. How could schools avoid it? They would be individually. selected on the basis of their performance. If they didn't offer what enough par ents wanted, they would go out of business.

If schools were free to deter~ mine their own programs with an eye toward the market, everyone's freedom would be broadened by virtue of the choices that would become available. The academic freedom of the in stitution to chart its own course would establish the only possible realistic basis for the academic freedom of students: a variety of offerings to choose from. There would be schools with prayer and schools without. Some with athletic programs and some without. Some with coed athletics. Some allowing freaky dress. Others not. Some highly special ized.Some general. ,Some low. cost. Some expensive.

112 THE FREEMAN February All would prosper or fail on the basis of how they met the desires of the publi'c. Some things would be missing the fighti.ng, rioting, shouting, ar guing and disruption that takes place when one system is supposed to be all things to all people. This same academic freedom, the institution's right to provide the program it chooses, would also provide real academic freedom for teachers. There would be' a real market for different points of view and new methods. The teachers' creativity would be stimulated by the variety of approaches and edu cational programs available as well as the drive toward improvement supplied by competition. There would be no lifelong lock-in to a stale job - no stagnation or' iner tia rewarded with raises acquired by carrying a sign. Noone can say what forms true academic freedom would take and how it would develop and all that it would produce. But some things are certain. Unlike our present static system, improved forms of education would not only be pos sible, they would be assured. And correspondingly, the archaic and ineffective would disappear.

Does anyone remember why we have those summerlong vacations? There was a time when heat in the summer was a problem. And in some places, maybe the youngsters were needed to help in the fields. Now we have air conditioning. And most families don't raise their own produce. But we still have those long summer vacations often a problem for teenagers, a bore for youngsters, a trial for moms. Under a system of private edu cation, it is reasonable to assume that school facilities wouldn't re main unprofitably idle for months at a time. In some instances there might be a choice of terms~ on a rota tion basis. Or continuous terms with several shorter vacation pe riods during the year. Or the choice of going to school ye·ar round. Or the alternative of going to school part time or in adjust able periods to accommodate em ployment in the case of highschool and college students who want to work.

And the "free lunch" would be free at last. Instead of being paid for by the taxpayers, free lunches offered by a private school would be a competitive inducement to gain enrollment. It would only have promotional effect if the school's fees were competitive with those in comparable schools; so "free" in this case would take on some meaning. Total educational programs 1976 ACADEMIC FREEDOM 113 might be offered in this same free and easy competitive way. For ex ample, builders and developers in increasing numbers would likely include schooling in their master plans, in the same way that they now include recreational facilities in the price of .the home itself while keeping prices competitive. There was a time when a devel opment attracted buyers with just a swimming pooL Competitive pressures have led more and more builders to include recreation and in expanding ways. It is becoming more and more common to find in cluded such features as tennis courts, putting greens, barbecues, clubhouses, game rooms - even golf courses and lakes.

In appealing to families, prox imity to schools has always been a prime consideration for builders. Can anyone possibly believe such facilities wouldn't be provided if there were no public monopoly of education? Whenever competition comes in to play, extra services automati cally result. There would likely be programs to accommodate working mothers troubled by mid-afternoon dismis sals. There might be pre-school programs tied in with elementary school enrollments. Educational franchises could pop up faster than Jack-in-the-Boxes or McDonaldses - based on formulas that would make education more palatable, more fun, and more ef fective. It is likely that companies in established educational fields would offer systems using their materi als. An encyclopedia company or publisher would be in a good com petitive position for introducing educational programs. In spite of the fact that the gov ernment is currently hostile to companies providing related serv ices within an industry, calling it monopoly, great efficiencies can be offered by compani es already in a field, economies that are passed along to the consumer quite nat urally under competitive pres sures.

The only real and deleterious monopolies are those that are forced upon us by government sponsorship and protection - the monopoly of education being a prime example. A private system would offer schools appealing to different learning capacities as well as dif ferent economic levels. There would be good schools and pro grams for the handicapped and those needing special attention.; There would undoubtedly be schools for advanced stude·nts that would avoid the difficulties posed by "skipping" youngsters into ad114 THE FREEMAN February vanced age groups. We wouldn't be stifling the genius in our young Edisons as the uniformity of pub lic education has done in the past. Standards of accomplishment would be vitally significant be cause schools would have to de pend on their reputations and per formance for continued existence. We could expect to see more schools in connection with church: es - schools that are not econom ically feasible in competition with forcibly financed public schools.

