Are Public Schools Hazardous To Public Education?
For a diverse nation, we share a remarkable consensus with respect to educating children. As reflected in polls and focus groups, Americans are nearly unanimous in their commitment to certain fundamental ideals: that all children have access to a quality education regardless of family income; that they be prepared for happy and productive lives; that they be taught the rights and duties of citizenship; and that the schools help to foster strong and cohesive communities. These are the ideals of public education.
One hundred and fifty years ago, a band of dedicated reformers declared that progress toward those ideals was too slow and proposed that a new institution be created to more effectively promote them. Led by Bostonian Horace Mann, the reformers campaigned for a greater state role in education. They argued that a universal, centrally planned system of tax-funded schools would be superior in every respect to the seemingly disorganized market of independent schools that existed at the time. Shifting the reins of educational power from private to public hands would, they promised, yield better teaching methods and materials, greater efficiency, superior service to the poor, and a stronger, more cohesive nation. Mann even ventured the prediction that if public schooling were widely adopted and given enough time to work, "nine-tenths of the crimes in the penal code would become obsolete," and "the long catalogue of human ills would be abridged."
Though Horace Mann's promised nirvana has clearly failed to materialize, there is one respect in which he and his fellow reformers were completely successful: They forged an unbreakable link in people's minds between the institution of public schooling and the ideals of public education. As generation after generation has attended public schools and sent its children to public schools, it has become more and more difficult to see the distinction between the institution itself and the principles it is meant to uphold. "If you believe in our shared ideals of public education," goes the mantra, "then you must...
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