The School Revolution (2 page)

 

W
e are late in a 180-year war. It is a war over who will maintain control of the system of education, beginning at about age six and ending with an academic degree granted by some institution. This degree may be a high school diploma, a college diploma, or a PhD. Formal education is the front line for the future of every nation.

Throughout most of history, parents have been the primary educators. When society was agricultural, neither churches nor the government (federal, state, or local) could extend control over the content and structure of education. Fathers taught their sons, and mothers taught their daughters. While there was always progress, traditional modes of thought prevailed throughout
most of history. All this changed around 1800. The enormous growth of productivity and longevity that began in the British Isles and on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States has changed the face of the world. But along with this change has come an enormous expansion of state power. Politicians and bureaucrats assert a degree of authority over education that would have been entirely inconceivable
two centuries ago. All over the world, governments have extended control over education, beginning with financing, but not ending there.

The old phrase was “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” There was another phrase: “Give me control over the child for the first seven years, and I will make the man.” This is often attributed to Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuit Order
in the mid-sixteenth century. It is sometimes attributed to other Jesuit leaders. Whoever said it, the idea is clear: the person who shapes the thinking of a young child has an important office. The idea goes back to one of King Solomon’s proverbs: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6).

Modern educators are convinced of the truth of these familiar proverbs. They want control over the thinking of children, and they want to reduce the influence of parents. They are thoroughly convinced that there are better ways to educate a child than the traditional ways, and they are determined to be placed in authority over the education of every nation’s children. It is now
a matter of political power, and the professional educators have succeeded in gaining a near-monopolistic control over the structure and content of education during the first dozen years of school.

This control was resisted by Catholic immigrants in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the second half of the twentieth century, there was an equally self-conscious movement, generally
coming from evangelical Protestants, to remove their children from tax-supported schools. The goal is the same in both cases:
to maintain parental control over the structure and content of education
. Parents want their values inculcated in their children. They recognize that the way to gain this authority is to pay for it, but a private classroom education is extremely expensive. Yet now, because
of the technological revolution of the Internet, the cost of educating a child today can be minimal. If the parents homeschool their children, the Internet can provide access to almost everything the parents need to provide an excellent education. This is an unprecedented breakthrough.

The battle for control over education will continue to escalate precisely because of the
reduced costs associated with Internet-based education. The old rule of the free market is correct:
when the price of something falls, more of it is demanded
. Regarding homeschooling, as the price of online education continues to fall, the main expenses become the parent’s time and trouble. Still, this will make it possible for parents to reestablish control over the content and structure of their
children’s education. They will be able to offer their children a better education than tax-funded schools can offer. They will be able to transmit their values and beliefs to their children, because they can get help from educational programs that share those values and beliefs. The free market will provide many alternatives for parents, enabling them to pick and choose from among a wide variety
of curriculum materials.

Why is education central? It is central because each generation passes on its values, assumptions, and skills to the next generation. Parents are in a position to teach children about what they believe matters most in life, and what is more important than that? Because they are in authority over their children during the first two decades of their
children’s lives, they can transmit a system of values to them. Ultimately, education is a debate over ethics. What values do the parents hold most dear? These are the values they want their children to adopt. Parents have an idea about the way the world works. They have ideas about what constitutes success and failure in life. They want to transmit these ideas to their children, as well as their
own basic moral values. Finally, they want to give their children a head start in life. They want their children to be successful, and this requires that the children be equipped to deal with the many challenges in life, part of which is technical education and part of which are core values and beliefs. The educational system is vital for helping parents impart to their children hope for the future
as well as the values and skills required to be successful.

This takes many years of hard work and sacrifice on the part of parents. Parents must work with their children in order to persuade them of the truth of their worldview. Parents need help, and educators supply it. There is a division of intellectual labor. Parents can select educational materials in terms of their presuppositions
about what constitutes a good education, and a good life. Parents can go outside the household to gain support from professional educators, who will reinforce the parents’ viewpoint.

