September 23rd, 2010
I admire Nick Lemann a lot, so this isn’t meant to be churlish or sarcastic. But in his Talk of the Town defense America’s school industry–from public primary schools to full-blown university–he rests his case on essentially two arguments:
(1) Whatever people might say they think, the number or people continuing to enroll in public primary and secondary schools and colleges means that things are pretty okay. Because the market is the truth and the way.
(“But, by the fundamental test of attractiveness to students and their families, the system—which is one of the world’s most ethnically diverse and decentralized—is, as a whole, succeeding. Enrollment in charter schools is growing rapidly, but so is enrollment in old-fashioned public schools, and enrollments are rising at all levels.”)
(2) Even if we were inclined to make changes in the education system, we should be wary of doing so because the system is so old and enormous and complex that we should understand our own limitations in correctly anticipating unintended consequences.
(“It should raise questions when an enormous, complicated realm of life takes on the characteristics of a stock drama. . . . Large-scale, decentralized democratic societies are not very adept at generating neat, rational solutions to messy situations. The story line on education, at this ill-tempered moment in American life, expresses what might be called the Noah’s Ark view of life: a vast territory looks so impossibly corrupted that it must be washed away, so that we can begin its activities anew, on finer, higher, firmer principles. One should treat any perception that something so large is so completely awry with suspicion, and consider that it might not be true—especially before acting on it.”)
Neither of these arguments is particularly convincing. As for (1), markets are hugely fallible. People kept buying real estate in the ’00s even when it was obvious that the system had become a bubble. Markets are always right, except for when they’re not. Which is a goodly portion of the time.
And as for (2), I’d take this argument from Lemann more seriously if he thought it held sway in other realms of public life. Like, for instance, the complete redefinition of the Western ideal of marriage based or the remaking of the global economy in response to the chance of climate change.
Actually, maybe this is a chance for ideological horse-trading. I’ve always been in favor of making actual compromises with the left. For example, the Right gives up capital punishment and the Left gives up abortion. Or the Right gives up big-business welfare, and the Left gives up multi-culti preferences. (Actually, that’s a trick: Both sides are in favor of both items.)
But I’d be happy to go along with the teacher’s unions and the educational establishment if the left would stick with traditional marriage and/or give up climate change re-ordering. If the Left gave up both, I’d even throw in a player-to-be-named-later.
Jeff Singer September 23, 2010 at 8:52 pm
First of all, welcome back! I used to the love the Kurdish people, until their nefarious agents hacked your website…well, that and the fact that their leaders seem to have become anti-democratic tyrants (http://blog.american.com/?p=13678), but you can’t win ’em all!
Second, with respect to Mr. Lemann’s analysis — his number (1) is fatally flawed. Repeat after me — public schools are (basically) a monopoly — so enrollment encreases are driven by demographics, plain and simple (which usually means, for many growing communities in America, by Hispanic immigration and low-income population growth). Despite the efforts of reformers to introduce charters and private school alternatives (especially in urban areas), for most parents who don’t want to pay property taxes AND private school tuition, public schools are the only game in town. When we all have the option to take our property tax money and use it for public or private schools, then we’ll really have a market.
What is amazing about all of this is not the success of the “public school market”, but the rise over the past 20+ years of the home school movement — these are folks who pay property taxes and yet still think it is worth it to keep their kids out of the public school system (for whatever reason). Simply remarkable when you think about their sacrifice.