As we wade through the muck of a national effort to privatize public schools and replace them with “school choice,” via privately-run charters and vouchers, it’s important to recall why we have public schools. Education is not a consumer item. It is an integral part of a democratic society. Contrary to the propaganda from the right, our public schools do not indoctrinate children. They are tasked with transmitting the knowledge and skills to help young prople become productive citizens and to keep our democracy strong. At their best, they teach young people to question authority and to think for themselves. Thanks to Professor David Berliner for sharing this essay with me.
This article was written by a Canadian educator who was educated in the U.S.
Why public schools are public
Charles Ungerleider, Professor Emeritus, The University of British Columbia
Parents seeking programs that they believe are in the “best interests” of their own children sometimes act as if the education they seek is a private benefit. In seeking an education that is in a child’s or grandchild’s best interest it is easy for parents or grandparents to lose sight of why public schools are public.
If education were primarily a private benefit, it would not be something supported by governments; it would be left to families to determine the why, the what, and the how of educating the young. But in enrolling their children in public school they do not have that discretion.
Governments provide for schooling because it is a public good, something of benefit to everyone. Few people read the legislation establishing public schools but doing so is instructive. The purposes of education are often set out in a public schools or education act that is readily accessible.
The Public Schools Act in Manitoba, for example, proclaims that “a strong public school system is a fundamental element of a democratic society.”[i] Alberta’s act simply says, “Education is the foundation of a democratic and civil society.”[ii] Ontario’s act declares that “a strong public education system is the foundation of a prosperous, caring and civil society.”[iii] Despite differences in the way it is expressed, the contribution of schooling to a democratic, civil society is among public education’s paramount purposes.
Several acts speak specifically about the active connection between public schooling and the health, prosperity, and well-being of society. Manitoba says that “public schools should contribute to the development of a fair, compassionate, healthy and prosperous society.”[iv] Nova Scotia describes that the primary mandate of its publicly funded school system is “to provide education programs and services for students to enable them to develop their potential and acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.”[v]
In the context of setting out the purposes of public schooling, the various statements of purpose refer to individual students. However, they make clear that the development of the individual is in service to the [re]creation of society. Some are quite explicit about the link between the student and the student’s social contribution. Alberta, for example, states “the role of education is to develop engaged thinkers who think critically and creatively and ethical citizens who demonstrate respect, teamwork and democratic ideals and who work with an entrepreneurial spirit to face challenges with resiliency, adaptability, risk-taking and bold decision-making.”[vi]
In addition to the general references to democracy and civil society, some statements of purpose are more specific. British Columbia’s School Act says that educational programs are “designed to enable learners to become literate, to develop their individual potential and to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed to contribute to a healthy, democratic and pluralistic society and a prosperous and sustainable economy.”[vii] BC complements its School Act with a ministerial order devoted to the mandate of the school system that provides the rationale for the emphasis on social and economic goals:
Continued progress toward our social and economic goals as a province depends upon well-educated people who have the ability to think clearly and critically, and to adapt to change. Progress toward these goals also depends on educated citizens who accept the tolerant and multi-faceted nature of Canadian society and who are motivated to participate actively in our democratic institutions.[viii]
The BC ministerial order makes clear that individuals have an obligation to contribute to the development of that society, and specifies that the educational program is designed to produce citizens who are:
- thoughtful, able to learn and to think critically, and who can communicate information from a broad knowledge base;
- creative, flexible, self-motivated and who have a positive self-image;
- capable of making independent decisions;
- skilled and who can contribute to society generally, including the world of work;
- productive, who gain satisfaction through achievement and who strive for physical well being;
- cooperative, principled and respectful of others regardless of differences;
- aware of the rights and prepared to exercise the responsibilities of an individual within the family, the community, Canada, and the world.[ix]
The public schools and education acts and related policies make clear that education is instrumental in developing the knowledge, values, and behaviours that citizens need to maintain a socially cohesive and productive society. The territory of Nunavut is perhaps the most explicit about the importance of the education system in preserving Inuit values and traditional knowledge.
