Jan Resseger writes brilliantly about the importance of education in a democracy. She reads widely in the work of authors who understand why education should not be privatized and turned into a consumer good. You will enjoy reading this essay.
She writes:
I find myself struggling these days to understand how those of us who prize our U.S. system of public education seem to have lost the narrative. As I listen to the rhetoric of today’s critics of public schooling—people who distrust or disdain the work of school teachers and who believe test scores are the only way to understand education, I worry about the seeming collapse of the values I grew up with as a child in a small Montana town whose citizens paid so much attention to the experiences its public schools offered for the community’s children. The schools in my hometown provided a solid core curriculum plus a strong school music program, ambitious high school drama and speech and debate programs, athletics, a school newspaper, and an American Field Service international student every single year at the high school. While many of us continue to support our public schools, what are the factors that have caused so many to abandon their confidence in public education?
It is in this context that I found myself reading “Education and the Challenges for Democracy,” the introductory essay in the current issue of Education Policy Analysis Archives. In his essay, Fernando M. Reimers, a professor in the graduate school of education at Harvard University, explores the interconnection of public education and democracy itself. Reimers explains, for example, that the expansion of our democracy to include more fully those who have previously been marginalized is likely to impact the public schools in many ways and that these changes in the schools will inspire their own political response:
“(T)he expansion of political rights to groups of the population previously denied rights (e.g. women, members of racial or religious minorities) may lead to increased access for these groups to educational institutions and a curriculum that prepares them for political participation. These changes, in turn, feed back into the political process, fostering increased demands for participation and new forms of representation as a result of the new skills and dispositions these groups gained by educational and political changes. But these increases in representation may activate political backlash from groups who seek to preserve the status quo. These forces may translate into efforts to constrain the manner in which schools prepare new groups for political participation. In this way, the relationship between democratic politics and democratic education is never static, but in perpetual, dynamic, dialectical motion that leads to new structures and processes. The acknowledgement of this relationship as one that requires resolution of tensions and contradictions, of course, does not imply an inevitable cycle of continuous democratic improvement, as there can be setbacks—both in democracy itself, and in education for democracy.”
Reimers continues: “Democracy—a social contract intended to balance freedom and justice—is not only fluid and imperfect but fragile. This fragility has become evident in recent years… In order to challenge the forces undermining democracy, schools and universities need to recognize these challenges and their systemic impact and reimagine what they must do to prepare students to address them.” While Reimers explains that the goal of his article is not only, “to examine how democratic setbacks can lead to setbacks in democratic education, but also how education can resist those challenges to democracy,” he presents no easy solutions. He does, however sort out the issues to which we should all be paying attention—naming five specific challenges for American democracy:
“The five traditional challenges to democracy are corruption, inequality, intolerance, polarization, and populism… The democratic social contract establishes that all persons are fundamentally equal, and therefore have the same right to participate in the political process and demand accountability. Democracy is challenged when those elected to govern abuse the public trust through corruption, or capturing public resources to advance private ends… Democracy is also challenged by social and economic inequality and by the political inequalitythey may engender… One result of political intolerance is political polarization… Political intolerance is augmented by Populism, an ideology which challenges the idea that the interests of ordinary people can be represented by political elites.” (emphasis in the original)
Reimers considers how these threats to democracy endanger our public schools: “The first order of effects of these forces undermining democracy is to constrain the ability of education institutions to educate for democracy. But a second order of effects results from the conflicts and tensions generated by these forces….” As the need for schools and educators to prepare students for democratic citizenship becomes ever more essential, political backlash may threaten schools’ capacity to help students challenge the threats to democracy.
In their 2017 book, These Schools Belong to You and Me, Deborah Meier and Emily Gasoi articulate in concrete terms what Reimers explains abstractly as one of the imperatives that public schools must accomplish today: “(W)e need a means of ensuring that we educate all future citizens, not only to be well versed in the three Rs, and other traditional school subjects, but also to be able to see from multiple perspectives and to be intellectually curious and incisive enough to see through and resist the lure of con artists and autocrats, whether in the voting booth, the marketplace, or in their social dealings.” (These Schools Belong to You and Me, p. 25) Schools imagined as preparing critical thinkers—schools that focus on more than basic drilling in language arts and math—are necessary to combat two of the threats Reimers lists: corruption and populism.
