Market Values Invite A Class-Dividing Education System

Our democratic society depends upon a public school system that produces graduates who identify with democracy’s fundamental values and who provide the work necessary to maintain them.

Isn’t that what we want? Or would we prefer public schools to help establish a class society that values some people less than others and excludes them from meaningful participation?

That is what we could expect from two initiatives now before the Legislature in Olympia and likely headed for the general election ballot in November.

Those who support Initiative 173, establishing tuition vouchers, and Initiative 177, allowing charter schools, say free market enterprise and consumer choice would make our educational system responsive to the public’s needs and demands. This is a fallacy.

Our government is designed to uphold our fundamental belief that each person is created equal and has the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The U.S. economy, on the other hand, is designed to uphold, as much as possible, our beliefs about property and the free use of it. The right to own property, to derive value from our labor and to exercise free choice in the exchange of resources, goods and services - these are also basic values in our society.

A free market economy, vibrant with human enterprise, is the most efficient model yet designed for the distribution of scarce resources to satisfy human wants and needs.

A free economy does not exist to preserve our fundamental human rights, just as the purpose of a democratic government is not to resolve economic problems.

An example of how democratic values and a free market economy can be at odds is slavery. Scholars of U.S. economic history conclude that slave labor was the most cost-effective means of producing cotton and the most responsive, market-driven means to satisfy consumer demand. The strength of our country’s social consciousness, however, recognized that slavery was a violation of human rights and this reprehensible practice was abolished.

Thus it is a mistake to suggest that human behavior, dependent upon the principles of the free market economic model, would guide the renewal of our public school system.

Using free market enterprise to allocate educational resources limits participation by citizens in our educational system. Vouchers are of value only to those with the wealth to pay the remaining “half” of the tuition at another school and to afford the added cost of transportation. Choice, in effect, is denied those without this wealth.

Children locked into poverty or other circumstances beyond their control cannot change this condition of economic exclusion. The dilution of funding for their education would erode their opportunity for equal access to an education.

Charter school advocates want parents and community members with similar views and values to form, with public funds, their own schools to reflect those views and values. Separation of children into such homogeneous groups endangers the potential to develop recognition of the dignity of each person in society, tolerance for others and learn the value of disagreement. We might also lose what it means to be a community.

Since its inception the public school system has been envisioned as a model of a democratic government because democratic values are at the school system’s core.

We value our public schools because our children receive an education with the other children in our community. The diversity of values and opinions confronted in the schools reflects living in our community. This interaction provides each student the opportunity to find strength in individual values and opinions as well as to learn about others’ values and opinions.

Our schools should reflect our democratic society. Purposeful conflict and commonly held goals need to guide decision-making by all the stakeholders, such as parents, community members, students, and the schools’ teachers and staff. To sustain our democracy, students need to build academic excellence and tolerance for others, and to acquire the skills for respectful human interaction.

To reform our educational system requires us to do the difficult thing: become involved in the public schools. Taking the easy route and depending on the wisdom of “market forces” to preserve our democracy through initiatives 173 and 177 offers only false hope.

Democracy and our system of education depend upon the personal participation of all in our community. Consumer behavior is often fickle and focuses only on self.

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