Academic freedom would then be come a reality for certain religious sects that have been harassed for years by public educators in spite of the controversy over the sepa ration of church and state and the Constitutional guarantees of re ligious freedom. Those who see only illiteracy as the alternative to socialized (pub lic) education should remember that our early colleges, such as Princeton, Harvard and Yale, were all founded and funded by church initiative, not the government. It is also interesting to note re cent research by the University of Texas indicating some of the fail ures of our public efforts to edu cate everybody. Of the 10,000 adults tested, 20 per cent cannot read newspaper help wanted ads, 13 per cent can't address an en velopeproperly, 58 per cent can't extract the meaning from a simple paragraph, 30 per cent can't fig ure out airline schedules. One out of five were found to be function ally illiterate.

Socialized education, like allase. pects of socialism, is not anything so much as it is an emptiness, a void, an absence of expression and ideas. It is accepted because some where along the line we have made the mistake of defining free and responsible institutions as those which present all points of view. There never has been and never could be such a thing. "Equal Time" on T.V. and un biased reporting in the press are utopian concepts and noticeably nonexistent. Freedom of the press is the right of anyone to take a point of view in his ne"Tspaper and bear the responsibility for factual accuracy. It is the result ing existence of many newspapers that gives us the choice that makes freedom a reality. And academic freedom - what is it? (a) It is the right of people to get the kind of education they want from the choices available on the mar ket. As it is, there is no market at all.

(b) It is the right of teachers to teach what they choose, any way they like, as long as there is a market 1976 ACADEMIC FREEDOM 115 for their services. It is not a li cense for quackery and dema goguery at other people's ex pense. (c) It is the whole body of freedoms that depend on an institution's right to offer what it will, as long as it can survive in the mar ket place. (d) It is the freedom of choice only possible through privately fund ed institutions. (e) It is the variety of offerings that encourages differences, and the appreciation for individual dif ferences, on which the progress of civilization depends. (f) It is the only systen1 that can make learning as n1uch fun as it should be, because it is the only system that can meet individual needs. (g) It is the system that places edu cational responsibilities where they belong - with parents and students. (h) It is the system that produces people with direction and goals.

Not the kind of education that The Both-Sides Idea turns out people who think the absence of goals is a goal in it self. (i) It is the only system that can challenge young people of all capabilities and give then1 confi dence in accomplishment. (j) It is a system of prolife.rating choices . . . a system that can change and grow. (k) All of the above. (1) And more. Much, much more. An act of Congress can't pro vide academic freedom. Only pri vate competition can, with the in exorable pressures of competitive alternatives pushing toward im provement and perpetuating prog ress. Just two things keep the public system going. Financing by force, through taxation. And the willing ness of people to accept the social ist notion that there is no alterna tive. There is, of course. The alternative to nothing is everything. , IDEAS ON LIBERTY WHEN A PERSON voluntarily arranges for the presentation of socialistic ideas along with free market ideas, you may be sure of this: He hasn't completely repudiated socialism; he hasn't completely accepted the ideas of the free market and of govern ment restricted to the equal protection of the life, liberty, and honestly' acquired property of everyone.

HUGHSTON M. Me BArN Socialized HotDogs ?• DAVID J. SCHOLL COMPLEX ISSUES sometimes are clarified by simple experiences. An example occurred a few years back at a small, isolated California col lege. For servicing their odd-hour ap petites, the students long had de pended on a vending machine firm holding an exclusive franchise. And for years the students com plained that the products were stale and the machines "ate" their money, returning neither food nor coin. The vending machine com pany complained that the students repeatedly damaged their ma chines, causing exorbitant main tenance costs. The issue came to a head when the student government demanded that "something be done." The col lege administration and the ven dors mutually agreed to cancel their contract. The machjnes were removed, leaving the students with no on-campus source for snack items, just three weeks before finals. The nearest supply after 8 :00 p.m. was fifteen miles away by winding road, far from con venient to scholars spending late hours at their desks.