But what about Reimers’ other threats? How can schools, in our current polarized climate, push back against intolerance, inequality, and polarization? Isn’t today’s attack on “diversity, equity and inclusion” in some sense an expression of a widespread desire to give up on our principle of equality of opportunity—to merely accept segregation, inequality and exclusion? This is the old, old struggle Derek Black traces in Schoolhouse Burning—the effort during Reconstruction to develop state constitutions that protect the right to education for all children including the children of slaves—followed by Jim Crow segregation—followed by the Civil Rights Movement and Brown v. Board of Education—followed by myriad efforts since then to keep on segregating schools. Isn’t the attempt to discredit critical race theory really the old fight about whose cultures should be affirmed or hidden at school, and isn’t this fight reminiscent of the struggle to eliminate the American Indian boarding schools whose purpose was extinguishing American Indian children’s languages and cultures altogether? Isn’t the battle over inclusion the same conflict that excluded disabled children from public school services until Congress passed the Individuals with Disability Education Act in 1975? And what about the battle that ended in 1982, when, in Plyler v. Doe, the U.S. Supreme Court protected the right to a free, K-12 public education for children of undocumented immigrants? Our society has continued to struggle to accept the responsibility for protecting the right to equal opportunity. As Reimers explains, action to address inequality has inevitably spawned a reaction.
Educators and political philosophers, however, have persistently reminded us of our obligation to make real the promise of public schooling. In 1899, our most prominent philosopher of education, John Dewey, declared: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children… Only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself.” (The School and Society, p. 1)
In 1992, political theorist Benjamin Barber advocated for the very kind of public schooling Reimers would like to see today: “(T)he true democratic premise encompasses… the acquired virtues and skills necessary to living freely, living democratically, and living well. It assumes that every human being, given half a chance, is capable of the self-government that is his or her natural right, and thus capable of acquiring the judgment, foresight, and knowledge that self-government demands.… The fundamental assumption of democratic life is not that we are all automatically capable of living both freely and responsibly, but that we are all potentially susceptible to education for freedom and responsibility. Democracy is less the enabler of education than education is the enabler of democracy.” (An Aristocracy of Everyone, pp. 13-14)
In a 1998 essay, Barber declared: “America is not a private club defined by one group’s historical hegemony. Consequently, multicultural education is not discretionary; it defines demographic and pedagogical necessity. If we want youngsters from Los Angeles whose families speak more than 160 languages to be ‘Americans,’ we must first acknowledge their diversity and honor their distinctiveness. English will thrive as the first language in America only when those for whom it is a second language feel safe enough in their own language and culture to venture into and participate in the dominant culture. For what we share in common is not some singular ethnic or religious or racial unity but precisely our respect for our differences: that is the secret to our strength as a nation, and is the key to democratic education.” (“Education for Democracy,” in A Passion for Democracy: American Essays, p. 231)
These same principles are prophetically restated by William Ayers in his final essay in the 2022 book, Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy: “In a free society education must focus on the production—not of things, but—of free people capable of developing minds of their own even as they recognize the importance of learning to live with others. It’s based, then, on a common faith in the incalculable value of every human being, constructed on the principle that the fullest development of all is the condition for the full development of each, and conversely, that the fullest development of each is the condition for the full development of all… Schools don’t exist outside of history or culture: they are, rather, at the heart of each. Schools serve societies; societies shape schools. Schools, then, are both mirror and window—they tell us who we are and who we want to become, and they show us what we value and what we ignore, what is precious and what is venal.” (Public Education: Defending a Cornerstone of American Democracy, p. 315)
Please open the link to complete the reading.
