Public schools glue our community together. Ironically, it is that glue that makes individual liberty possible. Because they are “public,” they teach tolerance and require students to practice it. Students must at least tolerate others who are different – different family incomes, different races, different religions, different political allegiances. That tolerance, in turn, paves the way for children to become adults who can live together in a society where individuals are free to be different.
Without respect for difference, no differences would be tolerated. Intolerance snuffs out freedom.
There are now those who now seek to undermine the public school system with a gospel of state-funded “parental choice” that promises to promote intolerance. They want to use state money - grants, vouchers, tax credits, or debit card accounts - to enable parents to send children to private schools or even to school students at home.
Our state constitution prohibits using tax money for schools that are not “free schools,” but these promoters argue that this does not prohibit giving money to parents, an end-run that never occurred to anyone in the first 100 or so years of the constitution’s existence. Casting aside any pretense of conservatism, they call their idea “revolutionary.”
It is a “revolution” Mississippi does not need.
To begin with, providing state money for private education will undercut support for public schools and reduce funds available for them. In Arizona, held up as an example by school choice advocates, state money for private education tripled from 2008 to 2019, but the per pupil expenditures in the public schools declined 5.7% -- as opposed to the 9.7% growth in other states. Mississippi public schools are already underfunded. They need more support, not less.
In addition, what the movement means is “no choice” for taxpayers because it forces taxpayers to finance teachings with which they may violently disagree. Just last year the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public funding of private schools cannot discriminate against religious schools. Now a religious school must be funded, no matter how eccentric its doctrines.
Because of that court decision, public funding for private education will require taxpayers to fund indoctrination of children in doctrines many taxpayers see as anathema, not only various extremes of Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish thought, but also Muslim, Rastafarian, Hindu and even, if application should be made, Wiccan – a pagan sect that meets in covens. The only way to avoid this is not to fund private schools at all.
But it gets worse. Private schools will be expected to go where the money is. The poor will be taxed to fund education for the rich. While presumably racial discrimination in admissions will be prohibited, our experience with private schools in Jackson since 1970 has shown that racial segregation will persist. There will be nothing to prevent the organization of yet another round of schools sponsored a White Citizens Council or the Republic of New Afrika.
Also, the public may have difficulty discovering how its money is being used. Private schools are not subject to public scrutiny. At the extreme end, home school expenditures will be subject to even less control – does a family trip to Disney World Epcot count as an educational experience?
And then there will be the problem of the for-profit private schools, whose owners now provide significant support for the “school choice” movement. They will presumably receive a per capita payment like the one operators of private prisons now receive. So they will be subject to the familiar destructive incentive to spend as little as possible on programs in order to make as much money as possible for shareholders.
But the real bottom line here is the further destruction of what one author has called the “social capital” that holds our society together and makes individual freedom possible. Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone/The Collapse and Revival of American Community, describes the fragmentation of our society since World War II. He finds evidence of fragmentation in falling membership in civic activities as well as a decline in social trust – an element of social cohesion that polls show is shockingly low in Mississippi. He worries that a decline in “generalized reciprocity,” a belief in helping each other out, endangers our ability to lead civilized lives.
Public school diversity promotes trust and enhances social capital. As he writes, the more economically, ethnically and religiously diverse a group is, the greater is its capacity to cultivate the kind of public deliberation that is essential to democratic citizenship. He says “social capital and tolerance have a symbiotic relationship.” And tolerance is necessary if individual liberty is to survive.
Mississippi’s public schools need improvement, but they have served us well. The state should not starve them to create a private education system that encourages division, discourages tolerance, funds extremism, lacks public oversight, and puts tax dollars in the pockets of private investors at the expense of school children. On this issue, we need a conservative bias against reckless experimentation. That is why multiple states in recent years have rejected proposals like this, and Mississippi should too.
Luther Munford is a Northsider.
