For many right-wing politicians, 2023 is “the year of universal choice in education.”  They and eager entrepreneurs are working overtime to defund public education by diverting tax dollars away from traditional public schools and, they claim, into the hands of parents, who then can decide how their children are educated. The not-so-secret goal of many of these zealots and opportunists is to discredit, dismantle, and eventually destroy public education, because they do not believe education has a public purpose.

It’s not just rhetoric.  Arizona, North Carolina, and a few other states have pushed through schemes to create vouchers and allow tax deductions for private and parochial school tuition. Idaho has given parents unprecedented authority over the textbooks schools use. Oklahoma has approved a religiously-affiliated charter school, another crack in the wall separating church and state. As it always does, money attracts a crowd, and so, for example, new private schools–most of them religiously-based–are springing up in Arizona and elsewhere, promising to bring up children with proper Christian values.  These schools are free from oversight, meaning there’s no accountability whatsoever.  The lessons of unsupervised charter schools–greed and theft–are being ignored, and so we should expect history to repeat itself.

Does it matter?  Why shouldn’t parents be free to send their kids to any school they choose? And what’s it to you if some of these schools teach children that the world is flat, that their God created the universe in six days and rested on the seventh, that women must obey their husbands on all things, that Jews killed Christ, that non-white people are inferior, and that children who misbehave must be whipped, and so on?  What’s the public interest here?  

Well, these are our tax dollars, for one thing, but I would argue that all of us, collectively, have a shared interest in an educated citizenry.  About 75% of households in the United States do not have school-age children living in them, and the chances are that you are in that group.  So why should you–or the rest of those 75%–care about what is happening to public education?

Here’s my answer: Those 50 million children in public schools are going to be adults someday, and where they go to school won’t determine where they end up living. You want your local cops, firefighters, and other public employees to be well-educated, well-rounded, and exposed to people of varying backgrounds.  Public schools can see that those things happen, but many of those civil servants will have grown up and gone to school in other places. In fact, one in eight will have attended schools in California, and there’s nothing to keep them from moving to New Jersey, Minnesota, and Massachusetts.

Perhaps some day one of them will be called on to repair the gas main leak just down the street from your home.  Perhaps another will be the nurse or medical technician adjusting your IV drip and rationing out your vital medications.  Perhaps one will be the EMT person summoned to your home when your spouse has a life-threatening medical emergency.  You definitely want them to be educated to the maximum extent possible, wherever they go to school.

Even though MOST public school graduates won’t live anywhere near you, their competence may affect you directly. Some may be responsible for the maintenance of the jet planes that you, your family, and other loved ones will board one day, and you definitely want them to be competent.  Others may be processing your tax returns, handling your request for a passport renewal, or maintaining your Social Security and Medicare records.  In short, you will benefit if those young people are well educated…and you might die if they are not.

I’m not arguing for a free pass for public schools, which need to improve to be worthy of our making a concerted effort to defend them from the would-be “defunders” and destroyers.  We should begin by considering the fundamental purpose of public education, which is, I believe, to “Help Grow American Citizens.”  

Help: It’s a team effort involving parents and teachers.

Grow: It’s a process, a film and not a snapshot. That is, don’t pay too much attention to bubble test numbers.

American: That’s who we are, and children need to be connected to our country, which, whatever its flaws, is still a shining city on a hill.

Citizens: This is the term we need to argue about. What does it mean to be a citizen? What do good citizens do? 

How do schools teach citizenship? They could begin by practicing democracy. Shouldn’t schools that intend to prepare children to live in a democratic society practice what it’s preaching, for both its teachers and their students.  Right now, most public schools are top-down: Everyone is told where to be, when to be there, and what to do once there, all in the name of efficiency–not learning. Ideally, schools and the adults in them should seek first to discover How Each Child Is Smart (and not How Smart Each Child Is) and then build on those strengths and interests. 

We have strayed far from our original conception of a public institution that exists to strengthen the social fabric and bring us together. There’s work to be done.