It is the responsibility of the Minister, the district education authorities and the education staff to ensure that Inuit societal values and the principles and concepts of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit are incorporated throughout, and fostered by, the public education system.[x]
The principles and concepts of Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit define what it means to be a citizen in Nunavut:
- Respecting others, relationships and caring for people (Inuuqatigiitsiarniq);
- Fostering good spirit by being open, welcoming and inclusive (Tunnganarniq);
- Serving and providing for family or community, or both (Pijitsirniq);
- Decision making through discussion and consensus (Aajiiqatigiinniq);
- Development of skills through practice, effort and action (Pilimmaksarniq or Pijariuqsarniq);
- Working together for a common cause (Piliriqatigiinniq or Ikajuqtigiinniq);
- Being innovative and resourceful (Qanuqtuurniq); and
- Respect and care for the land, animals, and the environment (Avatittinnik Kamatsiarniq)
The curricula of the provinces and territories are intended to express what students must know and be able to do to prepare for adult citizenship. Public schooling benefits all of us by making sure that each student is prepared for adult citizenship. Public schooling is not about you or me, but about us.
[i] Manitoba, The Public Schools Act C.C.S.M. c. P250,
[ii] Alberta, Education Act, Statutes of Alberta, 2012 c. E-0.3
[iii] Ontario, Education Act, RSO 1990, c. E.2
[iv] Manitoba, Ibid.
[v] Nova Scotia, Education Act,
[vi] Alberta, Ibid
[vii] British Columbia School Act, RSBC 1996
[viii] British Columbia, Statement of Education Policy Order, OIC 1280/89
[ix] Ibid.
[x] Nunavut, Education Act, S.Nu. 2008
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is the way most people in Canada feel Diane. We have our privatizers who were successful in creating charter schools in Alberta, but there is little take up. Alberta has been our most conservative province for decades due to oil money (think Texas). Even there they elected a social democratic govt in a three party race recently and they lead the polls again. Religious schools get support in many provinces and in Ontario catholics get full support. These are historic legacy issues that date back to Canada’s founding as independent from Britain. We have the usual elite private schools for the rich. With all of those qualifiers, the Canadian education is functionally a public system, and always scores very highly on PISA as a result. The big difference is we have wrestled our poverty rate down to about 8-9% unlike USA where it remains at 20%.
Our national shame remains the historic treatment of indigenous Canaduans, about 5% of Canadians. Their education lags far behind and should be a national disgrace.
Thank you, Mr. Little, for that superb commentary!
Agree, Bob.
Good lord: this is magnificent. And, ofc, this is the argument of a number of outstanding books by a profound scholar of education named Diane Ravitch.
Ed reform echo chamber alert:
“Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced $25 million in new grants in two states and nine cities — the latest in a series of initiatives by private donors and state and civic leaders — to boost promising career-pathway programs at a time when they are particularly suited to addressing educational inequities widened by COVID.
With the aim of maximizing the impact of their donations, a number of other philanthropies are collaborating with Bloomberg. Last week, the Walton Family Foundation announced $20 million in grants to nonprofits engaged in career development efforts, including a competitive grant program, the Catalyze Challenge, co-sponsored by the nonprofit American Student Assistance and the Charter School Growth Fund. Other Walton grantees include the think tank New America’s Partnership to Advance Youth Apprenticeship which, among other things, uses data to identify promising initiatives, and Urban Alliance, which aims to increase employer participation in career preparation.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Charles Koch Institute and Walmart.org have also recently announced new or increased financial support for CTE. Building on research funded by Bloomberg, the education leadership incubator Chiefs for Change has issued recommendations for states and school districts that want to create programs or boost the effectiveness of existing ones.”
Ugh. The ed reform billionaires and their employees are designing yet another part of the US education system.
We’re outsourcing career and technical education to the Walton, Koch and Bloomberg families and the loyal (and lockstep) employees of their education orgs.
Echo.Chamber.
I really hope public schools don’t follow along lockstep this time. It would be a shame if the ed reform echo chamber dominated CTE and designed it around the employee (and employment) preferences of America’s billionaire class.
Low wages and no rights or protections in the workplace- that’s the Walton agenda for CTE. We don’t have to continue to follow this ideologically-driven echo chamber. We can design our own CTE programs in public schools.
https://www.the74million.org/article/fueled-by-grants-states-bet-innovative-career-training-programs-will-lure-disengaged-youth-back-to-school-after-covid-starting-in-middle-school/
Good morning Diane and everyone,
I don’t think public schools have ever been tasked with teaching young people to question authority and think for themselves. It seems to me that public schools try teach adherence to the status quo. I think public schools aim more to keep a stable society than to teach students to overturn valued norms and live in relationship to their own integrity. Most institutions do that.
The libertarians and privatizers don’t believe in a commons or a public good, that would be socialism or communism in their restricted biased eyes. For them it’s every man/woman/child for himself/herself and social Darwinism for the masses. If you are poor and can’t afford a private school or health care, then tough luck, you should have made better choices, it’s your fault. Ask for charity, the heartless, empathyless libertarian commands.
