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Breaking Liberal Taboos on Education

by Christopher Chantrill
July 11, 2004 at 3:00 am

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IS THE WIND changing on education?  Three straws seem to suggest so.  First there was the calculated outburst from Bill Cosby.

It’s comical to read solemn liberal commentators worrying about whether it was right for Bill Cosby to wash the dirty laundry of the black community right out where whitey could see (as if anybody cares after 40 years after the civil rights acts).  Still, he did say what no white American would be allowed to say, and certainly no conservative American.  In a speech on May 17 at a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education he railed against parents that bought their kids $500 sneakers but wouldn’t cough up $200 for “Hooked on Phonics.”  And then a month or so later, he broke the taboo again at a Rainbow/PUSH conference in Chicago, in case anyone didn’t get the message the first time.  Responding to accusations over washing dirty laundry in public, he reminded his audience that their “dirty laundry was getting out of school every day at 2:30… cursing and calling each other n-----.”  “They think they’re hip," the entertainer said. "They can’t read; they can’t write. They’re laughing and giggling, and they’re going nowhere."

Meanwhile in The Daily Telegraph, English teacher Francis Gilbert reminded us of what we already know, or ought to know.  A disruptive lower-class child does better when challenged.  Writing about a boy who started out as a discipline problem Gilbert observed: “He became competitive about his work when he saw that other boys - tough characters like himself - wanted to do well.”  It was not positive self-esteem that motivated this boy, but the desire to compete with his peers.

On top of that, the British government suddenly announced a five-year plan on education that would increase “choice,” allow successful schools to expand, and even allow “selection,” permitting schools to interview and select the students they admit.

Only the government didn’t call its new policy “selection.”  The abolition of “selection” in schools is a sacrament of the Labour Party church in England, indeed, so holy that it is taboo.  To mention the word “selection” in a meeting of Labour Party members of parliament would shock them just as much as any mention of sex is supposed to have shocked a Victorian matron.  Since time immemorial, the Labour Party has believed that it is wrong for schools to stream students by ability and to send college-prep students to one school and vocational students to another.

Of course, they might be right.  But notice what is missing in their appreciation of the issue.  Notice what they have assumed without even batting an eye.

Yes, you guessed it.  They have not given a thought to what a parent might want for his or her child.  They have assumed, as bien-pensant elitists, that it is their job to decide how children will be educated.  Parents?  Shmarents!

Let us conduct a thought experiment.  Imagine a system of charter schools, funded by the taxpayers, but with each school a quasi-independent entity where the principal, assisted by a board, determines the curriculum and hires the teachers.  Obviously these schools will range from quasi-military academies to arts academies to science schools to unstructured progressive idylls.  Some parents will want to send their children to the military academy, others to the progressive school.  But what happens if everyone wants to send his or her child to the military academy?  Why, then the military academy will have to select which children to admit.  Evil “selection” will rear its ugly head.

That’s the rub, isn’t it?  Only in a one-size-fits-all, liberals-know-best system can we avoid the issue of selection.  Only if every parent is forced to send children to the school selected by the government’s bureaucrats is there no selection issue.  The parent has no choice in where to send a child to school, and the school must accept all students in a specified catchment area.  So when progressives, whether Labour Party loyalists in England or liberal activists in the United States, rail against the injustice of “selection,” they are also railing against the right of parents to send their children to the school of their choice.  Which side would you rather be on?

All across America, parents are making choices about their children’s education.  They move to areas with good public schools; they learn how to manipulate the system to get their children into the program they want.  They send them, if they can afford it, to Montessori schools, to Waldorf schools, to military academies, to college prep schools.  They choose adventurous schools, rigorous schools, progressive schools, art schools, and science schools.  Or maybe they home-school them.  But woe-betide that any government school should select its students based on ability or intelligence!

But wait a minute!  Public universities select by ability!  What’s going on, senator?

Christopher Chantrill blogs at americanmanifestobook.blogspot.com.

Buy his Road to the Middle Class.

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Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.”  —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

China and Christianity

At first, we thought [the power of the West] was because you had more powerful guns than we had. Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system. But in the past twenty years, we have realized that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity.
David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches... they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Class War

In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status... Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher... The academics lost their power and prestige and... have been gloomy ever since.
Freeman Dyson, “The Scientist as Rebel”

Conservatism

Conservatism is the philosophy of society. Its ethic is fraternity and its characteristic is authority — the non-coercive social persuasion which operates in a family or a community. It says ‘we should...’.
Danny Kruger, On Fraternity

Conservatism's Holy Grail

What distinguishes true Conservatism from the rest, and from the Blair project, is the belief in more personal freedom and more market freedom, along with less state intervention... The true Third Way is the Holy Grail of Tory politics today - compassion and community without compulsion.
Minette Marrin, The Daily Telegraph

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Drang nach Osten

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Richard Fletcher, The Barbarian Conversion

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

presented by Christopher Chantrill

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