Traditionally, “school choice” reform arguments have centered on the inherent value of market processes, especially the insertion of competition in a clearly monopolistic government school system. Lately, many conservative and free market scholars have revisited the utility of market arguments to address the problems of public education.

For example, in their paper “Choice Thinking,” Richard Meinhard and Steve Buckstein of the Cascade Policy Institute write that,

We will not make major strides toward school choice if we continue to believe that simply teaching the public about the benefits of market education or tinkering with choice proposals will be enough. A new market perspective can’t be simply taught. It must develop, like any living system develops, out of its more primitive pro-government form. Our challenge is to understand this transformation.

Similarly, but with a more focused twist, a recent article in Education Next magazine argues that competition alone cannot crack the iron yoke encumbering government schooling. Author Frederick M. Hess, a professor at the University of Virginia, writes that, “Making education competitive requires more than just high hopes; the very culture and rules of public schooling must be overhauled.”

He concludes his article,

It is not clear that we [school choice advocates] are serious about embracing a school system characterized by vigorous competition. For instance, many advocates of charter schooling trumpet the freedom and innovation promoted by choice, but they remain hostile to the ideas of unbridled markets and for-profit operators. This is not an untenable position - one can believe in school choice but not an educational marketplace. However, small-scale competition [e.g., tuition tax credits] is not going to unleash the market bulldozer. It is naïve to pretend that it will.

The essential point is that the effect of competition on public schools is inextricably intertwined with the history and culture of American schooling. Allowing competition to bloom and thrive necessitates shattering these constraints. Advocates of competition must accept this reality.

For two consecutive sessions of the Utah State legislature the issue of tuition tax credits has been hotly debated and soundly rejected. Two sessions ago the House chamber voted to approve tuition tax credits. During this most recent session, when advocates spent a great deal of time and money seeking its passage, tax credits never saw the light of day in either chamber.

I draw your attention to Utah because in many ways Utah is a model laboratory for school choice reform. Its legislature mirrors its citizenry: largely conservative and Republican. The state’s overwhelmingly predominant religion (60 percent of the population) holds to a firm belief in the essential merits of education and educational achievement. Utah is perhaps the most educated state population in America, if we define “educated” as holding a high school diploma. It is a place where you would expect education markets to flourish.

And yet, as the Manhattan Institute recently pointed out, Utah ranks second to last in the nation in educational freedom. Only Hawaii, a state with no local school districts at all, ranks lower. As you might expect of an educational gulag, Utah has one of the highest numbers of per capita government school attendees in the country. We actually have more home schooling families than families utilizing private schools. We have only eight charter schools; and they came into existence reluctantly. In a state where the entire fiscal budget is $7 billion, government schooling consumes $2.5 billion, or about 36 percent of the budget. And unlike most other states, all income tax, both individual and corporate, goes directly to education. Conservative, liberty-loving Utahns seemingly worship government schooling.

In a desperate effort to try to understand this anomaly it dawned on me, as it did Hess, that all government schooling reforms, whether marketplace reforms or administrative ones from within, are “inextricably intertwined with the history and culture of American schooling.”

I noticed that public debate in Utah over the tuition tax credit issue fell into two competing camps. The first camp is comprised of those who argue reform from a market perspective. The second camp, government school defenders, is comprised of those who make their arguments in moral terms. Never the twain shall meet. Strong market arguments were met only with equally passionate moral arguments.

News story after news story has revealed the divergence. One story in the Salt Lake Tribune, aimed at highlighting how tuition tax credits would “ultimately leave districts with more money per student,” included a solitary opposing comment that “just because a police officer doesn’t come to my house doesn’t mean I go back and demand a reimbursement from the city.” For this critic, public education, like our police department, is a public good; a moral argument for most people.

In a point-counterpoint commentary in the Deseret News, its resident Republican pleaded to “allow the magic of free market forces to provide natural incentives and rewards for improvement and natural penalties for poor performance.” While its resident Democrat responded thusly,

[M]oney is not the most important thing at stake as we talk of shifting public funds toward private education. Schisms are concerning in Utah. We have the rich getting richer and the poor poorer. We have the split between Mormon and other religions. We have the West Side versus the East Side. And now we want to add to those conflicts a new barrier: public versus private schools? I think not. Religious and community leaders decided a long time ago that Utah should not go the private school route…. [Government schools pay] off later in life and reduce the dimensions of our community fractures.