This is a great, insightful essay. We as a people must defend our democracy from those that seek to change the very definition of what it means to live in a free, democratic society. Education is a key element of a democratic society. While business moguls have tried to turn our schools into some type of workplace readiness factory, the scope and importance of public education goes to the core of what it means to live in a participatory democracy. As a career educator, I felt a certain responsibility to uphold these values every day in the classroom. We cannot turn a blind eye to inequity, diversity and factual history as these define our values as described in The Constitution. When children recite The Pledge of Allegiance, it ends with “liberty and justice for all.” Even though we fall short of this goal in our society, it is and must always be the aspirational goal to commit to and do better to deliver on the promises made by the founding fathers.
cx: scope and importance go to the core
Today the role of young people is indeed the hope for democracy. They are the recipients of the public school endeavor and as we have seen are well versed in how we as adults are failing them in so many ways. Adultism as clearly articulated by the work of Adam Fletcher is a major cause which is never addressed by these analysts. Speak to the youth as they are the future. Adam’s newest book, Democracy Deficit Disorder, provides a refreshing and necessary view of the future of democracy and its connection to education. We continue to ignore our youth at the peril of education and democracy
Great essay. We need more Jan Ressegers.
‘ In a 1998 essay, Barber declared: “America is not a private club defined by one group’s historical hegemony. ‘
This quote really resonated with me.
Education in a democratic republic has a special place and purpose. Or, at least, it’s supposed to hold such a place.
Aristotle perceived the importance of public schooling to democratic citizenship, noting that “each government has a peculiar character…the character of democracy creates democracy, and the character of oligarchy creates oligarchy, and always the better the character, the better the government.”
In other words, the mission of public education in a democratic society is to develop democratic beliefs and values. As recounted by Thucydides in ‘History of the Peloponnesian War,’ Pericles described them in his funeral oration: popular sovereignty, equality, justice, freedoms, promoting the general welfare. Aristotle and Pericles knew that government can be “of the people, by the people, for the people;” or, it can be controlled by plutocrats.
Kevin Phillips pointed out in ‘Wealth and Democracy’ (2002) that “by 2000 the United States could be said to have a plutocracy.” That was only exacerbated by Citizens United, which opened the floodgates to corporate spending on politics. As Phillips explained it,
“the essence of plutocracy has been the determination and ability of wealth to reach beyond its own realm of money and control politics and government as well.”
Think Rupert Murdoch and Fox News and the Wall Street Journal. Think the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity and the Tea Party. Think the Walton family and charters and vouchers and “accountability” and privatization. Think Trump and nearly the entirety of the Republican Party..
After the American Revolution, early state constitutions –– like those of Massachusetts (1780) and New Hampshire (1784) –– set up and stressed the importance of a system of public education. The Land Ordinance of 1785 provided for public school financing in new territories. Thomas Jefferson sought a publicly-funded system of schools in Virginia, believing that an educated citizenry was critical to the well-being of a democratic society, writing in Notes on the State of Virginia (1794) that “The influence over government must be shared among all the people.”
In the early years of the republic, George Washington, Jefferson, Horace Mann and other early advocates for public schools agreed that democratic citizenship was a primary function of education.
Over time, access to both public education and voting rights has been broadened, by legislation, by constitutional amendment, and by court decisions. Think, for example, about the impacts of the 13th, 14th, 15th, 17th, 19th, 23rd 24th, and 26th amendments. Or the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Or the Brown v Board of Education (1954) decision, in which a unanimous Supreme Court agreed that “ in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As a result, the United States – in many respects – has become a better, fairer place.
Think also about the ramifications of supply-side, laissez-faire economic policy. It is the orthodoxy of the Republican Party. The rich are fabulously richer. Poverty has grown. The middle class has gotten squeezed. Deficits and debt have piled up as money has been redistributed to the top brackets. Jobs have been off-shored. Wall Street was morphed into a high-stakes casino.
