Welcome to the discussion about P-16 education policy

This blog is an attempt to provide readers with a lively and accessible, but scholarly view of the critical role of P-16 eduction for the future of Kentucky.  

A healthy and vibrant system of public education from early childhood through the university level, cradle to career, not only impacts the competitiveness of our economy, it impacts our future as a democracy.  Thomas Jefferson said "if a nation expects to be ignorant and free...it expects what never was and never will be." 

Maintaining the "public" part of our P-16 system is a cause worth defending.

From the very beginning, our nation's theory of government has been dependent on education. In looking at more than three centuries of history of US schooling, the main tenant where there is wide agreement is the role that public education plays as a “public good” in promoting and fostering our free and democratic society.  

Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton did not agree on much regarding the founding of our republic, but both wrote and spoke eloquently on the importance of public education in the development of an informed and enlightened citizenry.  The father of the common school, Horace Mann, said education was a prerequisite of citizenship. The 20th century voice of public education was the preeminent American philosopher John Dewey.  Dewey believed that the education system should be designed to make democracy work.  “A democracy is more than a form of government, it is a primary mode of associated living” where the public school played a key role in that aspect of human development. The expansion of free compulsory education for everyone in American society by the early 20th century through the mixing of classes and ethnicities was considered the crown of society and republican democratic ideals. 

Yet, I am fearful of the pejorative label “government schools” being applied in some states to public education as if moving schooling away from the public domain to private markets is the answer to every challenge.  Treating schooling as a commodity for the private market is dangerous.  We often hear the virtues of running schools like businesses.  But if we turned the tables and asked the CEO of a business to run their firm the way we are expected to run schools, then the CEO would have no control of the quality of the raw material they use.  A company making strawberry ice cream, for example, would have to use every strawberry, un-ripe, rotten and spoiled to produce their ice cream.  If applied to the business of health care then every hospital or doctor would be held accountable for the illness or death of a patient in their watch. 

Public goods and the public interest are not always protected when completely turned over to the hands of the private market place. 

We must uphold the social contract in which all youth can hope for a democratic future by seeing to it that our future citizens are trained to participate in an inclusive democratic society, a society built on the imperatives of equality, liberty and justice.  It is our education system that makes possible our students’ democratic identities, values, and political engagement.

Public education is the most important social invention in US history, a bedrock of our democracy and one of the few unifying forces in our nation.  The Christian philosopher Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the best morality test for any democratic society is the condition of its children-- ALL of its children.