It’s worth repeating that, if public education is going to succeed, the adults in control must learn to think differently.  Here are four possible paths to success:

1. Think like a librarian
2. Think like a swimming instructor
3. Think like a highway engineer
4. Think like a gardener

Librarians do not have a captive audience. After all, no one is required to attend the library.  To survive and prosper, librarians have had to identify their audiences and find ways to appeal to them, to draw them into their buildings or electronic networks.  For the most part, they’ve succeeded, and without pandering.    So educators must ask students the librarian’s questions: 

What can I do to make material this appealing to you? 

How can I persuade you to invest your energies in this subject? 

What else are you interested in?  (Because knowing that might allow you to teach this important material at the same time,)

Or educators can learn to think like Swimming instructors, who are measured by results. If wannabe swimmers don’t learn to swim, the instructor cannot claim, “I taught them effectively, so it’s not my fault that they cannot swim.”  No, he or she has to find new ways to teach swimming, because the instructor owns the failure.  In my experience, many teachers already think the way competent swimming instructors do. But not enough!  Every teacher and parent has to live by the mantra, “If they’re not learning, then I am not teaching.”   

And I don’t mean waiting around for bubble test results at the end of the year (or later).  Teachers need to assess frequently, take a clear-headed look at the results, and adapt accordingly. That means asking for help.  That also means that leadership must abandon the all-too-prevalent “Gotcha” attitude toward teachers.  The new thinking: “Assess to improve,” and not “Test to punish.”

Why not think like Highway engineers–the men and women who design our roads and streets?  After all, they have one important goal in mind: to get us safely from Point A to Point B.  Because their data and their own life experience tells them that every driver’s attention wanders, highway engineers design roads whose lanes are about one-third wider than the cars that travel on them.  Without that extra room for predictable error, we’d have many more highway accidents.  Instead, nearly all of us arrive at our destinations safely.

Apply that to teaching and learning, and we will have an education system that treats failure as nothing more than an opportunity to try again.  Recall the story of WD-40. If the chemical engineers who developed that ubiquitous product had been penalized for failing, work would have stopped after their first try, which they conveniently labeled “WD-1.”  Instead, they tried and failed 38 more times before hitting on a formula that worked!  Plan teaching with that in mind, and don’t take it personally when a student doesn’t get it the first time, or the fifth. Explore the reasoning behind the error, but not punitively. Celebrate wherever possible.

The last option is to think like Gardeners, who understand that what they are involved in is a work in progress.  And works in progress  take time, faith, work, and love.  The last thing a gardener would ever do is pull up the emerging plant or flower by the roots to see if it’s growing.  Nurturing is essential. 

Gardeners know that roses demand one kind of attention, which is different from what green beans, tomatoes, and hydrangeas require.  “One size fits all’ doesn’t apply to gardening—or to teaching and learning.  The educational equivalent mind set asks “How is this child smart, and what is she interested in?”  

What’s more, gardeners don’t hover over their seedlings; they pay the appropriate amount of attention and they walk away, leaving nature, the sun, the earth, and the seeds to do the work of growing.  

To be like gardeners, teachers and parents cannot hover; they cannot expect students to be ‘on task’ all the time.  In fact, in these difficult times, play and free time have never been more important.

What should you do to save–and improve–public education?  Talk with family, friends, and neighbors about the THREE kinds of school safety: Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual.  Is it safe in your schools to admit “I don’t understand” or to be curious? Is it safe to be smart? It should be.  Do student leaders stand up for and defend vulnerable kids who are being bullied or harassed? Do they call out the bullies? They should be rewarded for doing that.  Armed police seem to make schools more dangerous, not less, as this new report explains.

Also: Call out the profiteers and charlatans. Confront those who would ban books and ideas. Support political leaders who value diversity and curiosity.  Support your teachers and principals.

Consider running for School Board or other local office.

What we cannot afford to do is nothing, because that’s why the destroyers are now winning.