Of Tin Foil Hats and Voices from The Closet
Fred Barton
Editor, SLATE Newsletter

I’ve never been much of a fan of conspiracy theories, although I can understand their attraction. It’s much more comforting to believe that evil is the result of intention than simply random chance. After all, who wants to think that civilization is so fragile a single madman acting alone can change the direction of history? I’ve always thought of those who believe the world is awash in conspiracies to be practicing the same faith that brings people to church on Sunday morning, just a darker version.

Lately though, I’ve begun to wonder if there might be something to the reports that public education is under a concerted and coordinated attack. My suspicions were activated when I read yet another “Report Card” that purported to show schools were failing. This particular account was published by the American Legislative Exchange Council and was written by Andrew LeFevre who is the founder and Executive Director of REACH, which is an acronym for Road to Educational Achievement through Choice, an organization whose goal is to “educate the public on the benefits that school choice can bring…”

Not surprisingly, the “Report Card” finds public schools wanting. I’m no statistician, but the folks at the Progressive Legislative Action Network are, and they had this to say about the report: “The ‘Report Cards’ compare student success averaged across each state as a whole—with no breakdown for wealthier versus poorer communities or any account of special education needs that might vary between the states. LeFevre's career is as a political hit man for corporate privatization of public institutions, not in educational statistics, and it shows in the simplistic statistical analysis used in the ALEC ‘report cards.’”

That got me thinking about the whole voucher movement which was supposed to save schools by letting people abandon them, like old cars left by the side of the road after they’d been driven to death. In a recent article in Rethinking Schools, Barbara Miner pointed to the conservative philosophy of the “hyper-individualistic ideology of choice” as the driving force behind the money poured into the voucher program by people like the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and Richard Mellon Scaife, among others. For the sake of argument, let’s assume these people are generally good hearted, if somewhat simplistic in their assumption that getting an education is similar to a commercial transaction in which the consumer hunting for, say a new toaster benefits from having several companies producing toasters in competition with one another.

That still doesn’t explain why voucher schools are allowed to hide the very things that cause the most complaints about public schools, namely how the money is spent and what the results are. Miner, for example points out that the Milwaukee voucher schools don’t have to report any of their data concerning student achievement, don’t have to abide by open meetings and records laws and aren’t required to prohibit discrimination based on pregnancy, marital status or sexual orientation. That’s like picking your toaster without knowing its features or how much it costs until you get to the check out, and then it’s too late to take it back if you don’t want it. Not exactly choice.

As I was pondering this seeming paradox, I came upon an organization called First Class Education, started by Tim Mooney, a Republican political consultant from Arizona, who founded the group with backing from Patrick Byrne, president of Overstock.com. They favor a program called the 65% solution, in which 65% of public schools’ funds are directed into the classroom.  Sounds good, until I ran across a leaked copy of a memo Mooney wrote in which the real agenda is laid out. Here is part of what the memo said:

Pit Teachers against Administrators: "Because most state education unions represent both administrators and teachers, the proposal will create tremendous tension within the organization."
Bankroll Ballot Initiatives with Soft Money: "In the era of campaign finance limitations on candidates, PACs and parties, galvanizing an electorate via the initiative process is a tremendous opportunity."
Lay Groundwork for Vouchers: "Targeted segments of voters may be more greatly predisposed to supporting voucher and charter school proposals, as Republicans address the voting public with greater credibility on public education issues."

It’s that last point that reminds me of something I read in a book called The Fox In The Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy by Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich. In it they describe several methods that private interests use to take over public assets. One of them is called “Disinvestment.” In that strategy public funds are withheld, or withdrawn from public services until those services implode. As the author’s write: “Divestment in education, for example, leads to overcrowded under-supplied classrooms that allow privatizers to say, ‘See, Public education is failing,’ and then further undercut those schools by offering vouchers to parents to send their children to private schools.”

So much for the good hearted, if somewhat simplistic in outlook theory. Yet just because a certain element of the population doesn’t like public schools, that doesn’t necessarily mean there is a conspiracy against them. Are these people in collusion? Is there some sort of master plan to dismantle schools, or is this just a common complaint of disconnected groups of people?

After all, this isn’t the first time we’ve had this debate about school. In the 19th century, as America moved from an agrarian to an industrialized society, the purpose and scope of public schools was hotly debated. As John Rury writes in Education and Social Change: Themes in the History of American Schooling, “In very general terms, the question at the heart of the clash was this: Would education be utilized as an instrument of social and economic development, or would it remain the prerogative of individual families and local authorities? For the locals, it served personal taste for improvement and literacy, and provided an introduction to Christian values.”

Of course history doesn’t repeat itself exactly, but sends ripples through time. During the 19th century, society was undergoing rapid technological change as factories and mechanization replaced farming at the nation’s economic center. Waves of immigrants were turning up on American shores, and in American classrooms, particularly urban classrooms, and school reformers decried the enormous variability of what constituted a “quality education.” 

