The Dilemmas of Public Education; C. Carson

ClarenceB. Carson The Dilemmasof PublicEducation A great many issues have reached the level of public debate today con cerning public education. They range from questions that plumb the philosophic depths to everyday problems of student discipline. They range, that is, from questions as to the origin of life and of plant and animal species on this planet to the question of whether teachers should be permitted to use corporal punish ment in the classroom. There are those who believe that only the doc trine or theory of evolution should be taught in public schools. On the other hand, there are many equally convinced that an account of Divine Creation should be given at least equal time. Then, there is the ques tion of whether or not prayer should be permitted (or perhaps encour aged or required) in the public schools. Dr. Carson has written and taught extensively, spe cializing in American intellectual history. He is the author of several books, his most recent being Orga nized Against Whom? The Labor Union in America.

He is working at present on A Basic History of the United States to be published by Western Goals, Inc. Indeed, there is a great variety of controverted and complex issues about such matters as sex educa tion, the content of the curriculum, athletics, public policy about private schools, the right of parents to teach their children, homosexual teach ers, the teaching of contemporary literature in which obscenities and profanities abound, the use of the schools as instruments of social re form, frills versus basics in educa tion, the unionization of teachers, the compulsory bussing of children to achieve racial integration, the qual ity and character of textbooks, and so on and on. It is not my intention here to take sides on these issues. Rather, it is my purpose, in the first place, to call attention to the fact that the issues exist, that they involve vexing ques tions, and that when they are pushed on one side or the other they tend to become dilemmas. In the second place-and this is my main point they are dilemmas because they are being approached in the framework of public policy. They are dilemmas 515 516 THE FREEMAN September of public education, i.e., of govern ment supported and controlled edu cation. The contentions arise from efforts to use government for differ ing ends, indeed, diametrically op posed ends, quite often. This may not be unusual in itself, but the differ ing positions on education are being pressed at a level at which no gen erally satisfactory resolution is pos sible. They are dilemmas.

A dilemma is a "situation requir ing a choice between equally unde sirable alternatives." Granted, at the level at which the debates have been conducted the issues do not appear to pose a question of choice between equally undesirable, or even un equally undersirable, alternatives. It appears that those who have taken sides would be quite pleased if their position could be made to prevail. Take the issue of prayer in the pub lic schools. Presumably, those who favor them would be quite satisfied if the schools would have prayers, and those who oppose would be equally satisfied to have prayer pro hibited. That, however, is largely an illu sion.Undoubtedly, there are many who would like to see prayer in stated in the schools or classrooms. Beyond that, a considerable portion of these would like to see an attitude of piety toward God, toward human relations, and toward their studies prevail more generally among teachers and students in the schools.

Nor is there any good reason to doubt that there are others who would like to see prayer excluded from schools. Beyond that, there may be those who would like to see all pious, religious, or believing attitudes excluded from education, that the whole undertak ing be carried on in a secular and skeptical framework. No AmericanConsensus But I doubt very much that there is an American consensus for a po litical solution to this question. More important, those whose careers de pend upon knowing such things, i.e., politicians, clearly do not believe that there is a consensus for political ac tion on the prayer issue. The best evidence for this is that constitu tional amendments on this issue have been hanging fire for 20 years now. None has ever mustered the two thirds majorities necessary to get an amendment out of Congress and be fore state legislatures or conven tions. So far as we may judge there is no consensus behind a constitu tional amendment that would per mit or authorize prayer in the public schools. But even if an amendment were adopted, it is not at all clear that the issue would be resolved.

The truth seems to be that there is no acceptable political solution available. There is the dilemma. A political solution involves the use of force. Probably, most of those on ei ther side of the prayer issue would 1983 THE DILEMMAS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 517 be exceedingly reluctant to employ force to achieve the full measure of what they wish to see established. That is, most of those who· want prayer in the schools would not wish to see teachers forced to lead prayers or preside over them. Indeed, it is not at all clear how anyone could be forced to pray or what desirable end could be achieved by it. Such use of force would be con trary both to the nature of prayer and of education. On the other hand, surely those who oppose prayer in the schools do not envision sending SWAT teams or the NationalGuard to prevent small children from giv ing thanks by repeating: "God is great. God is good. Let us thank Him for our food." In short, it may well be equally undesirable to many Americans either that there should or should not be prayer in the public schools or that force should be di rectly applied to achieve either end.

