Whose Freedom
Neal McCluskey suggests school vouchers as a solution to endless political wrangling over evolution in public schools:
Thankfully, there is a way to end this death match, but it will require that both combatants do something that so far they’ve seemed unwilling to consider. Rather than exchanging blows in perpetuity, they could agree to let each other have what they want. They could cease forcing all people to support a single system of government-created and government-run schools, and implement school choice, giving parents control over their children’s education by letting them pick schools that share their values.A couple of things to note about this.
One is that while vouchers certainly would make it easier to reach a modus vivendi the education case is fairly non-standard. There's not really a "live and let live" solution to these things because the actual subjects of the education system -- the students -- are being subjected to coercion either way. The question facing a given child is whether his parents should decide whether or not he learns correct science or whether the state should decide whether or not he learns correct science. As far as that goes, I don't think there's an important issue of individual liberty. Either way, children are going to be coerced into doing something or other. Under the circumstances, I think there's good reason to take a pragmatic attitude -- better than children be coerced into learning correct science than incorrect science. The question is which system, in practice, is likely to teach most children the right stuff.
The other angle is that thinking about these kind of cases tends to undermine the argument that voucherization would generate dramatic improvements in school quality. Introducing voucherization would mean that (at least in areas with dense enough populations to support robust competition) that customer satisfaction would go way up. But what many customers (i.e., parents) want, as we see here, is to make their kids' education quite bad.
Good points, Matt. An illustrative example: free competition between restaurant chains does not necessarily lead to better nutrition. Importantly, people with less income and less education have the worst diet of all -- and they learn to like it.
Another point worth to mention when evolution is discussed is that roughly one percent of people have severe psychiatric problems. Scientific theories supported by less that 1% of specialists in any given field may well be insane. Actually, I do not see much of a point in teaching alternative science. Established science is useful because it is, well, useful. Evolution theory allows to test medicines using animal models, search effectively for oil, coal and other minerals etc. Science is about utility, not values.
It also makes me wonder what value system really depends on the idea that evolution did not happen. Does it mean that, those of us that believe in evolution can kill, steal, cover neighbors wife, make graven images, abuse parents etc. while those who do not believe in evolution cannot?
August 2, 2006 7:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
The question facing a given child is whether his parents should decide whether or not he learns correct science or whether the state should decide whether or not he learns correct science. As far as that goes, I don't think there's an important issue of individual liberty.
In Phase 1, of course, this is true. But the Phase 2 implicit in this bargain is that, once the camel's nose is under the tent, parents will demand that the schools (that they're paying for, dammit!) be responsive to their demands for incorrect science.
August 2, 2006 8:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
Two quick points to build on Matt's perceptive take on this foolishness:
1) Historically, the bargain in American education is that we'll school your children part of the day (not enough of it, actually, to complement many parents' schedules, and less than what is offered in many induatrial democracies). Then you can have your kids and teach them whatever the hell you want. You just have to let them go to school (or offer a viable alternative). So it's not either/or here: It's whether parents should have total information control over their children--which easily starts to look like, well, a human rights and civil liberties issue when you look at it a certain way.
2) Are the devotees of Cato ready for Scientology schools, Wiccan schools, and Christian Identity schools? Are we all ready to start subsidizing them with our tax dollars? As for me, you'd have to pry that money out of my cold stiff fingers.
August 2, 2006 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
...at least in areas with dense enough populations to support robust competition.
Voucher advocates paint this picture of hungry, hustling disadvantaged kids taking Milton Academy over by storm.
Maybe in a city with proper mass transport.
Maybe in a metropolitan area with a lot of private schools, confessional and non-confessional.
The only competition in many areas are the local Christian schools.
No one runs the sort of bus systems that the public schools do. If you can't get to the school, what good is the voucher.
For much of the country, all a voucher plan is, is public support of the local Christian Academy.
Which I suspect was more or less the point in the first place, regardless of how the scheme is marketed.
Patria est ubicumque est bene. Their 'homeland' is wherever they can turn a buck. Cicero, Tusculan Disputations
August 2, 2006 9:42 AM | Reply | Permalink
Are the devotees of Cato ready for Scientology schools, Wiccan schools, and Christian Identity schools? Are we all ready to start subsidizing them with our tax dollars? As for me, you'd have to pry that money out of my cold stiff fingers.
You can Google up any number of outrages perpetrated by state-run schools we're already paying for. I'd like to say "you'll have to pry the money out of my cold stiff fingers" for those schools, Abu Ghraib, and all the other outrages funded with my money, but in practice tax evasion is unpleasant.