Now we are moving from the manufacturing age to the knowledge age and some of the same concerns have resurfaced. In the 1830’s Horace Mann recognized that “religious sectarianism” and the version of the culture war then being fought were the greatest challenges to the future of a uniquely democratic public school. In a similar vein, advocates of progressive school models today face those who, despite their reform rhetoric, are looking to the past in their wish to apply a discredited manufacturing model to schools and disconnect education from its democratic function.

Mann’s concept of a “common school” was aggressively attacked by church leaders of every stripe who thought schools unconnected to churches would produce immoral unreligious adults, much as religious leaders like Jerry Falwell and James Dobson decry the disconnect between school and religion today.

The advantage provided by the passage of years allows us to see the cultural and societal currents at work in Mann’s time and better understand the dynamic interplay of forces operating then. In short, there wasn’t a “conspiracy” against public schools per se, more an evolution brought about by a sea change in the society in which they existed.

That was then, and this is now. While we can see certain parallels between Mann’s time and ours, does that necessarily mean that there isn’t an organized, shared plan to dismantle public schools in our era? That’s a question that I’ll have to leave to future historians, and while I’m not ready to get out my tin foil hat just yet, I understand, as the poster says, that just because I’m paranoid, it doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.

What I can say is that it looks like the odds are on our side. Mann helped usher in the progressive era and by and large the vision he had for schools became a reality. In the sweep of America’s brief history it seems she prefers to move forward rather than back, even if the forward motion is halting and inconsistent.

Of course the past is no guarantee of the future. It could be argued that if it hadn’t been for someone like Horace Mann, students would still be learning to read by memorizing bible passages. Who are the Horace Manns of today? Another question I’ll leave for future historians.

What I would like to do is move the conversation away from questions of conspiracy to the idea of evolution. As the environment changes, certain traits are favored over others. Darwin’s finches are a good example. As the distribution of seeds changed over time to favor certain beak shapes, those birds that were not privileged by the new environment only understood that they were hungry and went about searching for food the same way they always had, perhaps more aggressively and more intensely, but still in the only way their particular beak shape would allow. In other words, those in the midst of an environmental shift are both unaware of the nature of that shift and, in any event powerless to do anything about it. So they do what worked in the past.

Like the Galapagos, schools are an environment populated by individuals with all sorts of strengths and weaknesses, all sorts of beaks, if you will. Like Galapagos, that environment is shaped by forces both within and outside of itself. Given the forces operating on schools as we move deeper into the knowledge age, it would seem to me the traits that are favored are critical thinking, flexibility in problem solving, and creative use of information. A quick scan of the landscape shows that what is being advocated by the so called reformers is patternistic thinking, absolutism, and rote behaviors.

This is both hopeful and frightening. Hopeful because the end result of evolution is always a species more adapted to the environment, even though that adaptation may be long and brutal. Frightening because nature moves inexorably onward and for those who are not favored by the new conditions, the end is bleak, but certain.

So, to return to the thesis of this piece, do I believe there is a conspiracy against public schools in America? Well, if history is any indication, it doesn’t matter. Schools exist in the world and are shaped by it. Just as in Mann’s time, I believe schools will move in a positive direction, eventually.

It’s the students who currently populate the institution of school that concern me. Not all of them are being prepared to live in the world that is growing up around us. In fact, as a result of the efforts of so called reformers, many are being prepared for a world that no longer exists. Even if we were able to turn around the current situation in schools tomorrow, I fear we may already have lost most of a generation.

These are the students who are coming out of educational establishments having learned that the world is a cut and dried place where you follow directions and behave in prescribed ways. They will be entering a world that is in flux, where spontaneity, flexibility, and adaptability may be the deciding characteristics between success and failure.

Nature is an amoral place. It does what it does and doesn’t care whether an individual finch lives or dies, but institutions were created by humans, and specifically educational institutions are supposed to be places where children are nurtured, protected, and prepared for the future. The finch cannot chose which beak it is born with, but we can choose how to prepare students for the future. Future is the key word here. While schools certainly contain conservative elements, they are fundamentally progressive in nature. Knowledge, culture, custom, all move forward and schools must move with them, or they become superfluous.

In the 1800’s certain elements of the American community tried to hold back our march into the industrial age by arguing for schools suited to an agrarian age. Today, as we move from the industrial age into the knowledge age, a segment of our society looks to hold off that movement by attempting to freeze schools in an era that is quickly passing.

It didn’t work in Mann’s time, and it won’t work now, but my thoughts are with those students caught in the transition.  Did they have the misfortune of being born at the wrong time? Are we reduced to watching as they struggle through with skills that ill equip them for the future they will face? Not much is written about the students who were not touched by Mann’s reforms. I imagine some managed to be successful in spite of the education they received, and some did not. Unfortunately, the same will be true in our time. Perhaps Santayana was wrong. Even those who do remember the past are doomed to repeat it.

Works Cited

Kahn, Si and Elizabeth Minnich. The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy. San Francisco: Berret-Koehler, 2005.

Miner, Barbara. “Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Voucher Wars.” Rethinking Schools. Spring, 2006, 25.

Rury, John L. Education and Social Change: Themes in the History of American Schooling. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002.

Progressive States Network. http://www.progressivestates.org/dispatch  Visit March 16, 2006