Ponderous! And yet the idea of centrally-controlled education is as problematic as the idea of centrally-controlled media – and for exactly the same reasons. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to protect all forms of communication, information-sharing, knowledge, opinion and belief – what the Supreme Court has termed “the sphere of intellect and spirit” – from government control. Nothing could be more fundamental to the sphere of intellect and spirit than the education of our children, and yet freedom of education was not included in the First Amendment along with freedom of speech, press, and religion, because at the time of the American Revolution the idea of centralized state-controlled schooling was not yet clearly on the horizon. But by the mid-19th century, with Indians still to conquer and waves of immigrants to assimilate, the temptation to find a way to manage the minds of an increasingly diverse and independent-minded population became too great to resist, and the idea of the Common School was born. We would keep our freedom of speech and press, but first we would all be well-schooled by those in power. A deeply democratic idea — the free and equal education of every child — was wedded to a deeply anti-democratic idea — that this education would be controlled from the top down by state-appointed educrats. The crucial confusion here is between the idea of publicly supported education and the idea of centrally controlled state-administered education. To really get your hands around this distinction simply replace the word “school” with the word “radio” in the following sentences and see what you get: I am in favor of publicly supported radio. I am in favor of centrally-controlled state-administered radio. Not the same thing, are they?
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 03:33:43 +0000
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