David W. Kirkpatrick: http://www.schoolreformers.com/about/david.html

DaveK@SchoolReformers.com
November 20, 2002

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If you ask parents to whom their children belong, or who should be responsible for them, once they get over the shock of such a question most would point to themselves. They might find it hard to believe that anyone would maintain the contrary.

But a contrary view has a long history, going back to ancient Sparta. In that Greek city-state, when boys became seven years old they were taken from their families, placed in state-run boarding schools and trained to meet the needs of this military society. That would be extreme today but the essential belief that the young belong to the state has never died.

The point was made early in our history, ironically by Philadelphian Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Ten years later, in proposing a plan for education in Pennsylvania he wrote, "Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property."

Rush's plan died but not the sentiment. It was in Pennsylvania nearly a half century later, in 1834, that the first plan for a common school system was adopted. Its prime sponsor and defender, Thaddeus Stevens, said that the sons of both the rich and the poor are all "deemed children of the same parental--the Commonwealth."

That Stevens' view was not shared by the general public was demonstrated when most of the Representatives who voted for that measure were defeated at the next election. Stevens himself was reelected and in what has to be recognized by even those who disagree with it as one of the great speeches in American legislative history, he persuaded a majority in the new session to not repeal the new law, as they had been elected to do.

Fortunately the view that children belong to the state is not shared by the U.S. Supreme Court. In its unanimous Pierce decision in 1925, which still stands, the Court upheld parental rights to control their children's education, declaring that "The child is not the mere creature of the state," and "those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations."

This law of the land, however clearly stated, is neither universally accepted nor honored in practice.

A decade ago, in a debate on a Chicago radio station, when an advocate of school choice said the schools existed for the benefit of the students, Bella Rosenberg, assistant to then-American Federation of Teachers president Al Shanker, strongly disagreed, saying, "First and foremost, we're running a public system at taxpayer's expense for the public good and only secondarily for the good of parents and individuals."

Even if one accepts this point of view, she didn't explain how the system can serve the public good if students aren't successful. Certainly the public good is not served when millions of students drop out every year before graduating from high school, and huge numbers of those who do graduate possess minimal skills, as has been true for years.

In the 1980s Arkansas' governor was promoting education reforms in his state, among which was mandatory kindergarten. When asked by a writer if the state knows better than parents what is good for children, the governor's response was, yes it did. Then he attempted to take himself off the hook by adding, "Look, I can't change this, it's Hillary's bill." That was, in another sense, Hillary's Bill, later president Bill Clinton.

While few state it quite that bluntly, the tendency since Pennsylvania's 1834 Common School Act has been for the state to continually expand its field of control of children, which necessarily restricts the control of the parents. We've gone from Jefferson's plan for three-years of basic schooling to one embracing young people for thirteen years. Now the drive is to push schooling further down the age ladder and, as with the recent initiative adopted in California earlier this month, to more schooling at the upper ages.

None of this is to deny the importance of education, especially in a child's early formative years. But education and schooling are not synonymous terms and there is some indication that too much schooling, even when "successful," may be harmful. If this is true, the more schooling, the more harm.

The more time students spend in school the more they are with their peers. A generation ago Urie Bronfenbrenner cited research suggesting this is harmful. The more time children spend with their peers the more likely they are to have a negative view of themselves, their friends and their future. Compared with those who identify with their parents, peer-oriented children tend to be less responsible and to get in trouble more often.

School staff say problem kids tend to be so because of the family they are in. It may be, however unintended or indirect, at least partially because of the schools they are in. If so, that needs to be recognized, or at least considered.

Are they problem kids, or kids with problems?