Shielding public education as a core of democracy
In 1997, education historian David Labaree observed that the goals of education shifted since the beginning of our nation. At its inception, public education was conceived as a public good, established to train citizens to maintain our democracy. However, in the 20th century, the notion emerged that public education is a private good whose goal is individual advancement. Labaree noted warned that the primacy of this view of education has negative consequences for schools: elevating the formal markers of education (such as test scores) over substantive learning, narrowing curriculum, and increasing stratification and exclusion. It also has negative consequences for society. The endgame, he predicted, is the complete withdrawal of public control of education in favor of privatization.
Two excellent new books prove the prescience of Labaree’s warnings: “Schoolhouse Burning,” by law professor Derek Black, and “A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door,” by education historian Jack Schneider and journalist Jennifer Berskhire.
In his scrupulously researched book, Derek Black emphasizes that the recognition that education is essential to democracy predated public schools and even the U.S. Constitution. He describes how the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, which applied to 31 future states, mandated funding and land for public schools, declaring that education was “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.” Education was not explicitly included in the U.S. Constitution. However, after the Civil War, the United States required Southern states guarantee a right to education in their state constitutions as a condition for readmission. Northern states followed suit. State education articles were based on the notion that education was necessary to citizenship and democracy.
These lofty ideals were often not matched by reality. Enslaved African Americans neither had their freedom nor education. However, African Americans recognized early on that education was the key to full citizenship, and fought for the right to equal access and treatment for all. For Black, the struggle of ensuring equality in public education is intertwined with the struggle for political equality.
Black posits that attacks on public education throughout American history are attacks on democracy itself. Recent events prove his point. For example, Rutgers’ Domingo Morel showed that when majority African-American elected school boards won gains such as increased school funding, states took over those school districts, neutralizing the boards’ power. Northwestern’s
Sally Nuamah found that in Chicago, where there is no elected school board, the city’s closure of 50 schools in one year despite protest by the AfricanAmerican community decreased political participation by that community afterward.
Black writes that the billionaire Koch brothers, who fund charters and voucher efforts as well as attacks on other public institutions, view school privatization as the “low hanging fruit for policy change” to “change the trajectory of the country.”
“A Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door” complements “Schoolhouse Burning” by detailing the specific mechanisms those who attack public education have employed in recent years. In this eminently readable book, the authors describe the “unmaking” of public education and the players
In his scrupulously researched book, Derek Black emphasizes that the recognition that education is essential to democracy predated public schools and even the U.S. Constitution.
behind this effort. They explain how the attacks on public schools are part of a larger effort shrink government and in general what the public expects from the public sphere. One target is the largest part of any education budget: teachers. Anti-public education advocates have pushed cutting state spending on education, attacking job protections, de-professionalizing teaching, weakening unions and promoting failed educational ideas like virtual learning- where teachers are replaced by computers. These “unmakers” also aim to deregulate education, including expanding unaccountable voucher and charter schools.
Schneider and Berkshire demonstrate that attacking public education has also torn at the social fabric of America. Attacking unions weakened the base for democratic electoral support. Deregulation resulted in the gutting of civil rights protections for vulnerable students in charter and voucher schools.
For all three authors, hope emerges from those directly affected by public schools. The recent teacher walkouts to protest school underfunding were widely supported by parents, students, and communities. Grassroots advocates and voters have defeated attempts to institute vouchers.
Both books note how it has been the activism of communities most excluded that has most often made public education live up to its ideals. These courageous efforts have a parallel in the recent presidential election, where African-American, Latinx and Native American voters overcame voter suppression efforts, secured Joe Biden’s victory, and safeguarded the integrity of our electoral system. As these books show, those in power owe it to these citizens and everyone else to ensure the vitality of two institutions that are the bedrock our democracy — voting and public education.