From 1970 to 1997, Shanker wrote a weekly column entitled 'Where We Stand', which appeared every Sunday in the 'New York Times'.
Here's part of Shanker's column from July 23, 1989, where he makes the startling admission that the public education system was in the process of failing, for operating like a communist economy with no incentives for innovation and productivity --
http://archive.is/CPhnG
https://www.nysut.org/resources/special-resources-sites/social-justice/shanker-library
http://archive.is/fhgZI
http://source.nysut.org/weblink7/DocView.aspx?id=1068
http://www.shankerinstitute.org/about-albert-shanker/
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| An image of a portion of Albert Shanker's July 23, 1989, 'Where We Stand' column. |
This paragraph from Shanker's column deserves to be repeated —
It’s time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve : It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.Those are tough words from a union leader who spent his life working in the public education system, and who helped to make it function like a 'planned economy'.
Now consider this tweet regarding public education, showing a quote from John Green --
https://archive.is/rbKZk
Green's quote is disturbing to read, and it is sad that it is being repeated in social media, as if it contains an important insight.
Notice that John Green's first two sentences in the quote above make absolutely no sense — even if you are perfectly happy with our dysfunctional, government monopolized, public education system, Green's quote does nothing to explain why you should want to pay for it.
Green asserts that the benefit from public education exists apart from its individual participants (parents and students). But all human values can only be defined with respect to individual people. There is no such thing as 'the benefit of the social order', as Green put it, because a social order is not an individual human being with interests, desires, or goals. Attempting to discuss human values outside of the context of individual human beings is worse than a contradiction, because human values only exist at all because of individual human beings.
In short, why would we spend the time and money to build and run any system that was not intended to benefit the people that participate in that system, or are affected by it, rather than some undefined abstraction, 'the social order'?
For example, consider the case of a prison system. In a free society, a prison system is not created and maintained for the benefit of some particular 'social order' — it is created and maintained (made part of a particular social order), because individual people want to have some form of protection against crime.
John Green uses the phrase 'social order' as if it describes an obvious value that all societies should strive to achieve. But this is obviously false. The phrase 'social order' is commonly used in two different senses: 1) to refer to a set of related social structures — institutions, relations, and practices. etc., or 2) to refer to a stable society, in contrast to one that exhibits chaos or disorder. Both of these uses of the phrase 'social order' are morally neutral.
Saying that something is 'for the benefit of the social order', is crude question begging: 'What particular institution or practice of which social order, and for what purpose?'
Notice that countries like North Korea and Cuba have elaborate social structures, stability, and free compulsory education, and no reasonable person would defend them as having a social order that should be emulated. Indeed, being stranded on a deserted island, with no social order of any kind, would be preferable to the lives of most North Koreans — you may still starve to death, but at least you will not be persecuted in the process.
Here is a more objective view of public education from H. L. Mencken, in the April 1924 issue of 'The American Mercury' --
http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1924apr-00504
...
That erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else.
...
Personally, I do not like paying taxes for public schools — not because I like 'living in a country with a bunch of stupid people', to use John Green's words, but because I know a government monopolized educational system will not prevent that — John Green and those who quote him favorably demonstrate that vividly.
If he were alive today, H. L. Mencken certainly would not be surprised to read John Green's statement, or to see it repeated — it fits Mencken's criticism of the nature of public education perfectly, in that Green's sentiment on public education is the unenlightened expression of a trained standardized citizenry, reduced to the same safe level.
When I first read John Green's statement, I wondered if it was not intended as some kind of provocation — at first glance, this kind of aggressive, self-righteous stupidity, that treats government dysfunction as cause for celebration, seems a little unbelievable. But after seeing it repeated, it is clear that Green's sentiment resonates with many people.
I would love to pay taxes for an educational system that had enlightenment as its aim, and actually produced it as a result, but clearly that is not what we have.
Here is a comment on some of the other fallacies contained in Green's statement —
http://jsbmorse.com/john-greens-fallacies-on-education/
http://archive.is/qZxnP
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