And, as a final example, in a calculated lobbying campaign against tax credits, the Utah Education Association and the Utah School Boards Association released a short video titled “Public Schools are the Right Choice for Utah.” Nearly every argument made against tuition tax credits in the video is a moral argument:

“Public education is the cornerstone of our democratic society.”

“Public schools are where our diverse backgrounds come together to share the common experiences which makes us Americans.”

“Public education is the last great common denominator for this society.”

“Public education is a service to the community … just as fire and police protection.”

“Our schools … are community centers.”

[Public education] is an educational birthright.”

These arguments and others like them have pushed me to reflect on the true morality, if any, underlying public education. My conclusion, presented in its fulness in my published paper here today, is that government schooling does indeed have a proper role in society, but it is a limited and welfare role. Our fundamental and primary education policy should be self-reliance in education.

There is a great historical legacy to support this conclusion. The centerpiece of “free,” community, or public education during America’s first 150 years was parents who did not feel that they were educationally competent or who were not financially able to produce their children’s education.

Again using Utah as an example, prior to statehood, Utah had a system of “common schools” established by the early pioneers. These common schools were neither financed with taxes nor were children compelled to attend. Parents who chose not to educate their children at home or in private collectives, but who could pay other people to educate their children, covered their own costs of public education. On the other hand, many parents felt they were not competent to teach their children at the level of competency set by early church leaders (i.e., not just literacy, but knowledge of the world sufficient to preach the gospel effectively throughout the world). Neither were many parents able to pay for that level of competency, a level that most often required more experienced instructors. To help meet these needs, neighbors, who were willing and able, assisted with the payment of other children’s educational expenses.

The established precedent throughout the first century of life in America, and throughout Utah prior to statehood, was that truly self-reliant families and good citizens did all that they could do to meet the educational needs of their children first. Neighborly, or public, assistance played a role only after all attempts within the family were exhausted to meet those needs. This precedent actually continues to be expressed in Utah laws,

It is the public policy of this state that parents retain the fundamental right and duty to exercise primary control over the care, supervision, upbringing, and education of their children…. (62A-4a-201) [Ital. Added]

Certainly, and at the very least, Utah state law bears out a legitimate welfare relationship between the state and parents in need of education assistance,

The Legislature further acknowledges that the primary responsibility for the education of children within the state resides with their parents or guardians and that the role of state and local governments is to support and assist parents in fulfilling that responsibility. (53A-6-102) [Ital. Added]

The inescapable question for parents and taxpayers is this: if it is immoral for an able-bodied person, who can and should take care of himself, to place himself on the government dole, what makes it any less immoral for parents, who can and should take care of their children’s education, to place their families on the public education dole? That we pay taxes (lots of them) to send our children to public schools is little justification to do so. We also pay taxes to support the needs of others on welfare, yet we do not feel the least bit compelled to join their ranks.

What ideas and sentiments cause many reasonable Americans to forego logic and ignore this stark anomaly in their lives? What idea or ideas allow them to feel passionately justified in keeping themselves off of traditional welfare but equally passionate about placing themselves on educational welfare?

Perhaps the answer, for many of these reasonable people, is that they simply do not see public education as welfare?

Our founding fathers trumpeted the necessity of education to remain a free people. But citing the virtue of education is different than endorsing a coercive plan for state control of education - something even the real “education president,” Thomas Jefferson, opposed.

From Horace Mann to John Dewey to the National Education Association and its state affiliates, government schooling is a revered public good; perhaps the highest public good. It is necessary, they say, because education is vital to a free society - so vital to freedom, in fact, that we cannot afford any freedom in education. If education is vital to lasting democracy, then certainly we are justified in requiring it of everyone. And if required of all, then coerced upon all.