That is a true dilemma. (Since some may suppose that the courts have settled the prayer issue by their rulings, some observations on that may be helpful. The Su preme Court has nullified state laws specifying prayer and Bible reading in public schools. Such laws were held to be in conflict with the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution. Other courts have made rulings on a variety of reli gion-related practices in the schools. Thus far, however, United States Marshals have not been sent forth to interdict prayer in any particular school, and public prayers are still made in a goodly number of schools.) Force Is the Issue The dilemma, I am saying, is not in the issues; it arises from the pros pect of the use of force. Ultimately, the dilemmas of public education arise from compulsory attendance and the financing of schools with tax money. It is these things that make the questions public issues. It is these things, too, that make any solution difficult, if not impossible, short of tyrannical measures. This is true not only for the prayer issue but for most of those that have come to the fore in recent years.

Even so, it may be of some help to see how the issues have come to the forefront. More specifically, I want to explore a little the setting in which the issues have arisen. It is not sur prising, of course, that people should differ among themselves about what should be done or how to go about doing it. Each of us differs in some or in many respects from others. We differ in background, experience, temperamental make-up, tastes, preferences, abilities, goals, and in telligence, to name a few ways. From these individual differences arise differences of opinion. Nor is it dif ficult to surmise why we might dif fer with one another quite often about so sensitive and crucial a mat518 THE FREEMAN September ter as the education of our children. Fortunately, most of us do not usually set such store by each of our opinions that we are inclined to make a federal case, as the saying goes, about every difference. But on some matters within their hierarchy of values, many people feel strongly about their beliefs and principles.

Some of these fall for many people in the arena of education; in some senses, all of them do. DiverseOrigins Some of these differences might well assume some importance in any country, but the diversity of the pop ulation in the United States has in creased both their number and im portance. From the earliest English, French, and Spanish settlements, America was a land of immigrants. The diversity of the population has increased rather than diminished over the years. From the 18th through better than three quarters of the 20th century, peoples from virtually every land have come or been brought here, sometimes in small numbers and at others by the thousands and tens of thousands. At various times, they have come from Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Poland, Bohemia, Russia, China, Japan, Transylvania, Serbia, Tur key, Iran, the Gold Coast of Africa, Mexico, Cuba, and so on and on. Vir tually every culture, race, nationality, language, and ethnic grouping in the world is represented among those who have settled in America.

Of religious sects, denominations, and churches virtually every spec trum of belief is or has been present in America. There are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, Buddhists, Moslems, and Shintoists. There is a wondrous variety of Protestant sects and denominations: Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Disciples, Congregationalists, Na zarenes, Evangelicals, Quakers, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and many, many more. But no brief listing can begin to capture the diversity of re ligious belief or unbelief in America, for in addition to those who profess some religious belief, or belong to organizations which do, there are atheists, agnostics, skeptics, free thinkers, Communists, communi tarians, and a variety of groupings holding religious-like beliefs. All of these beliefs have greater or lesser import on beliefs and preferences about education.

While it would not be possible to exaggerate the .differences among groups and individuals which have some bearing on what may be wanted by way of education, it may be pos sible to overstate the case for most communities. When we look at the United States as a whole, what we may see is a great hodgepodge of peoples, groups, and organizations 1983 THE DILEMMAS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 519 representing almost every spectrum of diversity. By contrast, communities are of ten much more nearly homogenous than any description of the nation would suggest. For example, in many parts of the rural and small town South, there may be churches of sev eral denominations, but. the reli gious motif is apt to be Southern Baptist. In parts of New England, it may be Congregationalist; in West ern Pennsylvania, Presbyterian; in Utah, Mormon; and so on. Even in cities where there may be the most diverse religious, ethnic, and racial differences, there are often fairly homogenous groupings of people in particular sections.

