Public schools, public goods, and public work

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Public schools, public goods,Public schools, public goods,and public work and public work Kathleen Knight Abowitz and Sarah M.

Stitzlein October 22, 2018

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The value of public schools goes beyondThe value of public schools goes beyondindividual benefits to include importantindividual benefits to include importantcivic priorities.civic priorities.

Do public schools constitute a public good?Before answering that question, it’s important tounderstand what we mean by a public good.School choice advocates tend to define theconcept in a way that is typical in the field ofeconomics: A public good is available for allindividuals to freely share and virtuallyimpossible to exclude others from enjoying(Anomaly, 2018). One of the most obviousexamples is clean air, something accessible andbeneficial to each individual. Many economistsgo further, claiming that public goods areaggregations of private goods — things that servethe needs, desires, and interests of individuals. Inother words, public goods are those items thatare preferred by and benefit the largest group ofindividuals.

Those who embrace market-based educationreform persistently use this economic definition(Currie-Knight, 2017; DeAngelis, 2018), usuallyclaiming that public schools are only a publicgood if they are consistently preferred andchosen by a large number of individuals and ifthey can be freely consumed by each individualas he or she desires. These reformers will point toevidence of inequities in public schools, or to thepreferences of some families for privateeducation, as reasons to answer no to thequestion of whether public schools are a publicgood. And if these schools do not constitute apublic good, the logical next step is to call forpolicies that will defund public schooling.

However, this increasingly popular conception ofthe public good effectively disregards the civicelement altogether (Santoro, 2018, p. 11), which,in turn, jeopardizes the long-standing role ofeducation in a democracy.

Defining a public good from a civic perspectiverequires us to use a rubric that goes beyondconsideration of the individual. In the case ofeducation, the civic public good includes benefitsfor both the individual and the wider community.Individuals benefit from receiving an educationthat enables them to function in society, and thewider community benefits from being part of apopulace possessing shared general knowledge,critical-thinking ability for making decisionsabout social problems, and norms of civility andcommunity engagement. These benefits aremade widely available and accessible to all socialclasses, races, and ethnic groups through auniversal, tuition-free system of publicschooling.

To assess the public value of such a system ofeducation, it is essential to understand thelimitations of the economists’ view of the publicgood and counter it with richer language andnarratives that convey the civic value of publiceducation to our future as a free, democraticpeople.

Buying education at the supermarket?Buying education at the supermarket?

Recently, a small group of Ohio citizens invitedtheir state senator to discuss education policywith them. When asked why he had supportedmany laws that weakened the state’s publicschools, he asserted that the provision ofeducation should be more like shopping forgroceries at a competitive supermarket. Heexplained that if he could, he would wipe theslate clean and start all over again to rebuild theeducational system. Rather than creating oneschool system for everyone, he would create aneducational credit card, where you could shop foryour family’s education like you shop forgroceries, in a marketplace of educationalchoices.

This well-worn grocery shopping metaphor is afamiliar gambit for explaining what’s wrong withthe model of government-run public educationsystems. For instance, in 2011, the Wall StreetJournal published an op-ed by DonaldBoudreaux titled, “If supermarkets were likepublic schools” that asked, “What if grocerieswere paid for by taxes, and you were assigned astore based on where you live?” The piece was athought experiment intended to demonstratehow ridiculous it would be to set up a system forpurchasing groceries that was like our system foreducating our nation’s children. If families wereassigned one grocery store where their grocerieswould be provided for free (having been paid forby taxes), these stores would have no incentive tooffer quality items and good choices. They wouldalways be sub-par and would therefore wastepublic money.

The supermarket metaphor is effective because itcalls on the familiar experience of easily going tothe grocery store and enjoying abundant options.Indeed, the plentiful American versus the sparseSoviet supermarket became a trope for thebenefits of capitalism during the 1980s and ’90s,widely used to communicate the bad outcomesof centralized planning (see, for example,Williams, 1995). “Competitive markets respondto competitive choice,” Boudreaux (2011) arguesin the Wall Street Journal. If competition hasimproved the quality of cereal, it is bound toimprove the quality of schools. This logic hasdominated education policy for more than adecade.

Unfortunately, the Ohio senator and manyleaders like him operate under a set ofassumptions built on the economic definition ofa public good that views education as only anindividual experience sought to fulfill one’sunique desires. These assumptions ignore thatpublic schools are, in large part, aimed atsupporting and improving social life incommunities and the nation. This civic framingof school as a public good is a historic ideal, butit is in danger of fading as a commonlyheld value in the face of powerful, well-financedindividualist views of education.

Choosing breakfast cereal: ThreeChoosing breakfast cereal: Threeassumptionsassumptions

To help advance the civic framework ofschooling’s public value, let us walk throughexactly how choosing a school for a child isdifferent from choosing a breakfast cereal,starting with our common assumptions aboutthat purchase. In the United States, cereal iswidely available for every taste, budget, andnutritional profile. When we shop for cereal,three assumptions tend to drive our choice:

Assumption 1: Assumption 1: Cereal is an individualpreference that can be efficiently accommodatedby a wide array of good options. I can changebrands and find good cereals easily, as the costis relatively low for most consumers. Buyersselect their breakfast cereal based on individualpreferences, and it is not unusual for a home tohave multiple cereal boxes in the cupboard toaccommodate each family member’s tastes.