All this assumes that parents are the legitimate agents in teaching their children. But most modern educators do not assume this. Most educators assume that the parents are not competent to be the sole
providers of education. They have been able to persuade the state to enter and control the field of education. They have captured the state with respect to the methodology and content of classroom education. They want access to the children, and they have used the state to gain that access.

All sides in this conflict understand that the future
will belong to those teachers who are most influential in shaping children’s thinking. Every side wants to be able to frame the great questions of life in such a way that students will behave and think in a particular way. Most important, tax-funded educators reinforce the belief in students that they are under the lifetime authority of the state, and that they should not seriously question that
authority. They want students to respect that authority, and finance it. In effect, they want the state to replace the parents in shaping children’s lives.

This is why there is a growing battle between parents and the state with respect to education. This is why the revolution of liberty I propose must start with the educating of children. The educational system is at the center of
the struggle for the commitment of its graduates.

I propose a different kind of education from that which has prevailed in the United States over the past 180 years. To speak seriously of revolution is necessarily to speak about the first principles of life. These principles historically have been taught by parents, but not over the last 180 years.
This is why the revolution must begin
in the family
. It then extends beyond the family. It begins with the education of the children, and then extends beyond the narrow confines of the school. Simply put:
there can be no revolution without a revolution in education
. Any attempt to conduct a revolution apart from educational reform is an exercise in futility. It is also an exercise in coercion. Persuasion begins in the household, and
it is reinforced by a systematic program of education. The only alternative to persuasion is coercion.

I
f you are reading this, then likely at some point, you became convinced that we have surrendered far too much power to the state. In every area, the state has asserted authority: in money, in education, in economic affairs and taxation, in foreign policy, in health care, in housing, and in more than
eighty thousand other new ways—every year!
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Step by step, the state has encroached on the liberties of free men and women. Yet this was not done overnight. It was done over decades and, in some areas, from the early days of the American republic.

But you were not taught this in a tax-funded high school or college. Instead, you were taught that the expansion of the
state is positive, and that without this expansion into the lives of all Americans, the capitalist system would lead to great inequalities of wealth and massive poverty. You were told that the government under President Franklin Roosevelt saved capitalism from itself. You were also told the United States has necessary military responsibilities around the world, and that American taxpayers must
bear the burden of extending the influence of the U.S. government across the face of the globe. And that all this is done in the name of extending liberty to all. Here is the problem: the price of this so-called extension of liberty has been the surrender of individual liberty to the federal government.

The textbooks and curriculum materials dominant in the public schools have maintained
this view of American life since at least the end of World War II. This has been the story of modern America as taught in the textbooks. We need a new set of textbooks. Better yet, we need educational materials that are not tied to traditional textbooks at all. New technologies involve video production, interactive education, and low-cost publishing on the Internet. It is now possible to create
an alternative curriculum without spending millions of dollars to develop textbooks. A standard textbook may cost as much as $500,000 to produce. This has helped keep conservatives and libertarians from producing systematic teaching materials that would provide a different story of the expansion of the federal government since the end of the American Civil War in 1865.

Let’s dig a little deeper. The story of surrendered personal liberty to the federal government is the story of surrendered personal responsibility.
Liberty is inescapably associated with responsibility
. As the government has declared people incapable of becoming responsible for themselves and their families, it has grabbed expanded authority over the lives of all Americans.

Any program of education that is deliberately designed to increase the liberty of individuals must begin with this premise:
as individuals mature, they must accept greater personal responsibility for their actions
. Education or liberty must be geared to persuading people to take greater responsibility in their own lives. As people achieve greater responsibility, they also
achieve greater liberty. When they become confident in their ability to exercise responsibility, they are ready to exercise liberty.

