"Compulsory public education is the worst way to create a citizenry capable of fulfilling its public responsibilities.... except for all the other ways." -my apologies to Winston Churchill
Why are you running for a seat on the Union County Board of Education? I like to hear myself talk as much as the next guy and the $24 filing fee is quite a bargain.
No, really, why? I have a background in education, the ability to consider fundamental questions in finding pragmatic answers, and the responsibility as a citizen to offer my services.
Why do you refer to the Board of Education as "the School Board?" "School Board" is the traditional usage, as well as a more accurate description. While I would like for our public schools to be about education, I believe they are in practice about much more and much less.
What do you believe is the goal of public education? To ensure a citizenry competently performing it's public responsibilities, no more and no less. A citizen has two sorts of responsibility, to maintain himself and to capably perform public duties such as voting and paying for necessary public services such as education.
Shouldn't public education be teaching values? I believe it is impossible to educate without values. One of the greatest difficulties in public education today is our difficulty in reaching consensus about which values should be taught. We have a problem due to our belief that government should be as unintrusive on the individual and family as possible. It is not "the American Way" for a majority to dictate values to a minority.
How can we reach a consensus on the values taught by government schools when our citizenry have varied values? A fundamental question that is critical for education is, "How do we know?" While I did badly in my various attempts at formal Philosophy, I recall this as the central question asked in Epistemology. Our citizenry have differing answers to the question. Some are Rationalists, believing that we know through reason. Some are Revelationists, believing that the truth has been provided for us in a text. Some are Empiricists, believing that we know through careful observation and experimentation. Some are Authoritarian, believing that we know because an authority told us. And some believe that knowledge is revealed by a "still small voice within" us. Most of us believe in a combination of these means of knowing truth. I think that our schools must explicitly teach that there are these different belief systems, and that each provides its own rationale.
But what knowledge should be taught in school? Our schools should teach students to utilize and value rationality and empiricism, as well as critical evaluation of authoritarian credentials and knowledge. These are ways of knowing that can be discussed clearly. Revelationary knowledge is personal and cultural. It is best communicated by families and religious institutions, as it is beyond the observable and testable.
The founding documents are the contract under which our government operates. The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States, and the Constitution of North Carolina are our closest approaches to consensus. Government schools should use the values agreed upon in those documents as the basis for education.
Why do you say that compulsory public education is a bad idea? We're Americans, we don't like to be told what to do. While it is nearly possible to compel school attendance, it is impossible to compel education. We cannot hold our children down and pour learning into their ears, education must have the child's participation. If we cannot contrive to make education desirable to a child, we have already failed the child. And if we teach a child simple compliance with authority, we are not teaching the social contract, we are teaching him or her to be an irresponsible citizen.
Why do you say that simple compliance with authority makes for irresponsible citizens?Our nation was founded on the principle that the individual has primacy and that the state's moral justification is as a mechanism for protecting the individual's rights. Public education, which exists to make competent citizens, should be teaching critical thought rather than blind compliance.
But minors do not have adult rights! Shouldn't we compel their parents to send them to school? Can we expect children to seek an education, when their parents are resentful and oppositional?
Isn't it the parents' fault that children come to school unprepared to learn? Perhaps, but remember that the parents are to some extent products of the public school system.
So are you saying it's public education's fault that we have poor parents? Not really... I'm saying that it's unprofitable to try to point fingers. The only purpose of the exercise is to decide what we should do.
What should we do? In the context of previous questions, I believe we should explicitly re-examine our goals for public education, we should emphasize parents' responsibilities by explicit parenting training in our schools, we should take steps to redefine public schooling as a privilege rather than a mandated obligation, for parents and students.
If we don't force children to attend school, won't we have streets filled with juvenile delinquents? Possibly, but aren't we then speaking of a Public Safety rather than Educational issue? Shouldn't we remember this when we are looking at funding and programming questions? Wouldn't we better expend our resources in making school appealing to all?
What is your opinion on corporal punishment? I am against corporal punishment in the schools and in general, because I believe it is conterproductive. If given the opportunity I will vote to abolish corporal punishment in the Union County School District. I understand that others values might lead them to believe in corporal punishment for their children, so I do not support outlawing parents or private schools administering corporal punishment. For a more complete discussion of corporal punishment readers might try http://www.nospank.net/. Inclusion of this link is not intended to indicate any endorsement of my candidacy by this organization, nor to indicate that I endorse all of their positions.
But hasn't school quality gone down since I was a kid... since Reagan.... since Eisenhower... since back before the war... since the good old days? I don't think so, I think our expectations for public education have changed. In "the good old days," many of the children who were doing poorly, were discipline problems, or had "disabilities" would have quit school early to work if they attended school at all. There was little effort made to compel school attendance by disadvantaged youth. In Union County, my parent's generation had available only 11 years of public education, with time off for planting and picking crops. There was no expectation that more than a small minority would leave school with the skills for post-secondary education. African-Americans attended schools whose construction had been privately funded and used books that had been discharged from the "white schools" after years of hard use.
