Public Education [View all]

[H2O Man]

“The informing function of Congress should be preferred even to its legislative function.”
-- Woodrow Wilson; Congressional Government


On Thursday evening, during the executive session of our school board’s meeting, the superintendent posed a question: What is the primary purpose of our school district? It’s an interesting question, and the various responses tend to highlight what each board member’s reasons for serving in that often thankless position.

The superintendent stated his belief that the primary purpose of the public school is to afford individual students with the opportunity for upward economic mobility. And, while I do not agree with him on that, I think it is an interesting position. More, while he has experienced some difficulty in adjusting from his “big city” roots, to the small town environment that defines our district, that goal can translate well to both large and small schools.

I believe that the primary purpose of public education is to produce informed, responsible citizens. Such individuals are likely to be able to identify the pathways to upward social and economic mobility. Indeed, they are more likely to create and maintain such opportunities for everyone in their community.

My thoughts on this are, in large part, influenced by those of a now-obscure US Senator who is the first to advocate for government funding of public education. That senator, Daniel Dickinson, spent his childhood and youth in the town where I now live. In fact, the gentleman who would become his father-in-law lived in my house; built shortly after the Revolutionary War, the building served as a stage coach station, a post office, and housed his doctor’s office.

I have a couple of the old mill stones from the “cloth and carding” factory -- located at a water falls on this property -- where Daniel worked as a teenager. And I did the research and writing to get a church he helped to build on the state and national historic registers. Hidden in the attic of that old church were “community records” dating back to the late 1700s, including a wealth of information on the Dickinson family.

In his early adulthood, Daniel was a school teacher, as was his wife. The two were instrumental in having the first local “university” built; now long gone, I have a few photographs from the 1800s of the simple college, which sat on church property. Dickinson then began to study law.He became a lawyer, and then entered politics; he served as a state and federal senator, and as a state and federal attorney. That his passion remained public education is evident from the writings -- both by and about him -- that I have collected.

Daniel Dickinson’s public education certainly allowed him access to upward social and economic mobility. The son of a local farmer went on to be a US Senator at the time of our nation’s Civil War. Indeed, he was considered as a possible contender for the presidency after Lincoln was killed. Yet, he maintained his interest in the little one- and two-room schools in the rural areas, because he understood that democracy required an educated, informed population.

The current “war on teachers” (especially the war on teachers’ unions) is actually a war on democracy. It’s not just because public education is, by definition, a form of socialism: it is indeed a collective investment in the future. At its roots, it is a war on an informed public. It is an attempt to keep the public uneducated, mis-educated, and dis-educated. One need look no further than the attempts to “teach” the Christian creation mythology, along with or rather than evolution, for proof of that.

Interestingly, public school teachers are not the only group that is paid with tax dollars to teach and inform the public. Those of us old enough to remember the Ervin Committee’s Senate Watergate Report learned this (hopefully in school). That committee’s hearings were the very definition of educational and informative: it provided lessons in both the “how” and “why” the misdeeds of the Nixon administration posed a significant threat to our constitutional democracy. Indeed, we learned that two important US Supreme Court decisions had been based upon the responsibilities of Congress to inform the public.

When we consider Congress today -- both the House and Senate -- we find very few elected representatives who take that obligation to inform the public seriously. Rather, we are being victimized by politicians who blur the truth with misinformation, disinformation, and crude lies. They look at exploit the public’s ignorance, and capitalize on their lack of preparation to serve as an informed public. Prove it, you say? How else can one explain the republican party’s even considering Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush as possible candidates for the 2016 presidential election?

There are connections between all of the pathologies that threaten our future. Both the large and small issues overlap one another. But the most basic of these, the war on public education, threatens our ability to deal with, and perhaps resolve, all of the others.

In closing, I’d like to express my gratitude to “madfloridan,” the DUer who consistently provides this community with extremely important information about the topic of public education. What a great resource for all of us!

Thanks,
H2O Man