Canada also has universal healthcare which the libertarians in the US are constantly deriding and mocking. They sneer, what about the wait times? Wait times? There are wait times in the US for millions of Americans who have inadequate health insurance or the 20 plus millions of Americans without healthcare. Millions of Americans wish they were even in line for some health care. Then the libertarian knuckle heads claim that hordes of Canadians come to the US for health care. That is a proven myth and lie. Many Canadians come to the US for tourism and vacations not health care; they may buy temporary, one-time insurance just in case they get sick in the US.
The catch-phrase “school choice” was concocted by racists following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling that required racial integration in public schools. After that, racist organizations used racist politicians to conduct a decades-long attack that underfunded public schools and crippled their ability to provide the full measure of education and to “prove” that public schools were “failing”. Public school “failure” is an issue manufactured by racists organizations and politicians.
The racial resegregation of America’s school systems by the private charter school industry is so blatant and illegal that both the NAACP and ACLU have called for a stop to the formation of any more charter schools. The Civil Rights Project at UCLA summed it up, stating that charter schools are “a civil rights failure.”
The impartial, non-political watchdog Office of Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education has issued a report warning that so much taxpayer money is being skimmed away from America’s genuine public schools and pocketed by private corporate charter school operators that the IG investigation declared that: “Charter schools and their management organizations pose a potential risk to federal funds even as they threaten to fall short of meeting goals” because of financial fraud and their hidden ways for skimming of tax money into private pockets.
There is NO SUCH THING as a “public charter school”. Charter school operators spend a lot of taxpayer money telling taxpayers that charter schools are “public” schools — but they are not. As the Supreme Courts of Washington State and New York State have ruled, charter schools are actually private schools because they fail to pass the minimum test for being genuine public schools: They aren’t run by school boards who are elected by, and therefore under the control of and accountable to voting taxpayers. All — ALL — charter schools are corporations run by private parties. Taxpayers have no say in how their tax dollars are spent in charter schools.
The Stanford University Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) — which is funded by pro-charter organizations — has been conducting years-long research into the educational quality of charter schools. And yet even this charter-school-funded research center’s findings are that charter schools don’t do any better academically than genuine public schools. Moreover, CREDO reported that in the case of popular online charter schools, students actually lose ground in both reading and math — but online charter schools are the fastest-growing type of charter school because they make it easiest to skim away public tax dollars.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/petergreene/2019/03/29/report-the-department-of-education-has-spent-1-billion-on-charter-school-waste-and-fraud/#ab1fbdb27b64
The same can be said for The Century Foundation that is funded by The Waltons and Gates. I was surprised they took an honest look at the relationship between race and underfunding in public schools. They even quote Bruce Baker’s research.https://tcf.org/content/about-tcf/tcf-study-finds-u-s-schools-underfunded-nearly-150-billion-annually/?agreed=1
retired Remembering a recent post here, if they change the name from “vouchers” to “scholarships,” or to students getting some other form of payment for their education, parents only need to be reminded that public education is free to them and their children, and is only paid for by taxes . . . no individual outlay to support the public institution.
NO SCHOLARSHIP NEEDED. On that score, it’s free to any child. The hidden message is that vouchers or no, the tax base is developed on completely different criteria. If we understand THAT, we can understand their version of vouchers OR scholarships is a SCAM. CBK
Hello Diane: . . . missing in many Americans’ heads is the distinction between capitalism and the public domain. In the later, public services are paid for with our taxes and do not go by the principles of capitalism . . . where “the bottom line” is the arbiter of what does or does not occur, nor by corporate ideologies where you can question anything BUT the corporations’ meddling and manipulations, or the powers that-be and THEIR ideologies.
It’s no accident that the ideas of capitalism saturate the thinking of so many of us, including transactional ideology as an automatic go-to-idea. Remember the US Post Office, which is “not competitive,” and so their services (to the whole public) take a hit where they cannot cover their costs. Under that mindset, to understand and support public schools or anything “public” is for suckers.
One thing that seems to get overlooked in this scenario, however, is the overlay of whatever political, social, and ethical ideology that the private and corporate funders are espousing. With their money and power, they too easily keep their fingers on the scales of the curriculum . . . e.g., racists don’t want schools to teach about the history of racism . . . think Betsy, Koch, Gates, the Waltons, etc.