Several justifications are mentioned commonly in support of coerced government schooling. The following is a list of just ten of the more popular justifications:

All children are entitled to an education. In other words, all children have an inherent right to education. Actually, this point is not true either morally or legally. It is not true in traditional welfare and it is not true in education. The incumbent moral obligation is really with the giver to provide not with the recipient to receive (e.g., we cannot force people to accept assistance). Educationally, this means that the only moral obligation is in providing for children. Legally, the United States Supreme Court has long held, as we observed earlier, that such a “right” to education does not exist in the United States Constitution. This finding is not because every justice of the court disdains education or children. Rather, this consistent legal finding logically recognizes the true nature of education - an intellectual asset that cannot be coercively received. (Authors Benjamin A. Rogge and Pierre F. Goodrich, in their book Education in a Free Society, define the nature of education as “something that happens within an individual. No matter how formally educational the setting or the process, if nothing happens to the supposed learner, nothing educational has taken place.”) In fact, the relative numbers of personal failures in government schooling proves this point in spades. Imagine placing a “right” to education in the pantheon of fundamental constitutional rights along side life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Why not a right to food or housing or health care or a good haircut?

We need an educated and specialized workforce. Because there are so many private firms today offering trade school services, even high-tech services, one can only assume that this point is made to imply that poor children would be left out of these opportunities if government schools did not exist. In that case, this point actually supports a welfare model of education advocated in my full paper and, even then, there are many ways to deliver welfare services without government providing the services itself.

Public education promotes equality. The merits of this point are actually quite sketchy. Equality of what? Most advocates argue that equality of “opportunity” and “resources” lay at the heart of this point. But even this clarification ignores an important pedagogical truth. Namely, teaching and learning are individual aptitudes and are as diverse as people themselves. This point also ignores the stark reality that these benefits can be provided for all school-age children in a variety of ways, but especially absent the necessity to create a massive, coercive, universal government program. In public education’s quest for equality (i.e., forcing every child to be accountable to government schooling), it promotes only one thing: mediocrity. Within this reality, examples of educational excellence are relative and can only be measured against the norm of mediocrity and, conversely, educational failure could hardly mean worse.

Public education ensures that common values will be disseminated throughout society. The irony of this point is that common values are the only values that do not have to be disseminated at all. That is why they are seen as being common. On the other hand, uncommon values, such as religious values not uniformly held, are not allowed to be disseminated in government schools any more. Both of these points may be overshadowed by the further irony of the simultaneous promotion in government schools of “common values” and politically-correct “diversity.”

Public education is necessary to properly socialize children. To become what? What is the measure of a socialized child? Maturity? Independence? Kindness and consideration? None of these qualities are born out of a system strictly ruled by coercive state authority and peer dependence. What any impartial observer is likely to find in the character of public school children, left to the mercies of peer dependency, are manifestations of selfishness, rudeness, inconsideration, jealousy, exclusion, and a pervasive culture of destructive conformity unparalleled in society. That many public school children are absent any of these social handicaps is simply a testament of virtuous counter-socialization at home - the constant struggle of attentive parents to undue each evening the negative effects of public school socialization learned throughout the day. In other words, constructive, positive socialization happens in the home or not at all.

Public schools are the center of community life. Traditionally, the center of community life has been the home and church, along with generous doses of voluntary neighborhood services and activities. Government at any level tends to destroy these voluntary relationships. It is the “Scrooge” factor: government coerces me to pay taxes for “community” services, so why should I also extend my resources voluntarily? While it is true that some public school buildings in rural and poor areas provide a meeting place for a variety of community activities, this point does not explain why government must provide these facilities for those activities.

Public education provides essential training for immigrants in the American way of life. Again, we face a central question of definition: what is the American way? If this point simply refers to lessons in citizenship, then a pamphlet is much less expensive than twelve years of government schooling. If the point alludes to our insecure desire that all “foreigners” act like us or look like us, then real-world lessons will be much more effective in serving this purpose than classroom lessons. Certainly English language classes do not require government schooling. This point was much more relevant in America 150 years ago. Back then, not only were most of us first-generation Americans in need of republican understanding, but there was also an identifiable American way of life centered on home, church, and personal self-reliance and accountability. Government schooling works against each of those old ways.

More parents would abuse or neglect their children without public education. This point reveals the cynicism and disrespect that government school advocates have for parents and families. This point presumes that all school-age children are wards of the state and, as such, are in need of protection from parents by a system coercively structured on a similar presumption that all parents will be, if not now are, negligent or abusive. Child welfare and education are two separate public policy issues. To co-mingle them is to reveal just one more evidence of an intrusive government beyond its bounds.

