BIG BROTHER AT SCHOOL

By Jeff Jacoby

"Freedom of education, being an essential of civil and religious liberty . . . must not be interfered with under any pretext whatever," the party's national platform declared. "We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental . . . doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government."

Now which political party said that? The Libertarians? The Barry Goldwater Republicans of 1964? Some minor party on the right-wing fringe? Actually, that ringing endorsement of parental supremacy in education was adopted by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1892, which just goes to show what was possible before the Democratic Party was taken hostage by the teachers unions. (The same platform also warned that "the tendency to centralize all power at the federal capital has become a menace," blasted barriers to free trade as "robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few," and pledged "relentless opposition to the Republican policy of profligate expenditure.")

Today, on education as on so much else, the Democrats sing from a different hymnal. When the party's presidential candidates debated at Dartmouth College recently, they were asked about a controversial incident in Lexington, Mass., where a second-grade teacher, to the dismay of several parents, had read her young students a story celebrating same-sex marriage. Were the candidates "comfortable" with that? "Yes, absolutely," former senator John Edwards promptly replied. "I want my children . . . to be exposed to all the information . . . even in second grade . . . because I don't want to impose my view. Nobody made me God. I don't get to decide on behalf of my family or my children. . . . I don't get to impose on them what it is that I believe is right." None of the other candidates disagreed, even though most of them say they oppose same-sex marriage.

Thus in a little over 100 years, the Democratic Party -- and, for that matter, much of the Republican Party -- has been transformed from a champion of "parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children" to a party whose leaders believe that parents "don't get to impose" their views and values on what their kids are taught in school. Do American parents see anything wrong with that? Apparently not: The overwhelming majority of them dutifully enroll their children in government-operated schools, where the only views and values permitted are the ones prescribed by the state.

But controversies like the one in Lexington are reminders that Big Brother's ideas about what and how children should be taught are not always those of mom and dad.

Americans differ on same-sex marriage and evolution, on the importance of sports and the value of phonics, on the right to bear arms and the reverence due the Confederate flag. Some parents are committed secularists; others are devout believers. Some place great emphasis on math and science; others stress history and foreign languages. Americans hold disparate opinions on everything from the truth of the Bible to the meaning of the First Amendment, from the usefulness of rote memorization to the significance of music and art. With parents so often in boisterous disagreement, why should children be locked into a one-size-fits-all, government-knows-best model of education?

Nobody would want the government to run 90 percent of the nation's entertainment industry. Nobody thinks that 90 percent of all housing should be owned by the state. Nobody believes that health care would be improved if the government operated 90 percent of all hospitals, pharmacies, and doctors’ offices. Yet the government's control of 90 percent of the nation's schools leaves most Americans strangely unconcerned.

But we should be concerned. Not just because the quality of government schooling is frequently so poor or its costs so high. Not just because public schools are constantly roiled by political storms. Not just because schools backed by the power of the state are not accountable to parents and can ride roughshod over their concerns. And not just because the public-school monopoly, like virtually all monopolies, resists change, innovation, and excellence.

All of that is true, but a more fundamental truth is this: In a society founded on political and economic liberty, government schools should have no place. Free men and women do not entrust to the state the molding of their children's minds and character. As we wouldn't trust the state to feed our kids, or to clothe them, or to get them to bed on time, neither should we trust the state to teach them. What Americans in an earlier era knew in their bones, many in the 21st century need to relearn: Education is too important to be left to the government.





Hope for the innumerate from Australia

A teaching program that helps students "trust their heads" to recall basic mathematical facts has turned students failing maths into some of the best performers. The QuickSmart program, developed at the University of New England at Armidale in northern NSW, targets students failing national numeracy benchmarks who enter high school struggling with basic arithmetic and who often still count on their fingers.

John Pegg, who developed the program with Lorraine Graham, said QuickSmart was a last chance for students who needed to be proficient in basic maths before the end of primary school to develop the skills and proficiency required in high school. "These students use inefficient and error-prone approaches to learning and recalling information," he said. Professor Pegg, director of the National Centre of Science, ICT and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia, said students likened the improvement to "trusting their heads", meaning the answer to a sum like 7x5 came immediately.

The program received funding last week worth $200,000 from the federal Government and is being used with 800 students in 60 schools in NSW and the Northern Territory, including remote indigenous communities, where the rise in test scores is more than double the improvement in the average student.

At Orara High School in Coffs Harbour on the NSW north coast, about 70 students in Year 7, with about one in three having failed to meet minimal national numeracy benchmarks, were then taught using QuickSmart. Learning support teacher Lyn Alder said the school had a large proportion of students from low socio-economic backgrounds and about 11 per cent were indigenous. When they sat the NSW numeracy test earlier this year, the improvement in their results had almost doubled compared with the rest of the state, while the indigenous students' marks more than doubled compared with other indigenous students.

Ms Alder said about 40 per cent of the students jumped two levels in the four-level assessment system, from low to proficient or elementary to high. "It's given students the confidence to put up their hands and answer questions in class," she said. "They may not always be correct but they're prepared to have a go, and when you're dealing with students in a low socio-economic school, that's not always the norm."

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