When the economy suffered a near meltdown in the Great Recession, millions of homes were lost. Unemployment spiked. Taxpayers not only bailed out those who caused the calamity but they continue to subsidize Wall Street banks. Nobody was held “accountable.” None of the culprits took any responsibility for what they did, and they laid the onus for it on public schools. They tpld us that schools must “measure up” to ensure American “economic competitiveness.”
The great education historian Lawrence Cremin wrote this in Popular Education and Its Discontents (1990):
“American economic competitiveness… is to a considerable degree a function of monetary, trade, and industrial policy, and of decisions made by the President and Congress, the Federal Reserve Board, and the Federal Departments of the Treasury, Commerce, and Labor. Therefore, to conclude that problems of international competitiveness can be solved by educational reform, especially educational reform defined solely as school reform, is not merely utopian and millennialist, it is at best a foolish and at worst a crass effort to direct attention away from those truly responsible for doing something about competitiveness and to lay the burden instead on the schools. It is a device that has been used repeatedly in the history of American education.”
Will and Ariel Durant noted in 1968 that there are inherent tensions “between wealth laudation, which favors concentration, and democracy, which promotes distribution.” As Kevin Phillips pointed out, “government…is one of the most powerful forces shaping the creation and distribution of wealth within the United States.”
It isn’t hard to see why the US Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable and Exxon Mobil and the Waltons and Rupert Murdoch and the rest are so “interested” in public education. They can kill (privatize) it while claiming to “save” it, and make money in the process. Isn’t this what they do with almost everything else?
Indeed, some of the same biggest tax cheaters in the country gave money to the oxymoronic Teach for America, which in turn supports charters. The big contributors are the Arnold Foundation (which wants to privatize public pensions), the arch-conservative Kern Foundation (which tries to inculcate ministers into the belief that unregulated “free enterprise” is a “moral system”), the Broad and Gates and Walton Foundations, Cisco, State Farm, and big banks –– Bank of America, Barclays, Credit Suisse, Wells Fargo, HSBC, JP Morgan Chase–– that have paid billions and billions in penalties and fines for fraud and market-rigging.
The FDIC filed suit against 16 major “global” banks – including Bank of America Corp, Barclays, Credit Suisse, HSBC, and JPMorgan Chase – for “manipulating the Libor interest rate.” The Libor rate is critical to determining interest rates on “$550 trillion in financial products, from home loans to derivatives.”
See, for example: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/14/us-fdic-libor-idUSBREA2D1KR20140314
Guess who got hosed by these shenanigans? And guess who cashed in?
A democratic society is predicated and contingent on a citizenry that understands and is committed to democratic values. In any democratic society, the people ARE the government. Aristotle noted that democracy (demos) is the populace, the common people. Thus if all citizens are part of self-rule, then they are “a part of the state, and the care of each part is inseparable from the care of the whole.” That is the essence of the social contract.
Public education is an integral piece of the social contract. And that’s exactly why public schooling holds a unique place in democracies, and why it’s so important. In ‘Theory and Practice of the Social Studies,’ University of Chicago social scientist Earl Johnson called democratic citizenship “the supreme end of education in a democracy.” Horace Mann viewed public education as “the balance-wheel of the social machinery” in a democratic society. And Gordon Hullfish and Philip Smith, writing in ‘Reflective Thinking: The Method of Education,’ considered the development of critical intelligence –– which they described as the “reflective reconstruction of knowledge, insights and values” –– essential to the maintenance of a democratic republic.
Besides efforts to promote charters and vouchers, there are far too many public school educators and “leaders” who slobber over STEM, and “academies,” and LOTS of technology, and SATs and ACTs, and Advanced Placement, and “college and careers.”
Most of it is just phony baloney. Little if any of it gets to what ought to be the focus – the raison d’être – of public schooling.
Setting the record straight about public education is vitally important. Because it’s not just about schooling. It’s about family income, and wages, and a shared sense of community. It’s about needed services and the public good. It’s about a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s about the vibrancy, well-being and future of democracy itself.
As Ben Franklin was said to have responded when asked what kind of government the Framers had produced at the Constitutional Convention:
“A Republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Indeed. And we’re seeing it play out now in real time.