And so they set up the conditions to get rid of public schools by changing the narrative and reducing everything down to right vs left (the tribalization of America), but where what they mean by “left” happens to be rooted in some very basic democratic principles, as are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and the Gettysburg Address.
I don’t write here anymore, but this missing distinction in American heads is one that really hits home, and especially in teachers when they are so saturated with the same ideas that they just keep passing them down to their students. I have to wonder if it’s too late when over half of the nation either doesn’t understand the importance of public institutions or have actually bought into the ideas of fascism that are running rampant in the United States today. CK
If you want to follow the various attacks on our public assets, you should read “In the Public Interest.” They do an excellent job of following the assaults of the private sector on our public services and goods. BTW, lovely to hear from you.
To “retired”: Thank you . . . and I do already subscribe to “In the Public Interest.” Ironically, it’s in the public interest to let the public, such as it is, in on the distinction. If I had the money, I’d do a “public service” media campaign just about THAT. CK
Reblogged this on silverapplequeen and commented:
It’s a shame how the concept of public schooling has been denigrated in the United States.
Public Education that teaches children to think for themselves logically (with the ability to fact check facts vs alternative facts), critically, and with problem-solving skills is the most important non-violent defense the United States has against any countries or tribal thinking that threaten the U.S. as a Constitutional Republic with democratic institutions and values.
And once those public schools are gone and every child is taught what his or her parents want them to know (if the parents have any say after private-sector CEOs and organizations are in charge), then those children will grow up to belong to one tribe or another that thinks this way or that and disapproves of and even hates other American tribal groups that do not think like them.
And that is already happening.
We’re already witnessing how divisive and dangerous that threat is today thanks to Trump-MAGA-ism, fundamentalist indoctrinated Chrisitan sects that sometimes threaten to murder those that do not think like them in the name of Jesus Christ, and/or KOCH network-supported libertarianism.
Conservative religion is one of the enemies of public schools in the U.S. Another is the Koch network. Religious conferences co-host with the Koch’s AFP, school choice rallies, in state capitols.
Canada’s public schools start in a stronger position to thwart the campaign against them because they don’t have Charles Koch and only 42% of the population thinks religion is important. In the U.S., the number is 69%.
In absolute numbers, one of the major U.S. religions (63% of its regular White church attendees voted for Trump in 2020) grew 60%, from 45 mil. to 72 mil.
The story that is told is that the religion’s share, over the same period, fell from 25% to 22%, which misleads relative to the size of its influence.
A third factor that disadvantages the U.S. is Russia’s focus on destabilizing American democracy. RT, the Russian state news media, wrote mid-November about Christopher Rufo, in what I interpret as positive PR for him. Rufo leads the anti-CRT campaign in the U.S. A second individual, Ryan Girdusky (his interview with Pat Buchanan posted at Buchanan’s site is enlightening) founded the PAC that funds school board candidates who are actively right wing and anti-CRT.
The Russian geopolitical goal appears to be to create an axis of Putin (and the Eastern European nations he dominates) with American political conservatives, which would leave western democracies without U.S. protection.
The goal and successes of authoritarian conservative religion as it relates to public schools is spelled out in, “The New Official Contents of Sex Education in Mexico: laicism in the crosshairs”, posted at the Scielo site, 3-3-2021.
Jefferson warned the nation, in all countries and in all ages, the priest aligns with the despot.
“Linda” . . . dragging out the same old bumper sticker, I see. I’m glad to be gone again. CK
The European Council on Foreign Relations article, 5-30-2019, “Defender of the Faith? How Ukraine’s Orthodox split threatens Russia”, provides a fascinating explanation of the new situation in Eastern Europe, combined church leadership with authoritarian governments. The article informs us that Patriarch Kirill of the Moscow Patriarchate Church described Putin as a, “miracle from God.” Readers learn about the “prominent symbiosis between the Kremlin and the Orthodox Church”, that emerged after 2012. Also described is Patriarch Kirill’s position on an advisory board to the Russian Ministry of Defense.
The fact that RT (Russian state owned media) painted Rufo in the way that it did may hint at a confluence. Coalitions between conservative religious and government, especially in countries perceived as largely secular, is relatively new and includes both Russia and the U.S. We conclude from the article that the conservative social values’ plank against “militant secularists” which attracts GOP voters, takes different form in Russia in attracting its citizens to authoritarianism. But, nationalism is a feature of both. The racist feature isn’t explored in the article. It would be interesting to know if that is unique to the U.S. We know from reports that Russia’s strategy is to foment racial conflict in the U.S.