Tom Ultican explains why he spends so much of his time fighting for public schools.
The original cause for my supporting public education was that my rancher father married a school teacher. Growing up on a southern Idaho ranch, I learned many philosophical and theoretical reasons for supporting the establishment and maintenance of public schools from my mother. However, it was from watching mom and her dedicated colleagues in action that I learned to truly respect and appreciate public school.
I remember stories of my father being warned that he better not treat that women wrong. For several years in a row she won the Elmore County sharp shooting contest. She didn’t like to chop a chicken’s head off so she would pull out her rifle and shoot it off.
Mom had some old school attitudes but maintained a mind of her own. There was a period in which she had to come home at lunch time and milk the cow. One Friday, after having to chase the cow across King Hill creek again, she had had enough; didn’t discuss it just loaded that cow into a trailer and took it to market.
In my home, there was no doubt about the value of education and also an abiding belief that the American public education system was unparalleled. My father was a high school basketball referee and an ardent supporter of music study.
As was common in the community, school events were family events. Helping the local school was one of the main missions of our civic organizations whether it was building viewing stands at the football field or sewing costumes for school plays.
My grandfather was an immigrant from Scotland who came to America on the Lusitania. Three years after his arrival that ship was sunk by a German U-boat killing 1,800 passengers and further pushing America into engaging with World War I.
It was through family in Scotland that my mother became familiar with the British Education system. She learned of its high stakes testing which was deciding a child’s education path; if that education would continue and weather it would be academic or vocational. To her, the great advantage for America’s schools was they did not have these kinds of tests determining a child’s future. American students were not immersed in testing hell.
Instead of being sorted out by testing, American students had multiple opportunities to reenter the education system in whatever capacity they desired. Immature 11-year olds, did not have their futures decided by dubious testing results.
Still today, Idaho has a greater than 90% white population making it one of the whitest places in the world. It used to be even whiter.
I did not meet a Black person until I was a 17 years-old high school student. That year the University of Idaho Vandaleers gave a concert at my high school. A local rancher’s wife threw an after party for the choir and that is where I met Ray McDonald. Not only was he a talented singer, he was also one of the top running backs in America who would soon be drafted in the second round by the Washington DC professional football team. All I really remember is I was star struck and he was a friendly guy who played piano.
Although there was very little racial diversity in the community there was significant religious diversity. We had Mormons, Mennonites, Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, Assembly of God and other denominations attending our schools.
In a 2001 interview conducted at the Gathering, Richard DeVos lamented that it was awful that public schools had replaced churches as the center of communities. He did not identify whose church was going to be accepted as the community center.
The unifying factor in Glenn’s Ferry, Idaho was the public schools. Children from rich families and poor families grew up together in those schools. At school functions, parents from the disparate religious sects came together and formed common bonds. Political decisions concerning community governance were developed through these school based relationships.
Public schools became the foundation for democratic governance in the region plus it was literally where people voted. To me, it is unfeasible that a healthy American democracy does not include a healthy public school system.
America’s Founding Fathers Believed in Public Education
The second and third presidents of the United States advocated powerfully for public education. Thomas Jefferson saw education as the cause for developing out of common farmers the enlightened citizenry that would take the rational action a successful republican democracy requires. Jefferson contended,
“The qualifications for self government are not innate. They are the result of habit and long training.”
When Jefferson who was a former ambassador to France was queried about the French Revolution, he responded, “It has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty and vice, could not be restrained to rational action.” He called for the establishment of universal free public education claiming it as a requisite for the survival of a democratic republic.
Jefferson and his peer John Adams were integral to the founding of the United States. Jefferson is credited as the main author of the Declaration of Independence. Our system of government with its bi-cameral legislative branch, judicial branch and executive branch came about in great measure because of John Adams’ advocacy.