The whole system of education from kindergarten through graduate school ought to be geared to equipping students to take greater personal responsibility for their actions. This is the meaning of adulthood, and education is meant to prepare an
individual for precisely that. But the modern welfare state is premised on a very different view of maturity. It is premised on the view that individuals are not fully responsible for their actions, and therefore they do not deserve extensive liberty. The welfare state winds up treating adults as if they were children. Just as children are not granted a great deal of liberty of action by their parents,
so the modern welfare state constantly expands its authority over the lives of individuals. This restricts their liberty of action. If we do not begin with the principle of education that insists that
education for liberty is education for personal responsibility
, the system of education will not lead to an expansion of liberty, but rather, to its contraction.

Parents know
from the beginning that they are training their children to exercise maturity as adults. Parents want their children to be capable adults at some point, and they devote time and energy to helping their children understand the principles of successful living. Their job is to teach their children ethics, both verbally and by example, through their own actions. They teach their children skills that
are needed in order to be successful in life. They teach their children habits of behavior, including basic manners, that are essential to success in life. Parents do their best to teach their children how to compete in a highly competitive world, and to do so in a responsible manner. Linking liberty and personal responsibility is central to this.

By the time a child reaches high school,
most of his habits are already developed, including study habits. He already sees the world in a particular way. He thinks of cause and effect in a particular way. Then he is introduced to such academic subjects as government, economics, history, literature, science, mathematics, and perhaps even fine arts. All this should be taught from a consistent perspective. All of it should be taught with
this in mind:
there can be no extension of liberty without an accompanying extension of personal responsibility
. To teach economics, government, and history apart from this presupposition is to mislead the student. Worse, it is to persuade the student that responsible maturity is not based on an extension of liberty, and therefore that the state is the ultimate authority in life.

We tell our children that when they are adults, they will be able to leave the confines of the family. We tell them that they will be able to exercise liberty of action, without depending on their parents for finances or direct intervention in their lives. We want this for them, and that is the message they want to hear. But the textbooks tell them a completely different story with respect
to the expansion of personal responsibility and liberty. Textbooks tell students that the federal government must intervene in the affairs of hundreds of millions of individuals because these individuals are not capable of making their own decisions. They are not capable of negotiating a wage with an employer. They are not capable of saving for their retirement. They are not capable of deciding
what kind of health care is best for them, given the limitations of their income. They are not capable of deciding what kind of educational program is best for their children. The textbook version of the welfare state tells the story of the failure of the free market to make available opportunities to large numbers of people, opportunities that involve an increase in personal responsibility, but
that also bring with them an increase in personal liberty.

In other words, the story we tell our children with respect to their lives—namely, that as they mature, they will be given greater liberty and greater responsibility—is not the story their textbooks convey to them. There is a reason that conservatives and libertarians refer to the regulatory state as the nanny state. The nanny
state can, in many ways, be thought of as an imitation of a family nanny. A nanny is hired by wealthy parents to look after small children because the parents work full time or are otherwise overly occupied and need help. The nanny state functions similarly. Yet the family nanny is dismissed at some point, when the children grow old enough to manage without her. Sadly, there is no way to dismiss
the nanny state unless we cut off its funding. It will not go away if the voters consent to funding it. It will continue to intrude in the lives of individuals, as if they were children.

So, educating for liberty requires that we educate by means of a curriculum and a program of education that extend the benefits of both liberty and responsibility to students. As they mature, they must
be given greater authority over their own education. Parents sometimes do not want to turn them loose, in exactly the same way politicians and bureaucrats do not want to turn us loose. But a program dedicated to educating students for liberty must be consistent across the board. It must give the offer of greater liberty in response to improved performance. It must also present the story of economics,
politics, history, and business from the point of view of the extension of liberty. The student had better understand that his quest to gain personal liberty as an adult should be matched by a willingness by politicians and bureaucrats to reduce their interference in the lives of the citizenry. The student wants liberty, and the price of that liberty is greater personal responsibility. This
is manifested in improved performance academically. But if the student wants to continue to extend his zone of authority, which involves liberty of action, he must recognize that the nanny state is a threat to his authority to make his own choices.

