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Socialism Lives in Public Schools
by
Thomas L. Johnson,
January 2003
A piece entitled “Education is not just another product in the market
economy,” by Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, is
one of the clearest expressions of socialism and collectivism that one could
ever encounter. His article also contains both errors and omissions.
He begins with a significant error. Chase claims that in the 19th century
when people found that private firefighting companies could not be afforded
by everyone, the solution to the problem was to establish public fire
departments. He is wrong.
What actually arose to meet this need were volunteer fire departments that
citizens chose to staff and support without any government involvement. It
was only many years later, with the continuing spread of socialist ideas,
that governments began, with the approval of most citizens, to subsidize
“volunteer” departments or set up government-owned and government-operated
fire departments.
Chase’s discussion of fire departments results from his ridiculous attempt
to compare them to schools. He insists that “ignorance is very much like
fire. Individual parents can invest diligently in their children’s
education, but end up getting burned because some other parent could not do
the same.”
And just how is anyone going to get “burned” if other people do not get what
they need, no matter what these needs are?
Bob Chase is an ardent supporter of the public-school system and insists
that “quality schools must be a public-sector enterprise.” Karl Marx and
Friedrich Engels, authors of the Communist Manifesto, would agree with him.
In their famous manifesto they list 10 conditions necessary to have a valid
socialist society. The last one reads: “Free education for all children in
public schools.”
Other famous supporters of public education include Hitler, Stalin, Castro,
Mao Zedong, Mussolini, and every other 20th-century dictator, as well as
virtually every politician throughout the entire world. It is thus truly
amazing that private education has not been almost completely eliminated by
now.
But then, it actually has.
Most so-called private schools and universities that exist today are
anything but private, since they receive, either directly or indirectly,
government money and other assistance. (Hillsdale College is one notable
exception.) They also must often comply with government educational
requirements to receive this money.
Consider this example: Recently, America’s Roman Catholic bishops voted
223-31 to impose tighter controls over the nation’s 234 Catholic colleges
and universities. Now college leaders are afraid that this action might
threaten government funding of these religious institutions.
Chase writes, “If children are functionally illiterate, the odds are stacked
heavily against them in today’s economy.” He is clearly implying that
without public schools, functional illiteracy would be widespread.
What he fails to mention is the fact that the public schools have been
giving high-school diplomas to vast numbers of functional illiterates for
decades, thereby being the main institutions responsible for this
inexcusable phenomenon which seriously damages the lives of millions of
Americans as well as our economy. (At least 90 percent of K-12 student
attend public schools.)
Chase asserts, “We live in an age that glorifies the market.” Boy, you sure
could have fooled me. If what he says is true, then why do we find that the
government is extensively involved in virtually every human activity,
including providing pornography to the general public by means of the
“romance” novels that are available at public libraries?
Also, the children living in America are not “our” children as Bob Chase and
others insist. This collectivist concept clearly implies that everybody in
the United States comprises just one big family (a collective), and that we
must all be held responsible, by force of government, for everybody else,
including children. (Bill Clinton, a collectivist to the core of his being,
often refers to all of us as “the American family.”)
Chase concludes that “the market cannot handle the education of 46.6 million
children in 87,125 K-12 public schools.” How right he is, since a genuine
free-market operation would have nothing to do with government schools and
government funding. The operating of public schools by such companies as
Edison Schools Inc., using government money to teach children who are forced
by compulsory-attendance laws to attend school, is definitely not an example
of the free market.
Chase at least admits that the public schools are ailing, but he calls for
the spending of even more “public dollars to support proven, wholesale
reforms.” Just how many times have we heard this plea?
The best possible reform that could ever be effected is eliminating the
completely politicized socialist government schools and replacing them with
private, profit-making, and charitable education businesses that offer
courses of instruction only to willing customers. We need to introduce
education to the free market.
Thomas L. Johnson is professor emeritus of biological sciences at Mary
Washington College.
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