Like Jefferson, Adams also saw public education as crucial for the survival of our fledgling democracy. In a 1775 essay, he wrote:
“reformation must begin with the Body of the People which can be done only, to affect, in their Educations. the Whole People must take upon themselvs the Education of the Whole People and must be willing to bear the expences of it. there should not be a district of one Mile Square without a school in it, not founded by a Charitable individual but maintained at the expence of the People themselves”
Shortly before the American Revolution, Jean-Jacques Rousseau had published the controversial novel Emile, or On Education. He was widely condemned by the ruling elite for the religious views expressed in the book. However, the main portion of the book was about education. Rousseau’s character in the book was a tutor for children of the wealthy. That was the nature of education in the 18thcentury. Only children of the wealthy had the wherewithal to be educated by private tutors or in one of the few private schools.
Jefferson and Adams were calling for egalitarian progress giving common people the tools required to be self-governing. They were calling for a public school system.
It was the Massachusetts education advocate, Horace Mann, who more than any American political leader was responsible for the nationwide spread of public schools. With the challenges of industrialization, immigration and urbanization, public schools became the fabric of social integration. Horace Mann became the spokes-person for schools being that instrument.
It was Mann’s point of view that children in the common school were to receive a common moral education based on the general principles of the Bible and on common virtues. The moral values to be taught in public school were Protestant values and the political values were those of republican democracy.
Integrating the Protestant religious view into the common schools caused a split in communities. The burgeoning Catholic immigrant population did not want their children indoctrinated with an anti-Catholic ideology. Following the civil war, these influences irrupted into the “Bible Wars.” Author Katherine Stewart shared that it was in this atmosphere that “President Ulysses S. Grant declared that if a new civil war were to erupt, it would be fought not across the Mason-Dixon Line but at the door of the common schoolhouse.”
Stewart also shared an insightful admonition from Grant:
“Leave the matter of religion to the family altar, the church, and the private school, supported entirely by private contributions. Keep the church and state forever separate. With these safeguards I believe the battles which created the Army of Tennessee will not have been fought in vain.”
Early in the 20th century, public schools had been established serving every community from coast to coast. The results from this vast American public education experiment shine like a lighthouse beacon on the path of Democracy and social happiness. A nation that entered the century as a 2nd rate power ended the century as the undisputed world leader in literacy, economy, military power, industrial might, cultural influence and more.
Today, unbelievably, more and more forces are agitating to undo public education and even American Democracy itself.
As the 21st century dawned, the American public education system was facing a billionaire financed attack. Instead of financially enhancing public schools, libertarians called them “failures” and too expensive. They called public schools “monopolies” shutting out private business that would surely outperform “government schools.” Hopefully the aphorism attributed Lincoln is true: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”
I support it because I think privatizing it would be a really tragic mistake that people would regret and can’t be undone.
It isn’t going to be “better”, it isn’t going to be “more equitable” and it isn’t going to less expensive. The people who are privatizing it haven’t even thought through any of the real ramifications of what they’re doing and they operate in an echo chamber so there’s not even a chance of a real debate. It gets more incoherent every year. The same people who spent the last twenty years demanding every public school student be tested for national comparisons are at the same time promoting the complete deregulation and fragmentation of K-12 systems. It’s not even internally coherent. The echo chamber agenda doesn’t even make sense as a theory, let alone as working governance.
Ohio now has three publicly funded sectors- public schools are heavily policed and regulated by ed reformers, charter schools are barely policed and regulated by ed reformers, and the private schools they’re publicly funding apparently have no duty whatsoever to the public, so are exempt.
It’s inequitable as to the sectors, let alone as to the students.
I’ll never forget Arne Duncan confidently stating that “10%”of schools would be privatized schools. Arne Duncan and none of the rest of them have ANY IDEA how their grand privatization engineering scheme will play out. None.
And if they’re wrong and the privatized systems they prefer are worse? Tough luck. You’re never getting public schools back. Within a generation no one will even remember the US at one time provided free universal K-12 education. You’ll get your low value voucher and be grateful you got even that.