Conservatives and libertarians insist that
self-government is the most important form of government
. They maintain that the intrusion of the modern state into the lives of millions of citizens is an attempt to substitute the state for self-government. They are convinced that this will backfire, as bureaucracy expands and free enterprise is restricted. But if self-government is the foundation of liberty, it should also be the foundation of education. Students should be encouraged to learn
the techniques of research, analysis, writing, and public speaking. As they mature, they must be ready to step out into the world and begin to change it for the better.
The most meaningful way to improve the world is to free up the creativity of individuals
. These individuals can then find ways of better serving their fellow man. Through market competition, individuals find ways of improving the
lives of others. They ask to be paid for having provided such improvement, which is a form of persuasion. The alternative to persuasion is coercion.

Parents need to understand early in the process of educating their children that they must begin to remove themselves from that process. They must show their children the basics of education, and then turn over to them, once they
are old enough, the responsibilities of mastering a basic curriculum. Considering children too young to be tasked with such a responsibility is to underestimate them.

The curriculum can and should reflect the viewpoint of the parents. The parents should be in charge of selecting the curriculum, so they exercise authority economically in the marketplace. If parents decide that a particular
curriculum is not what the children need, and if enough parents make this decision, market forces will eliminate that curriculum from consideration. This is the basis of liberty in economic affairs, and it is also the basis of liberty in educational affairs.

Most parents understand this with respect to college. They know that they are going to have to turn loose any child who goes off
to college. Unfortunately, the parents will also be required to hand over a great deal of money. This is one of the problems of conventional, campus-based college education. The parents surrender almost all authority to the university with respect to the content of education, to the moral behavior on campus, and, usually in the first two years, to the dorm room. Parents have to pay a great deal
of money to the university for the privilege of turning their children over to people who probably do not share their view of the way the world works, let alone the way the world ought to work. The parents (or students) are saddled with severe economic responsibility, and at the same time, they surrender direct authority, or rather, they delegate it. This is so common today that hardly anybody gives
it a second thought. Yet they ought to give it a second thought—and then a third thought, and a fourth thought. Children go off to college, and either the parents or the students, through financial aid, assume whatever financial burdens come along with that. End of story. There seem to be no other real choices, so we just accept this situation. Most people bemoan this process but never truly question
it on a grand scale.

The transition from senior year in high school to freshman year in college is sometimes as radical as the transition from being single to being married, or the transition that takes place when the first baby is brought home. Some students are prepared to make this transition, but millions are not. They are not prepared emotionally, they are not prepared academically,
and they are not prepared in terms of the exercise of personal responsibility. In other words,
they are not trained in the exercise of self-government
, and so all that money and time and effort is largely wasted on individuals who are nowhere near being ready to take advantage of the experience. This is tragic, and it is widespread. It’s even more tragic because of this little-known fact: it is
possible to earn a bachelor’s degree from any of several accredited universities for a total cost of under $15,000—and the education can be just as good. But no one tells parents that these options exist. These options don’t feel real in our culture. But they should, because the actual education can be just as good.

A system of educating for liberty must prepare a student
to make this transition so that it is not wasted. The earlier the preparation begins, the better. It is possible today for a student in a homeschool or private school environment to take all his university course work. He can graduate with a degree from an accredited college or university at the age of eighteen. Not many students do it, but it is possible, and parents and students should know that
it is possible. Students who do this have mastered the basics of academic self-government. Parents cannot succeed in nagging the child into this kind of performance, but if the child is self-motivated and self-governing, this kind of performance is possible.

It is relatively common today for academically advanced students in high school to complete the first two years of college by
the time high school graduation day arrives. In the state of Washington, for example, there is a program that lets high school students attend a community college instead of attending high school classes, and the students graduate at eighteen with an associate’s degree. They then enter university as juniors. This saves parents anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000, an unbelievably large amount for most
families. If this is considered legitimate by the state of Washington with respect to tax-funded education, why shouldn’t parents adopt a similar program for their children that does not require tax funding or that the student even set foot on a campus?