The presidential primaries and the upcoming elections have
unlocked the dormant issue of public education and thrust it into
the limelight. In his State of the Union address, President Bush
reaffirmed his support for the No Child Left Behind Act. Democratic
candidates have offered strong opinions as well.
However different their positions, their objectives are one and
the same: to define the crucial connection between the federal
government and education.
But discourse on such a connection inherently assumes a
connection is necessary, or even beneficial. Nonetheless, a passing
survey of public education ““ its roots and intentions ““
will establish that the federal government’s involvement in
education has been the mark of dictators, monarchs and elitists
more than anything else.
The first state-sponsored education system was instituted in
ancient Sparta. It was meant to erase individual thought and to
erect collectivism. In “The Republic,” Plato writes:
“In Sparta, an ancient model for modern totalitarianism, the
state was organized as one vast military camp, and the children
were seized by the state and educated in barracks to the ideal of
state obedience. Sparta early realized the logical, inevitable end
result of a compulsory education system.” So the very first
instance of public education was linked not with the ideals of
literacy and knowledge, but with the ideals of slavery and
conformity.
Yet Sparta’s seminal encounter did not prove to be an
exception to the rule. Quite the opposite, it founded and
established the rule. Prussia, France, Russia and other countries
recognized the lesson and followed in Sparta’s footsteps.
In those cases and in every case since, the government’s
interest in education has invariably been embedded in the notions
of totalitarianism and social control.
The people of the United States, upon gaining independence,
decided to break the centuries-long connection between the
government and education. John Taylor Gatto, a former teacher and
education scholar writes: “Our form of compulsory schooling
is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was
resisted ““ sometimes with guns ““ by an estimated
eighthy per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost
… not surrendering its children until the 1880s when the area was
seized by militia and children marched to school under
guard.”
As late as the mid 20th century, the link between government and
higher education was cause for alarm. In his book “American
Higher Education,” Christopher J. Lucas writes, “The
Senate’s Judiciary Committee on Internal Security made
national headlines when it announced it would spare no effort to
root out leftist influences in higher education and expose the
“˜nest of communists’ … Senator Joseph McCarthy of
Wisconsin proposed that the government redouble its efforts not
just to clear the groves of academe of all communists but of
suspected Communist thinkers as well.” Of course, none of
this intervention would have been possible without a strong
connection between the federal government and education.
Today, we assume the federal government’s interests in
education are wholly selfless and noble. Yet the federal government
retains vast control over the curricula of public schools ““
in both secondary and higher education.
In 1994, the passage of the Goals 2000 Educate America Act and
the School-to-Work Opportunities Act granted unseemly control of
school curricula to the federal government. Presently, the House of
Representatives is in the process of passing the Studies in Higher
Education Act, which would give unprecedented oversight powers to
the government. Several other measures have also aggravated the
situation. What it all amounts to is the federal government
deciding what we learn and what we don’t.
There is a simple reason why the Constitution of the United
States does not mention a Department of Education or address a bond
between the federal government and education. America’s
values and ideas ““ among them, individualism and free will
““ are utterly incompatible with the institution of public
education.
It is high time we learn and accept history’s lessons, and
not foster the system in spite of them.
Hovannisian is a first-year history and philosophy student.
E-mail him at ghovannisian@media.ucla.edu. Send general comments to
viewpoint@media.ucla.edu.