What disturbs me is that privatization is the same old Jim Crow policies in a shiny new wrapper.. I agree with John Adams. There are some basic services including education that must remain public for the greater good.. When we look over the accomplishments of the 20th Century, it is a love letter to public education! Perhaps our greatest accomplishment was winning WWII. Hitler would have taken over Europe, if we had not entered the war. Our public schools are not only important to producing informed voters. They are responsible for soldiers that defend our nation. We cannot afford to abandon our commitment to strong public schools to please our six hundred plus billionaires. Privatization is a policy choice, not a right. We need to work to stop the private encroachment on our democratic public schools before we weaken them beyond repair. Public education is a public good, not private property or a commodity.
To this point, there has been uniform unwillingness to connect promotion of privatization by religious leaders (and their state conferences which serve as public policy arm) to the plot to return to the Jim Crow era.
If pundits and media are unwilling to make the connection to race, the tie to sexism is made obvious by overt church discrimination against women.
We can speculate what the public education battle in states like Ohio and Indiana would look like if legislators and staff at influential education think tanks weren’t implementing the bias of the two major U.S. religions or weren’t using their “faith beliefs” to advance profits for billionaires.
Research tells us that one of the, if not THE, most important factor in in a huge voting bloc, is religion. The decision of public education policy influencers to skip by churches with heads turned away hasn’t served the common good.
The echo chamber point to higher ed as the model for a privatized K-12 system.
Think about that. The system they look to when they’re engineering a privatized K-12 system isn’t universal, is WILDLY inequitable, and isn’t affordable for tens of millions of people. This is a bad deal. No one in their right mind would make this trade. You will regret it and it will be irreversible.
Public education has entered the doorway of a serious long-term problem: remote education. A lot of people really hate remote school. I’m one of them. But a fair number of people actually like it. I think that if districts continue to provide a remote option this fall, it will be very difficult to roll back, as there will be an entrenched and motivated group that views remote school as an essential service moving forward. Unfortunately, a lot of districts have already announced plans to continue offering a remote option this fall. I think it’s a huge, huge mistake, and it may be the most lasting impact of the pandemic.
OTOH, the pandemic has done a service in exposing most of the public to remote ed “IRL.” Judging from hundreds of comments at ed articles, maybe 10% of parents and students like it. The rest are divided between those who hate it and those who find it substandard but not entirely worthless – and beginning to heap opprobrium on “synchronous” [1 teacher, simultaneous in-person/zoom cohorts] instruction.
Meanwhile the press is doing us a service by panning it completely. The latter is temporary, to stir up feelings, & to support reopening/ back to the office. No doubt neolib boosterism will return when it doesn’t look like an about-face, but parents & students will not soon forget the experience.
opprobrium: the very word for glorifying this tech-heavy moment
On the other-other hand, there are some things that a lot of parents will not forget about this past year that is not very favorable to public school systems.
I also come from a family steeped in public school service. I, along with four of my five siblings, served in the public schools. Our mother too, was the driving force behind our passion as this Southern Belle turned busing advocate would frequently stand before the Chattanooga School Board and advocate for parenting classes to help young mothers navigate raising a child. One of the great sins of Arne Duncan was his advice to close schools while he served as Superintendent in Chicago. He, along with most policy makers, failed to understand the importance of individual schools as vital parts of individual communities. These schools provided safety and some opportunity that would not exist otherwise, and the closures resulted in a frayed community fabric that resulted in less achievement and greater violence. Public schools provide civic virtue not just from the teaching of democracy but through practicing it.
To me, the word “LIBERTARIAN” and the corrupted movement behind that had tainted that word has become synonymous with EVIL.
I blame that on the KOCHtopus family and the corrupt/cancerous political ALEC machine of lies, misinformation, and manipulation that they helped create and build.
“She didn’t like to chop a chicken’s head off so she would pull out her rifle and shoot it off.”
Now there’s a good argument for the second amendment that I have yet to see.
And I suppose one could argue for semi -auto and automatic rifles based on the idea that it’s more humane in case the first shot fails to completely sever the head.
Argument for Second Amendment
Machine guns for chickens
To sever the head
Cuz dying it quickens
When chickens ain’t bled