Personal choice is one of the hallmarks of a Brown undergraduate education. Our young scholars have the choice of following their own passions amid a wide selection of disciplines and potential experiences. This liberty is cherished by virtually every student who passes through the Van Wickle Gates. In the coming years, Brown graduates will continue to follow their dreams, and for many, this will include starting families. Some will choose to settle down right here in Rhode Island. Those newly minted Brown alums will want the same education choices available for their children that they have today for themselves.
What they will find is that our public school system is an overly bureaucratic, financial mess that demands uniformity and conformity from both teachers and students. They will quickly learn that teachers can’t teach properly because of the state-mandated curricula and contradictory expectations. A parent trying to get help for a child who has trouble learning, or who has advanced beyond the other children in his grade, will encounter a wall of resignation or indifference from teachers and administrators.
In a recent Herald opinions column, Daniel Carrigg GS argues that education reforms in Rhode Island and elsewhere “have largely ignored long-term statewide planning, land use and municipal development.” Carrigg calls Rhode Island “New England’s public education laggard” because, historically, we have not had enough community planning around schools. He argues that, “With a long-term plan, consistent long-term investment and constructive input from the community, we could atone for some of the sins of the past.”
This seemingly innocuous solution is actually a call to institute a statewide school board with the power to redefine and override local school districts and confiscate private lands for state use. In effect, this would give a tremendous amount of power to a few and limit the choices that exist for parents in our public education system.
I want to make the alternate case. The only chance for parental choice and educational freedom is the elimination of compulsory, government-run schools in Rhode Island.
There is no collective moral “sin” for which we have to atone. Parents are responsible for educating their own children. The taxpayers in Barrington and Newport have no moral obligation to pay for government schools in Central Falls and North Providence. And Rhode Island is not “lagging” in its spending. According to the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, we spent an average of $13,707 per student in 2009, roughly comparable to levels in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and considerably more than in Maine or New Hampshire.
But placing our decentralized public school system under a central planning authority is immoral. The first compulsory education law in colonial America was enacted by Massachusetts in 1642, requiring that parents and guardians “make certain that their charges could read and understand the principles of religion and the laws of the Commonwealth.”
Rhode Island never established a similar system of common schools – not out of ignorance, but rather out of fear. Roger Williams, an educator and religious reformer, and a host of other “heretics” and non-believers realized that the rulers of Massachusetts were trying to use the compulsory education laws to convert the children of Catholics to Puritan Protestantism. Rather than accept this assault on their intellectual and religious freedom, they fled the Massachusetts authorities. The early Rhode Islanders knew centrally controlled schools would empower the political clergy and lead to the imposition of an unacceptable social tyranny.
Today, we face a similar tyranny by a new set of ideologues in our own government. Who shall run this statewide school board which can use the full force of government to mandate values and virtues? John Dewey’s pronouncement that “education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform” may resonate with some, but it is the same dictatorial mindset as the Puritans who persecuted competing religions and non-believers. When your child goes through the doors of a government-run school, he is no longer yours to control or educate according to your wishes. Should you choose a different path for your children, the state can, under the legal doctrine of parens patriae — which literally means the state as parent — take your children from you and forcibly indoctrinate them with ideas that are contrary to your values and beliefs.
Exercise and defend your right to choose. We must reclaim our legacy of intellectual and religious freedom and push the government out of the school business instead of following the collectivist path of “long-term planning,” “long-term investment,” “community input” and reallocating other people’s resources. Any scheme of education reform that includes compulsory education at a government-run school will fail because bureaucrats always treat your child’s mind as theirs to mold as they see fit. Your children, especially the brightest and most independent thinkers among them, will be treated as expendable.
On the other hand, parents who make individual educational choices for their children — through private and home schools — can and will provide their children with the best education they can afford, following a curriculum that reflects their own personal values and beliefs.
The traditional arguments against private schools focus on the inability of some parents to pay for private schools. But this is only valid in a high tax, anti-individualist culture. As free people, we can support other parents with the costs of private education in numerous charitable ways. To that end, we need to foster a small government, low-tax culture that respects individual rights and allows people to keep more of the money they make.
Scott Lloyd, a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, is a Brown staff member and resident of Rhode Island who sends his son to private school. He reads The Herald daily and believes Brown students can still be saved.
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