* Setting standards for schools
Topics: Education
26 Oct 1994
From: "DG ervan@cs.rice.edu (Ervan Darnell)"
In my brief overview of privatizing schools, I said that the government
should not set standards. Even Pete thought that was too much. Parents owe
their children some basic education. How could I be opposed to requiring
such a thing? I'm not opposed to the *doing*. I'm opposed to the *trying*.
The goal can never be achieved, but efforts to get there will leave much
damage in their wake. It is better simply that the government have no
authority to even set such standards. This week produced three fine examples.
Thomas offered the first one is his previous post:
> LOS ANGELES (Reuter) - A controversial manual calling for a radical
>overhaul in the way the history of the United States is taught -- with
>emphasis on the role of minorities, women and ordinary people instead of a
>few great figures -- was published Wednesday.
That the left and the right are both intent on rewriting history is not
news. That the government will impose the orthodoxy of the moment as
historical truth is a dangerous situation (not surprisingly, the manual was
written at government request, at a government supported university, UCLA,
by professors who have probably spent their life sucking the government
teet). Ironically, the latest PC round of imposing views is done
supposedly in the interest of diversity.
We can all agree that everyone should know the basics of history, e.g. that
1776 was the year of publication of "Wealth of Nations". But the political
process will not produce these sorts of objective standards. It will
instead generate standards which are history as the current political
majority wishes that it had been.
The second example comes from this month's Atlantic Monthly. It had an
article on sex education. Unfortunately, I didn't get to finish the
article, but the bottom line was sex ed doesn't work, in the sense of
reducing STD's or teenage pregnancy. Despite what some people think of my
opinions, I'm not going to go conservative on you and say children should
not be taught about sex. The teacher can give a donkey a blow job in front
of the class for all I care.
The problems here are three fold. First, there are a group of child
psychologists who are using the schools for experiments. That's acceptable
in some cases, but they are so committed to their projects that they will
not acknowledge failure and it is difficult to show an alternative or to
remove your kids if you don't like it because of the government monopoly.
Second, precious time is being wasted. If sex ed does nothing, let's dump
it and stick in a math class. Third, the agenda of the people pushing this
is not really sex ed in any case, it is liberal attitude adjustment. Part
of the program (at least as covered in the article) was to make boys more
sensitive and girls more aggressive. I don't know whether that is good or
bad, but I do know the purpose is one of bending the curricula to produce a
desired outcome in attitude rather than to teach (under the rubric of sex ed
nonetheless). Allowing the government to set standards (in a voucher
environment) will produce these sorts of standards for private schools as well.
The third example is a new Texas law that tightens control on day-care.
Day-care is not school of course but it has much to say about how
legislators hold parents in contempt and how the process works to make
circumstances worse for children in the name of making them better. The
number of infants per adult can now be no more than four (it was five).
Workers can have at most 10 hours/day of contact with children. Workers
must take more 'training'. Spanking is strictly prohibited. The first
three all say that if you cannot afford 'good' day care, you cannot have
any. Better that you stay home and have no job. Just like minimum wage,
liberals seem to prefer no work to low-pay work; here they prefer no work to
work plus 'low' quality day care. Supporters on the state board of the DPS
assured us that this was to help children. Why four? Who not one? What
the heck, let's demand every parent have their own personal state approved
child psychologist per kid. All we have to do is pass a law and all of this
quality will be defined into existence, right? We are also told about the
shortage of quality day-care and how we need a government subsidy to correct
for a market failure. Go figure.
As for spanking, we are right back in the realm of the government telling
parents how they should raise their children. We are not talking public
schools. We are talking about private businesses (for now :-( ). Even if a
parent grants authority to let their child be spanked, the care-giver is
prohibited by the government from doing so. Letting the government set
standards will inevitably lead to such intrusive results. (I have no
opinion one way or another about spanking and child development, but it
clearly infringes on what is normally considered legitimate parenting).
As with all government standards, they legitimize the poor provider (who
technically meets the standard), stigmatize the good provider (who also
merely meets the government standard and is hampered in advertising its
better value), and remove the incentive from the consumer to shop for a
better deal since the playing field has been leveled (from the head down).
While no government authority to set standards would let some children slip
through with a very poor education, the standards we get (or would get with
vouchers) hamper many children. Utopia is not an option.
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