Public education is the only stable influence in the lives of many poor children. This point is certainly true in many sad cases. But far from dissuading advocates of self-reliance in education, this point actually makes their case on two counts. First, it distinguishes between children from self-reliant families and those from dependent ones. And second, it supports a welfare model of education advocated in my full paper.

Public education is the engine of democracy. In what possible way? Three pillars of democracy belie the virtue of government schooling: 1) voter participation grows smaller the more public education grows larger, 2) freedom, the true engine of democracy, is the antithesis of a coercive system of schooling, and 3) community life is packaged and programmed by government school engineers into a homogenous bottle of insincerity delivered by a few overachieving boys and girls and delinquents in need of afterschool busywork. Perhaps we speak too much of our “democratic system.” A “system” can never be the engine of democracy. Virtuous people and the right principles they live by are the engine of anything positive in America and any of its systems.

Another effective argument used by government school advocates is the “essential services” comparison. Education, they say, is every bit as essential to community life as a police or fire department. No one complains, they continue, about paying their fair share for those services, even when they do not personally use them. Neither is the public constantly bombarded with propaganda to privatize those services.

Let’s push this argument a little bit. A fire department exists to protect homes and businesses against fire damage. It functions much like an insurance policy. Taxpayers pay into the system believing that they will receive adequate fire protection, when needed, but hoping (and praying) that they will never need its services. In other words, taxpayers willingly and knowingly support a service they hope never to utilize. Police departments are treated much the same way by taxpayers. We are glad to have them around, but we hope never to have need of them ourselves.

While this analogy is actually closer to the mark it should be (i.e., a welfare model of education), it does not support the case for current government schooling. Yes, taxpayers pay for public education, but most everyone uses the system everyday, unlike how everyone rarely uses fire and police services every day.

Pushing a little further, nearly every home in America is equipped with a water hose and water taps. When a small fire breaks out it is conceivable that a homeowner can contain the fire himself. The large water resources of the fire department are there only if needed. Most homeowners also have the opportunity to protect their homes from criminals with a firearm or some other weapon of choice. If the police are called after a failed attempt at crime, they usually are called for the purpose of adding to or updating the database of criminal activity in that neighborhood.

In both of these cases, these essential public services are support systems to self-reliant citizens. No rational person who could put out a fire or stop a criminal himself would feel compelled to call the fire or police departments. In fact, any citizen who would rely wholly upon these services rather than act himself would be seen as irresponsible. These essential service analogies do not support the claims of public education advocates. They do, however, support a welfare model of education: pay into the system generally on behalf of those who need to utilize the service - and then pray that you do not have to be one of them.

These arguments in favor of government schooling are just as effective in Des Moines as they are in Salt Lake City. As my paper argues, I am convinced that we must counter anti-choice moral arguments with moral arguments in favor of freedom to be successful in reforming government schooling. We must be able to effectively express why it is both moral and reasonable to move school-age children from government schooling to non-government schooling.

We should not be coy about our intentions. All serious school choice reforms seek educational freedom and this freedom has the natural and moral effect of moving children from government schools to private or home schools.

Tuition tax credits are a perfect example. The tax credit is used to create incentives for parents to put their children in private schools or for businesses to contribute to private funds utilized on behalf of low-income children to go to private schools. Tax credits are not designed to benefit government schools, even though some versions actually leave an equal proportion of tax dollars in the system. To speak of how tuition tax credits benefit children and simultaneously strengthen government schools is a bit disingenuous.

Public education is a moral issue. Let’s face it, we do not support public education because it is the most efficient way to educate children. Nor do we do it because it provides children with the best available learning. We do not support public education as a matter of right pedagogy. We do it because we feel we have a moral obligation to do it. We do it because of our great societal desire that every child become an educated productive adult, no exceptions.

This is why any serious discussion about public education reform must be a moral discussion fundamentally. There is no use talking about school choice proposals or any other kinds of market-based reforms until we have first addressed the morality underlying public education. And it is this discussion that will point us in the direction of quelling the many controversies surrounding public education, and one that will also show us its true value and its proper, but limited, welfare role in a free society.