Assumption 2: Assumption 2: Cereal is a choice I make for myown family. Your family’s needs or wishesshouldn’t affect my choices, and I shouldn’tattempt to interfere with yours. My choice rarelyaffects other people — and only indirectly. Mymission, when buying my family groceries, is toprovide nutrition, full stomachs, and happinessto them, and not to anyone else.

Assumption 3: Assumption 3: Cereal choice has almostexclusively individual, not shared,consequences. If I eat Sugary Corn Pops everyday for a decade, I will bear any effects on mybody or life. If I buy overpriced granola and blowmy weekly budget, my family alone willexperience the consequence. Individualconsequences of breakfast cereal are borne bythose who make those individual choices, andnot the wider society.

Unlike cereals, though, schools serve our sharedcivic interests, rather than just our individualdesires and needs.

Shared liberties as a public goodShared liberties as a public good

Our capitalist marketplace provides grocerystores that carry an array of cereals fitting diversetastes. Individuals go to the store to buy a cerealthey want, take it home, and eat it for enjoymentor nutritional value. The market is designed todeliver maximum choice and quality to serveeach individual’s preferences. Education, on theother hand, isn’t solely about an individual’sexperience, nor is it aimed solely at individualfulfillment. While schools do and should providesome private goods, like credentials that enablefuture employment, schools are also widelyvalued for building skills for social interactionand engaged citizenship.

The best public schools are places of interactivelearning and building social relationships. To besuccessful, they must accommodate individualinterests and differences in a way that also meetssociety’s common needs and promotes certainshared values and principles. U.S. citizens enjoy,for example, individual liberties enshrined in ourBill of Rights, and we share an interest inpreserving these individual liberties. Our rightsto privacy, free assembly, or the vote areprotected only when citizens recognize theirshared interests in these rights and work tosafeguard them in the political process. Throughlearning history, literature, philosophy, and more,students cultivate an appreciation for these rightsand the know-how to defend them. And so publiceducation helps create and protect sharedliberties as a public good from which eachindividual benefits.

This is not to say that some private schools donot provide a sound education with regards tocivic values and shared liberties. Indeed, some doso with creativity and rigor. Other private schoolsdo not, however, because they are founded onreligious or sectarian values that are not alwaysaligned to those ideals. This variance in what aprivate education provides means that a fullyprivatized system of education will have no wayto systematically and thoroughly reproduce thesecivic values for future generations.

A public good is generated when citizens learn toappreciate shared liberties while being elbow-to-elbow and nose-to-nose with diverse others. Theintentional and unintentional separation orexclusion of students based on social class,intellectual ability, religious affiliation, sexuality,race, or other attributes diminishes the power ofa school to construct a public good ofsafeguarding shared liberties for all. Becauseprivate schools, by design and by practice, selectstudents based on an array of criteria, their valuein this regard is more limited than in publicschools that must accept all comers. (In practice,of course, some public schools are notparticularly diverse, and the de facto segregationof America’s public schools by race and classtarnishes public schooling’s value as a publicgood.)

Shared governance as a public goodShared governance as a public good

Cereal is an individual affair. It is bought to beconsumed by individuals, in their privateresidences. As a consumer, I want to purchase thecereal that satisfies the individuals in myhousehold, without regard for the individuals inmy block or city. Yet education in a societygoverned by democratic ideas must prepareindividuals for more than the satisfaction of theirindividual interests.

Shared governance is the assumption thatcitizens in democratic societies have a legitimatestake in the running of their society and shouldbe educated to participate in that work. Electingpolitical leadership, engaging in public dialoguearound shared problems, serving oncommunal boards, and volunteering for civicprojects are all common aspects of sharedgovernance. These activities involve not justmaking policies or decisions for our publicinstitutions; rather, they are forms of public workthat help preserve these institutions and createnew innovations to address shared problems.Public work entails “self-organized efforts by amix of people who solve common problems andcreate things, material or symbolic, of lastingcivic value” (Boyte, 2011, p. 632–633).

Public schools both rely on and transmit theskills for shared governance and public work.Public schools depend on their communities towork well — to do everything from partneringwith teachers to build educational opportunitiesoutside the classroom, to conducting free eyeexams, to sponsoring interns in workplaces, toleading parent workshops on raising teenagers, toworking with students and families coping withaddiction. Parents, pastors, health careprofessionals, business leaders, social workers,and students themselves are among the manykinds of citizens who engage in nonpaid laborthat contributes to public schooling’s success.Community members provide this labor not justbecause schools can’t afford to pay for theseservices (although many public schools cannot),but because public schools represent the sharedinterests of a community. Again, this work can beand is sometimes done in private schools, butthose communities tend to be more homogenous,creating fewer opportunities to work togetheracross differences in ideology, religion, orethnicity.

The value of public work and shared governanceis not derived from individual action alone — asit is with buying and eating cereal — but fromcollaborative action that reproduces a sharedvalue: a free democratic society, governed by andfor its own citizens. The economic definition of apublic good tends to sideline this value.

