Ten Points for Defending Public Schools

General Editor's Introduction
WHY ARE WE DEPENDING PUBLIC SCHOOLS? by Wayne Ross, 2004

The editors and authors of Defending Public Schools are not interested in defending the status quo. Each contributor is, however, very interested in preserving public schools as a key part of the two-centuries-old experiment that is American democracy. Public schools are in a centripetal position in our society and, as result, they always have been and will continue to be battlegrounds for conflicting visions of what our society should be.

We believe that public schools serve the public, "We, the people." We believe that schools should strengthen our democracy in the sense that our ability to meaningfully participate in the decision-making processes that impact our communities and our lives is enhanced, not constricted. Educational resources need to be directed toward increasing people's awareness of the relevant facts about their lives and increasing people's abilities to act upon these facts in their own true interests. Since the 1980s and even before, the purposes of public schools have been by the interests of the state and of concentrated private/corporate power, as follows from what I described earlier, as neoliberalism. We believe that public education ought to serve public interests, not the interests of private power and privilege.

At a time when our democracy and many of the liberties we hold dear are in crisis, we propose that the preservation of public schools is necessary to reverse anti-democratic trends that have accelerated under standards-based educational reforms, which intend to transform the nature and purposes of public schools and our society. Each of the volumes in Defending Public School takes on a different aspect of education, yet these volumes are bound together by the underlying assumption that preserving public schools is a necessary part of preserving democracy. The following ten points provide a synopsis of what defending public schools means to us:

1. The statist view of schools treats teachers as mere appendages to the machinery of the state and seeks to hold them accountable to serving the interests of state power. Linked as it is to the interests of private wealth, this view defines children's value in life as human resources and future consumers. Education should foster critical citizenship skills to advance a more viable and vibrant democratic society. Schools should be organized around preparing for democratic citizenship through engagement with real-world issues, problem solving, and critical thinking, and through active participation in civic and political processes. Informed citizenship in a broad-based, grassroots democracy must be based on principles of cooperation with others, nonviolent conflict resolution, dialogue, inquiry and rational debate, environmental activism, and the preservation and expansion of human rights. These skills, capacities, and dispositions need to be taught and practiced.

2. The current system uses "carrots and sticks" to coerce compliance with an alienating system of schooling aimed at inducing conformity among teachers and students through high-stakes testing and accountability. This system alienates teachers from their work by stripping it of all creative endeavors and reduces it to following scripted lesson plans. We believe that teaching is a matter of the heart, that place where intellect meets up with emotion and spirit in constant dialogue with the world around us. We call for the elimination of high-stakes standardized tests and the institution of more fair, equitable, and meaningful systems of accountability and assessment of both students and schools.

3. Current federal educational policy, embodied in the No Child Left Behind Act, sets impossible standards for a reason. Public access to institutions of learning helps promote the levels of critical civic activism witnessed during the 1960s and 1970s that challenged the power of the state and the corporations that it primarily serves. The current reform environment creates conditions in which public schools can only fail, thus providing "statistical evidence" for an alleged need to turn education over to private companies in the name of "freedom of choice." In combination with the growing corporate monopolization of the media, these reforms are part of a longer-range plan to consolidate private power's control over the total information system, thus eliminating avenues for the articulation of honest inquiry and dissent:

4. The current system of public schooling alienates students by stripping learning from its engagement with the world in all of its complexity. It reduces learning to test preparation as part of a larger rat race where students are situated within an economic competition for dwindling numbers of jobs. We believe that educational excellence needs to be defined in terms of teachers' abilities to inspire children to engage the world, for it is through such critical engagement that true learning (as opposed to rote memorization) actually occurs. Students living in the twenty-first century are going to have to deal with a host of problems created by their predecessors: global warming and other ecological disasters, global conflicts, human rights abuses, loss of civil liberties, and other inequities. The curriculum needs to address what students need to know and be able to do in the twenty-first century to deal with these problems~and it needs to be relevant to students' current interests and concerns.

5. Teachers matter. Teaching is a public act that bears directly on our collective future. We must ensure the quality of the profession by providing meaningful forms of preparation, induction, mentoring, professional development, career advancement, and improved working conditions. High learning standards should serve as guidelines, not curricular mandates, for teachers. Restore teacher control, in collaboration with students and communities, over decision making about issues of curriculum and instruction in the classroom-no more scripted teaching, no more mandated outcomes, no more "teacher-proof" curricula. Local control of education is at the heart of democracy; state and nationally mandated curriculum and assessment are a prescription for totalitarianism.

6. In the past two decades, the corporate sector has become increasingly involved with education in terms of supplementing public spending in exchange for school-based marketing (including advertising space in schools and textbooks, junk fast-food and vending machines, and commercial-laden "free" TV). We believe that students should not be thought of as a potential market or as consumers, but as future citizens.

7 All schools should be funded equally and fully, eliminating the dependence on private corporate hands and on property taxes, which create a two-tiered educational system by distributing educational monies inequitably. Include universal prekindergarten and tuition-free higher education for all qualified students in state universities.

8. Children of immigrants make up approximately 20 percent of the children in the United States, bringing linguistic and cultural differences to many classrooms. Added to this are 2.4 million children who speak a language other than English at home. Ensure that the learning needs of English language learners are met through caring, multicultural, multilingual education.

9. Citizens in a pluralistic democracy need to value difference and interact with people of differing abilities, orientations, ethnicities, cultures, and dispositions. Discard outmoded notions of a hypothetical norm, and describe either all students as different, or none of them. All classrooms should be inclusive, meeting the needs of all students together, in a way that is just, caring, challenging, and meaningful.