But whether a community was diverse or homogenous in its make up, people tended to associate in their own particular churches, clubs, or ganizations, and what have you, to preserve their own ways within en claves, as they chose, or to slough off many of their differences and fit into a more general American pattern. A great degree of harmony amidst wide diversities was generally possible in America by those who were differ ent keeping their distance from one another, minimizing the extent of their involvements, or going along with the prevailing customs. E plu ribus unum expresses a truth only if that in which Americans were one be limited and restricted to a small number of common interests. SchoolsProvidedby Communities and by Churches For most of American history, schooling tended to mirror and re flect the diversity of America. Schools tended to be provided, when they were provided, by communities and churches. Historically, schooling in Western Civilization was allied with if not tied to religion. In the Middle Ages, Catholic churches generally provided such formal schooling as existed. Cathedrals had their own schools as a rule. Generally speak ing, too, after the Protestant Refor mation where there was an estab lished church it had the oversight of all formal education, whether or not it provided the schooling. During the colonial period in America, the only experiments of any extent in com pulsorily provided education were in New England. Otherwise, people were left free to provide such edu cation in whatever form they would for their children.

Nor was there any great change in most regions after the American Revolution for the better part of a hundred years. Lands were some times set aside for schooling when the public domain was broken up for selling. But the initiative for provid ing schools was generally left to communities, towns, and churches, or whoever had an interest in it. Churches did sometimes support schools. Towns and communities of ten did so as well. The cost of schools 520 THE FREEMAN September was often defrayed by tuition paid by parents, and it was sometimes supplemented by charitable contri bution. Sunday schools were widely organized by churches in the 19th century, initially as a means to teach children the fundamentals of read ing and writing. In any case, the providing of a school for a frontier and rural community was not usu ally especially expensive. The men of the community could get together and raise abuilding. A schoolmaster could be paid in much the same way as a minister for the church, if he were not one and the same person.

Local Control But however the school was pro vided, it was generally done by some local community. The community controlled the school, so far as it was controlled, and those who were suf ficiently pleased by what was of fered could send their children to it as circumstances permitted. The di versity of the population of America was undoubtedly reflected in the schools from community to commu nity and region to region, so far as there was any will to make it so, and people pretty much had such schools as they could or would. Even after governments began to become involved and some tax sup port began generally to be provided, there was no great change for a good many years. The movement toward tax supported schooling and compulsory attendance was largely made between the Civil War and World War I. Schools were generally still locally owned and controlled, how ever, and many high schools were still private or semi-private. (Some churches, notably the Roman Cath olic and Lutheran, maintained schools for their communicants, where they were sufficiently concen trated for that.) Local boards made the basic decisions about education, levied charges, hired teachers, and, presumably, reflected community values. Even so, schooling became public education as compulsory at tendance laws were passed, and tax support became widespread. The stage was being set for the dilem mas which we now face. Local boards made the transition much easier, but they may have only served to delay the surfacing of the dilemmas.

At any rate, the schools have been transformed in the 20th century. They have been very nearly nation alized and secularized as well as made more or less uniform. They have been transformed into instru ments of or for social reform on a national scale. Control over the schools has been wrested from local communities and is now in the hands of state and national bureaucracies, legislatures, and the federal judi ciary. Local boards may still make intermediate decisions, but they do so within a framework of guidelines and prescriptions that make them 1983 THE DILEMMAS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 521 mostly errand boys. It is this trans formation that has brought the di lemmas of public education to the surface, given rise to strident de mands, and provides the setting for the urgency of some accommodation or resolution. The transformation has been ef fected mostly since World War II, but it was prepared and advanced for several decades before that.

Overcomingthe Differences It is tempting to speculate as to how anyone could conceive a na tional and uniform system ofeduca tion that could encompass and ac commodate the diversities of Americans, but it would be irrele vant to do so. No one ever has, and I dare say no one could. What was conceived, rather, was a system which its proponents hoped would act as a solvent upon the differences, obliterate them, if you will. As I was preparing this article, I received a little leaflet entitled "The Internationalization of Accounting Curriculum." It contained this re vealing sentence: "Education, in its essence, and by definition should re sult in the diminution of provincial ism." On the contrary, I would say that education might either heighten or diminish provincialism, depend ing on its content and emphasis and the receptiveness or resistance of the ones being educated. But no matter.