August 2, 2006 9:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
They could . . . implement school choice, giving parents control over their children’s education by letting them pick schools that share their values. McCluskey
Parents have that choice, today. What's the problem? :-)
August 2, 2006 9:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
It's true that customer satisfaction does not equal good schools. Consider proprietary schools: people continue to go to lousy trade schools. I mentioned this to a voucher supporter years ago, and he acknowledged the problem, but continued to support them because the current system produces neither good schools nor customer satisfaction.
If I had to choose, I'd choose good schools. But I think it's important to take into account parents' concerns. It shouldn't be a question of one or the other. As a friend used to say, these are the public's schools
August 2, 2006 12:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Advances in medical science, biological science, computer science, etc. depends upon people's ability to look at evidence and come to rational and/or useful conclusions and/or spur investigation to greater understanding. When you get to the point of saying, "Well, God must have done it," your investigation has stopped. You are now doing theology. The state has very practical reasons for advancing true science - failure to do so is death in our global economy. Using taxpayer money to fund schools that promote intelligent design is akin to pithing ourselves.
August 2, 2006 12:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
All of these possibilities and more could already exist and perhaps even receive state funding: it's called home schooling.
If you home school, you can basically teach your kids whatever you want, with minimal standards. I think in many states you can even get money for textbooks and the like. By far, conservative christians are the biggest home schoolers, and they buy home school teaching kits that certainly don't include any lesson plans on evolution.
August 2, 2006 1:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
The assumption that public schools provide a good education on controversial topics (in the sense that it generates controversy for the school, not necessarily that there is any serious intellectual controversy about it). While creationists haven't been successful in getting their views taught in science classes, they have frequently been succesful in reducing or eliminating the coverage of evolution in public schools because the administrators don't want to deal with small but vocal groups of parents making problems for them in local politics.
Putting aside the private school availablilty issue (relevant, but a different argument), I'd send my kids to schools where evolution and sex ed (that other social conservative educational bete noir) were presented accurately. So the potential exists for an increase in the quality of education on these issues for parents who do what their kids learning about them. Kids whose parents would send them to schools teaching creationism are probably already having whatever the public schools offer up on evolution overshadowed by support for creationism from their parents and religious indoctrination, so teaching them evolution at school is unlikely to actually result in them having a correct understanding of it.
It's also worth noting that not all religous schools would teach creationism. The Catholic church, for example, accepts evolution and I expect that they'd present it accurately in their courses.
August 2, 2006 1:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
Deleted because of double post
August 2, 2006 2:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
No "important issue of individual liberty"? Jeez, Matt... surely you know that the parents on the other side of this issue consider their right to fill their own kids' heads with their own preferred brand of nonsense to be an essential liberty. This is about the parents' rights, not the students'.
OK, you think those parents are wrong. So do I. Let's be honest about what the question really is.
August 2, 2006 2:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
Re 2)
As much as I'm willing to subsize any other school of same general quality outside of matters of religious doctrine (there needs to be some standards to ensure the money is actually going to education), but there is no way I'd send my kids to one.
Whatever damage a Scientologist/Wiccan/creationist/etc school can do to a kids attachment to reality is probably overshadowed by the the damage already being done by the Scientologist/Wiccan/creationist/etc parent. When the parent is preaching a different message than the biology teacher is teaching, the parent is almost always going to end up winning because the issues that conflict with the doctrine are only briefly covered while the parents abundant time over the child's life to drive their points home, so public education will only have a marginal impact on children whose parents hold these views.
August 2, 2006 2:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
What do you call a seemingly reasonable "reform" proposed for an institution with broad public support, that is really just a political tactic, a move in a long campaign to destroy the intitution the said "reform" was supposed to improve?
The foot in the door? The trojan Horse? The nose under the tent? There's got to be some good name for this, since it is so widely used. For sure by the republican/conservative party, maybe by the democrats too.
THats what vouchers and charter schools are. That's what intelligent design is. That's what private accounts for social security is. That's what the voter ID movement is.
SO, considering who the main proponants of vouchers are, why does anyone even consider them? The republican/conservative goal is to dismantal the public school system, to turn it into, at most, a safetynet for the most impoverished. One of the main reason is because of the strenght of the teachers unions which are big supportors of democrats.
So even if vouchers are a good idea in theory, does it make sense to embrace them if--in the hands of the people who push them most fervently--they are essentially a weapon against public schools?
I
August 2, 2006 2:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Evolution is considered a threat because from evolution it's a short jump to outright materialism and as a consequence you have only your own decency to keep you ethical or "moral" so society could collapse. I disagree. I am a Christian and have no problem with evolution via natural selection as a method for complex life to develop.