But hasn't the world changed, don't our students need to leave school with a better education and be prepared for further education? Maybe we should remember that it is our expectations that have changed before we decry the "deterioration of our schools." Not only our expectations of who we should educate have changed, but also our expectations for what level of material prosperity constitutes impoverishment. It would be nice if all of our students left school with the skills necessary to sustain themselves and perform their citizenship duties. I would like to see our society pay more to "unskilled workers" rather than complain that "we can't get Americans to do the job." I would like to see our public acknowledge that a competent tradesman or laborer is more valuable than an incompetent pencil pusher, but that is beyond the scope of a school board member or of public education.
Are you saying that our students don't need to be more highly skilled for a technologically advanced future? I'm saying that as a School Psychologist in the schools much of my work involved identifying students with poor academic aptitude as "disabled." I believe that we serve citizens poorly when we marginalize them because they do not meet performance expectations in a scholastic environment. "Tech-Prep" was the academic fad before "No Child Left Behind." I saw a decades old Brick Masonry program abandoned for courses that demanded more academic rigor, leaving those students unable to meet academic demands with increased feelings of failure and without usable skills.
Don't you think our schools could do a better job? Sure they could, I guess if this were not the public sector, we would consider "paying more money to attract better people." Instead, IMHO, every few years politicians impose the latest educational fad on educators and impose a new layer of "accountability," which is code among many educators for "futile paper work." Goals are established and failure to meet the goals results in threats to employment. The wise educator tries his best, considers extra-educational employment options, and waits for a new set of politicians to come up with a new set of ideas for "educational improvement." The old educational hand states that "nobody goes into education for the money." The really old educational hand thinks fondly of the days when intelligent unmarried women had few survival options outside of teaching and were compelled by economic necessity into this public service.
Are you "a tax and spend liberal," then? No, I'm not complaining that we need to raise taxes so our schools can do a better job. I think they are doing admirably, if they were not, Union County would not be one of the fastest growing counties in the country. I suggest that we stop trying to build exemplary schools, and concentrate our resources on the schools where students are at risk of being "left behind." Remember that I believe our goal should be to produce a competent citizenry, taking students beyond competence is a non-public function.
How might we concentrate our resources on the schools where students are most at risk? 1)Meaningful teacher incentives for those undertaking difficult students, rather than punitive measures toward under performing schools. 2)A no-fault and supportive approach to school administrators and teachers wishing to undertake well thought out and researched innovative approaches. 3)Sufficient support personal and attention to "extracurriculars" to ensure every student's involvement in their education.
Isn't it fundamentally unfair that you want to spend my tax dollars to educate their children? Since more tax money is gathered from wealthier parts of the county, shouldn't at least as much be spent on each student in those parts as is spent in the poorer parts of the county? The purpose of public education is to create citizens who can take care of themselves and contribute adequately toward a government that protects our individual rights. To the extent that we utilize democracy it is important for all of us that our students leave school feeling a part of society. If we consider the public safety component of "public education" we might decide our taxes are being spent to protect our lives and property when they are spent to include all in our ownership society. Perhaps the wealthier have a greater stake in a healthy and safe society than do those with less property to protect.
Are you a serious candidate? I think so... I would like to win because I feel I could help to make wise decisions for Union County. I would not describe myself as an "earnest" candidate because I have no intentions of personal gain from my candidacy, nor do I intend to lose or hide my sense of humor which I value.
If you are a serious candidate why are you not raising and spending money for advertising? I am as interested in addressing campaign reform as I am in addressing educational reform. I have an admittedly quixotic belief that our republic would be healthier if leadership were selected on the basis of critical thought and serious discussion of important issues, rather than on the basis of associational advertising, simplistic sloganeering, and simple name recognition.
What sort of campaign reform would increase the probability of rational voting patterns? "What goes around, comes around," I suppose. I'd like to include explicit critical thinking instruction in educational curricula. One of the two purposes I see for public education is, after all, citizenship skills. I'd like our students to be able to recognize and evaluate forms of persuasion and critically evaluate political posturing.
But what sort of campaign reform would increase the probability of rational voting patterns? I believe people have a right to advertise. I believe that people have a right to give money to whomever they choose. It's the Voter who is responsible for making rational decisions despite the money spent on a campaign. I believe in Voter Based Campaign Reform!
How am I, the Voter, responsible for campaign reform? As long as the Voter selects candidates on the basis of associational advertising rather than critical thought, our political process will be ruled by "special interests." The best "campaign reform" is for you to make certain that you are not that voter and that your neighbor is not that voter. The assumption that money wins elections is true, but it doesn't have to be.
But doesn't the ability to raise campaign money indicate that people support the candidate? Well yes, it does, the question is how much of such support is out of "good citizenship" and how much is to support a personal agenda at public expense? Who among us can even tease out a personal versus public agenda? Doesn't it make more sense to select a candidate based upon a careful consideration of his or her opinions and qualifications and cannot that information be acquired from unpaid sources? The mass media are the ultimate recipient of campaign donations, they sell the advertising. There is some conflict of interest when they evaluate the viability and seriousness of candidacies on the basis of money raised, but this conflict isn't sinister or purposeful. Money raised will be a legitimate means of evaluating candidacys as long as people vote based upon paid advertising.
Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other." Benjamin Franklin's closing address at the Constitutional Convention