Most likely, the person who wrote the sentence couldn't distinguish clearly between an essence and an apple, and he certainly did not bother to define education. What matters is that he was writing out of a vision of education that has become deeply ingrained over the past seventy-five years. It is a vision of using the schools to transform man and society. The idea was advanced most vigorously and directly by the proponents of what was called Progressive Educa tion, but it came to permeate the whole field of pedagogy, which has marched under the flag of "Educa tion" for most of this century. John Dewey was the leader of Progressive Education, and its center was Teacher's College of Columbia Uni versity. Progressive educationists usually described the transforma tion they aimed at as making Amer ica democratic, or more democratic. By that description, however, they meant mainly equality. That is not to deny that they may have favored democratic methods, sometimes anyway, but rather to assert that their animating ideal was equality.

The thrust of this idea of equality was to remove all differences, to bring the high low and the low high, or, as George S. Counts, a Progressive, said, "the school should be regarded ... as an agency for the abolition of all artificial social distinctions,..." (Quoted in John H. Snow and Paul W. Shafer, The Turning ofthe Tides 522 THE FREEMAN September [New York: Long House, 1956], p. 30.) To Progressives, all distinctions were arbitrary, of course. As John Dewey pointed out, "Democratic ab olition of fixed differences between 'higher' and 'lower' still has to make its way in philosophy." (John Dewey, Problems of Men [New York: Philo sophical Library, 1946], p. 15.) Professional Educators In short, the Progressives did not conceive a philosophy of education which would embrace the diversity of America. Instead, they advanced a plan to use the schools as an in strument for removing, obliterating, or crushing the differences. Progres sive Education eventually blended with or became the dominant influ ence in professional education, i.e., the teaching of teachers in peda gogy. There have been three main stages thus far in the movement to nationalize and make uniform the public school (indeed, so far as they could, all schools) in America.

The first was to give a dominant role in schooling to the faculties of education departments, schools, and colleges. This was done by requiring state certification of teachers, re quiring education courses for certi fication, and by founding numerous normal schools, teacher's colleges, and education departments. The second stage was to bring all public schools under the control of state departments of education. Certification was a major means to do this, but it would have been of little account without state leverage. This was achieved in most states by fi nancing and the laying down of guidelines in order for schools to re ceive state money. The third stage is the effort to na tionalize education more directly. Federal aid to education was the opening wedge. There is, of course, now a cabinet level United States Department of Education, and the federal courts now wield great power over the schools.

In large-and to summarize thus far-there is a vast educationist es tablishment in America. It includes not only the federal, state, city, and county bureaucracies with their hi erarchy of officials, but also thou sands of educationists in colleges and universities, and hundreds of thou sands of teachers in the public schools. This establishment exer cises decisive influence over the public schools, and much influence and some controls over private schools. The establishment may not be a monolith, but it is certainly monolithic in tendency. If anything, it has become much more cohesive in recent decades by the widespread organization of teachers in national labor unions. The common thread which holds it together at the ideo logical level is educationism. The thrust of this establishment has been to secularize, nationalize, 1983 THE DILEMMAS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 523 and make uniform the schools and schooling. This establishment has wrested the control over the schools from local communities and vested it in bureaucracies at ever greater remove from them. The ultimate power over the schools now rests in the Supreme Court of the United States, which is about as remote from popular control as it is possible to get.

Differences Aggravated This, then, is the setting of the di lemmas of public education. The ed ucationist establishment has not succeeded, not yet anyway, in wip ing out the diversity in America. They are suc~eeding, rather, in ex posing the dilemmas of public edu cation. The differences and diversi ties have been exacerbated rather than obliterated, and lowest com mon denominator schooling has given rise to a rising tide of resent ment to it. Some of these resent ments are represented in contempo rary debates on public issues. The educationist establishment would be in deep trouble if it had to answer only for the declining achievements of the pupils it serves, the disorders in the schools, and the low caliber of so much of the teaching. But the na tionalization and secularization of education (or schooling) has brought dilemmas to the fore for which there are no solutions in public education.

There is a way out ofthis morass. There is a way to restore schooling to local patrons, the control over ed ucation to parents, and freedom to learning. There is probably more than one way to go about attempt ing to do these things. President Reagan has stated his opinion that the control over education ought to be returned to local communities. He has also proposed that deductions for tuition to private schools be permit ted on income tax schedules. Propos als for a voucher system to enable people to choose their schools and pay with tax money have gained some followers over the years. Whatever the merits of these and like propos als, they do not go to the heart of the problem, by my analysis. The heart of the problem is com pulsory attendance and tax-sup ported schooling. It is these things on which an educationist establish ment has been built; they provide the levers for the control over schooling. So long as attendance is compulsory and schooling is tax supported, the dilemmas will re main; the diversity of America and the differences among people will take care of that.