Shared future as a public goodShared future as a public good

The experience of buying, eating, and digesting abox of cereal is ephemeral in nature and unlikelyto have long-lasting effects. One’s education isquite different; concentrated in the first years ofone’s lifetime, it is designed to affect the courseof a person’s entire life.

What constitutes a meaningful, productive, andflourishing life is, of course, debatable, and anypublic school must have some consensus on whatis necessary for such a life while providingenough latitude in curriculum and policy toallow its diverse students to pursue theirparticular interests and talents. Many privateschools, on the other hand, direct students topursue particularist visions of a meaningful life,such as a Catholic vision of a life well lived.These visions may be suitable for some students,but public schools have an obligation to present anonsectarian vision of a life that concerns ourshared fate, as a people, across our diversebackgrounds (Ben-Porath, 2009).

Originally, in the history of public schooling, thisnotion of shared fate was bound up innationalism, as in the shared future of those whowere part of the same nation. Early publicschool advocates like Noah Webster believed thata common education, like a common language,was required for a people to become citizens of anation. The concept of shared fate is nowconsiderably expanded, as our consciousness ofinhabiting a shared and finite planet has grownin the last century. As important as a peacefulfuture is for us as members of a nation-state, oursense of shared fate now also includes theunderstanding that we as a nation must shareessential and limited resources with those withinour country and around the world.

And so a public good is created througheducation that prepares citizens for sharing fatestogether, collectively enduring unforeseenproblems, crises, and challenges in large partbecause they wish to peacefully shareneighborhoods, access to fresh water, breathableair, and so on. Public schools do not create publicgoods like access to clean water or air, but theycan create the conditions for an educatedcitizenry with the knowledge and capacity forworking with diverse others in negotiating ourcommon fate together. Public school curriculaand programs reflect and help us prepare for ourshared fate as communities and a nation.

Beyond choice and competitionBeyond choice and competition

Choosing an educational institution for mychildren is a much longer-term project thanchoosing a breakfast cereal. Its socialconsequences can last a lifetime. What matters isnot that there is a grocery aisle full of choices, butthat there are some choices that help promote theeconomic and the civic values we care about,including protecting our democratic ideals. If mychildren do not understand, appreciate, and learnhow to value the shared liberties built into ourpolitical system, their individual and socialfutures are diminished. The pleasures of SugaryCorn Pops aside, schools create public goodswhen they balance individual interests andpreferences with the common goods ofprotecting our shared liberties.

Images of supermarket competition and vastchoices to suit our individual preferences may beappealing. But when considering whetherschools constitute a public good, applying a civicrubric enables us to see how our shared liberties,shared governance, and shared fate are essentialto and can be protected by our public educationsystem. Insofar as our public schools are underattack, taking up the task of public work andfulfilling our responsibilities to those schoolsrequires us to respond to those attacks. We mustcreate new metaphors for public education thatenlarge our notions of a public good andhighlight the many practices within schools thatbear considerable social and political benefits.Working together, we can reestablish andrevitalize a public education system with lastingcivic value.

ReferencesReferences

Anomaly, J. (2018). Public goods and education.In A.I. Cohen (Ed.), Philosophy and Public Policy.Lanham, MD: Rowman and LittlefieldPublishing.

Ben-Porath, S. (2009). Citizenship under fire:Democratic education in times ofconflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress.

Boudreaux, D.J. (2011, May 5). If supermarketswere like public schools. The Wall Street Journal.

Boyte, H. (2011). Constructive politics as publicwork: organizing the literature. Political Theory,5 (39), 630–660.

Currie-Knight, K. (2017, January). Why educationisn’t a public good — and why governmentdoesn’t have to provide it [Blog post]. LearnLiberty. www.learnliberty.org/blog/why-education-isnt-a-public-good-and-why-government-doesnt-have-to-provide-it

DeAngelis, C. (2018). Public schooling is not apublic good. CatoInstitute. www.cato.org/publications/commentary/public-schooling-not-public-good

Santoro, D.A. (2018). NEPC Review: Is PublicSchooling a Public Good? An Analysis ofSchooling Externalities. Boulder, CO: NationalEducation Policy Center.

Williams, W.E. (1995). Supermarkets displaycapitalism at its best. Human Events, 51 (43), 10.

Citation: Citation: Abowitz, K.K. & Stitzlein, S.M. (2018).Public schools, public goods, and publicwork. Phi Delta Kappan, 100 (3), 33-37.

Kathleen Knight Abowitz

Sarah M. Stitzlein

KATHLEEN KNIGHT ABOWITZKATHLEEN KNIGHT ABOWITZ(knightk2@miamioh.edu;@kknightabowitz) is a professor in theDepartment of Educational Leadership atMiami University in Oxford, Ohio. She isthe author of Publics for Public Schools:Legitimacy, Democracy, and Leadership(Routledge, 2014).

Choosing an educational institution for mychildren is a much longer-term project thanchoosing a breakfast cereal.

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Defining a public good from a civicperspective requires us to use a rubric thatgoes beyond consideration of theindividual.

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