Now unlike piotr I DO see value in teaching alternative sciences. In cases where "science" is sticking its own in head in the sand about new ideas to protect its old paradigms--and this has happened--then these alternatives should be taught. Evolution doesn't seem to fit this kind of model though.
August 2, 2006 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Tax evasion is quite simple at the local property tax level. You simply stop voting to adequately fund the public schools. That's what school vouchers will encourage. I don't mind paying taxes to fund the neighborhood school and I'm happy to shell out a few bucks to any little munchkin knocking at my door to fund the neighborhood school's activities. If my property tax money isn't going to the local school, then I'm not voting to pay more taxes.
August 2, 2006 4:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
Do you really think the children would stand for more school? I admit there's little they can substantively do about it but the prospect makes me a little nervous.
August 2, 2006 4:34 PM | Reply | Permalink
We also seem to be forever losing track of the fact that words used by the Bush gang never mean what the dictionary says. So, a plan to "save Social Security" means a plan to dismantle it. A clean air plan means a plan to allow more air pollution. A healthy forests plan means cut down the trees. Etc. So, of course any voucher plan means the exact opposite of whatever it is touted to do.
Hoppy in Sacramento
August 2, 2006 7:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
The whole voucher argument is a red herring. The debate over teaching evolution concerns *public* schools, not private schools. Unless the Cato people believe that voucher programs are going to lead to the demise of all public education, this isn't going to change the issue one bit. Even when there are vouchers, there are still public schools, and therefore still an issue over what is to be taught in those schools.
Additionally, the idea that issuing vouchers is going to lead to greater choice in education is questionable at best. For those students who have a large number of private schools nearby that they otherwise couldn't afford to attend, then vouchers may lead to greater choice. But if you grow up in a place like I did, where there were no private schools nearby and one public school to service three towns, it's not going to make a difference. If we take such schools out of the public hands, then we haven't eliminated the monopoly, we've just elminated democratic control and our constitutional rights. We would end up with lots of situations in which the only school that a student is able to attend teaches creationism on the tax-payer dime. That is clearly an unacceptable situation.
August 3, 2006 10:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
This is just another example of the dishonesty of Cato. There's no interest in "resolving" the issue in Kansas -- which vouchers have no bearing on, as Matt points out -- just an opportunity to push vouchers (and the arguments against those need not be reiterated here). To put it another way, vouchers are the goal for Cato, not a solution for achieving some other goal. If our public education were better, this would be obvious to everyone and Cato would be reviled as the bad faith agent that it is.
August 4, 2006 1:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
High school is not the place for brewing alternative scientific theories; teaching science is not the same as doing science. To teach "alternatives", they must have already proven themselves to be scientific and not crackpottery. Yes, protecting old paradigms has happened, but it's the inexorable scientific method, which incorporates competition and rewards for successfully overturning errant theses, which has always been the agent to sweep away those old paradigms -- teaching "alternatives" to children has never played a role.
August 4, 2006 1:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
I was lucky enough to get oriented into how to do science quite early. Things like forming testable hypotheses, searching the literature, and keeping detailed notes were things I was using in my self-study, certainly by age 13 or so. Admittedly, it was quite a few years before I knew how to do statistical hypothesis testing, but what impressed me was the conflict between high school teaching and the actual field. Luckily, I had a couple of teachers that tolerated my giving test answers that had nothing to do with what had been taught in class, but were conditionally accepted if I could give decent references for what I was doing.
Doing science seems generally to get started in college or in advanced placement courses. It's a long story, but one school I attended excused me from the regular chemistry (non-AP) labs, and sent me over to the biology lab. Depending on the topic, I either was a lab assistant or did my own projects. Sometimes, while officially a student assistant, I taught certain techniques that had an aspect of "art" to them.
It takes a certain level of learning how to think to "do" science. Few things are more vital to national progress than recognizing the students that have that capability, and nurture it.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
August 4, 2006 2:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
In his reply to Matthew, McCluskey whines that
"what is truly right or truly wrong is very difficult to know". That's right, science and empirical investigation is difficult, which is all the more reason not to leave what to teach up to untrained and uninformed parents. The best, by several orders of magnitude, arbiter of what is right and wrong (factually, which is the issue here) is the current consensus of the global scientific community, an institution into which society has poured huge resources of money, minds, and facilities, and represents our very best means and methods of determining what is right and what is wrong. The solution for Kansas is to insist that the public school curriculum reflect that consensus, and not the whims of the current elected school board.
Vouchers are a tool of anti-science anti-intellectuals, a means of instituting empirical relativism, where everyone has their own "truth" as to the facts of the world, and indoctrinates their children into this "truth". This is, of course, a recipe for disaster.
August 4, 2006 2:29 PM | Reply | Permalink