There is away, however, to free education from the trammels of gov ernment control. It is the free mar ket. It is to leave schooling to the market and education to those who are willing to seek it. It is the way to provide both for the inevitable differences between individuals and 524 THE FREEMAN September the diversity of the population in America. I am aware, of course, that many people favor what they call public education, although it is be coming equally clear that a consid erable portion of Americans are less than enthusiastic about the current product. It is hardly surprising that public schools should be widely, even gen erally, accepted as desirable. Any thing established as long as a hun dred years is likely to be widely accepted. If public baths had been established in towns and communi ties as long as schools, they would no doubt have gained widespread acceptance. How would people bathe themselves, after all, if there were not public baths? Surely, the poor would have to go dirty!

Church and State But perhaps I should choose an example closer to home, since most Americans have little familiarity with public baths. This example comes at least from our common his torical background. As recently as the early 17th century, most Euro peans apparently believed that an established church was essential to the unity and well-being of a coun try. (Indeed, the relics of established churches still survive in such coun tries as England and Sweden.) Moreover, many believed that the government should assist in compel ling attendance at churches and that the church should be tax-supported. Many people found it difficult to imagine how religion could survive without fullfledged support of the state. There were still a goodly number of people who believed at the time of the writing of the United States Constitution that some sort of state support for churches was desirable, and several states still had an estab lished, or government favored, church. There were others who be lieved even more confidently that religion should be freed from the toils of government, that people should be free to speak and act in accord with their own consciences, that it was folly to use force in such delicate and profound matters. They carried the field eventually.

Actually, there was no possibility of having an established church in the United States without arousing animosities that would wreck the union. Anglicans in South Carolina would hardly accept the Congrega tional church of New England. Quakers and Baptists would accept neither, and the great variety of de nominations and churches in Amer ica made the establishment of any church a potentially divisive and ex plosive issue of the first order. The happy decision reached by the Founders was to forbid Congress to establish any church or interfere with any that might exist in the states. The result was so generally satisfac1983 THE DILEMMAS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 525 tory that even those few states which had some sort of government sup port or preference for a particular denomination removed it. Nor did religion perceptibly decline and wither away in the United States without government support. On the contrary, religion flourished, churches abounded, and denomina tions proliferated. Religion, left to the market, so to speak, and to private giving and support satisfied both the desire for variety, which flows from individual differences, and the long ing to share faith and beliefs with others. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find a single Ameri can today who would favor a govern mentally supported national church.

The case for freedom of education is hardly less substantial than that for freedom of religion. Indeed, for many today, they cannot have full freedom of religion without also having freedom of education. For many thoughtful persons, God sub stantiates all knowledge, and if He is not acknowledged, the foundation stone is missing from learning. Given the diversity of America, a national school establishment is no more ap propriate than would be a nation ally established church. In one respect, at least, an estab lished school is much more gro tesquely unjust and intolerant than an established church. When com pulsory attendance at church was required, adults as well as children were required to attend. By con trast, we visit the compulsion only upon children, those among us who are the weakest, least able to resist, least able to fend for themselves, and who have no voice in political deci sions. This system of compulsion permeates education, stifles curios ity, and turns what could be a won drous adventure of the mind for those who have the aptitude and desire into almost insufferable boredom.

Compulsion has turned schooling into a "bad" rather than a good. The dilemmas of public education and the insuperable problems in so many contemporary schools are a direct consequence of the compulsion. I do not know what forms schooling might take if it were left to the market and voluntary giving, nor what great variety of ways people might find to become educated. I am certain that if people val ued these things and were free to provide for themselves, they would do so. And, for me at least, it would be exciting to see what kind ofchanges would be made when those who would provide schooling and help to educate should turn their at tention to serving customers rather than compelling attention. Only those who want to learn ever learn much worth knowing in any case. Rather than having dilemmas and national problems of education, we might have in their stead opportu nities for teachers and learners un bounded by state compulsion. I) David Smyth Until Shrimp ~.,.