Groundhog Day

by
Ian Underwood

In the film Groundhog Day, Phil keeps waking up to the same day, over and over, already knowing what’s going to happen, and powerless to stop it.

I was reminded of the film while reading the 98-page ruling in the ConVal lawsuit, in which Judge Ruoff effectively sent the legislature back in time to 2008, telling it to ‘come up with a better number’. Similarly, in 2008 the legislature was sent back to 1998. So now we’re starting our third trip around this track. And if we’re not careful, we’ll start a fourth one sometime around 2028.

But are we doomed, like Phil, to keep going through the same motions, year after year, decade after decade? Perhaps not. Phil is finally able to break out of his cycle when he changes his focus — from what he wants, to what other people need. In the same way, we can break out of our cycle by changing our focus — from how much money we should spend on schools, and where we should get it from, to what we should be using it for.

As a nation, we’ve tripled per-student spending over the last half-century without affecting student achievement at all. There are states that spend a third of what New Hampshire spends, and others that spend 50 percent more, while getting results equivalent to ours.

As a state, we’ve tripled school spending within the last two decades, also without affecting student achievement. Adjusted for inflation, every district in New Hampshire is now spending more than even the richest districts were spending in 1998. That is, every district is now a ‘rich district’. And we have nothing to show for it.

Focusing on money hasn’t worked in the past, and it’s not going to work in the future. What should we focus on instead?

I suggest that we take a new look at an old question: What is the purpose of public schooling?

We often answer this using phrases like ‘making sure that each child has a bright future’, or ‘helping each child reaches his true potential’, or ‘giving each child the education he deserves’, and so on.

But in Claremont, the court identified a very different kind of purpose, declaring that it is the state’s responsibility to ‘provide each educable child with an opportunity to acquire the knowledge and learning necessary to participate intelligently in the American political, economic, and social systems of free government’.

That’s quite a mouthful, so we often use the shorthand phrase ‘adequate education’ to refer to it. But over time, the meaning of that phrase has drifted from its original definition, leading directly to many of the problems that we’re experiencing now.

The two key concepts in the court’s original definition are opportunity and necessary. Considering the first lets us answer the question: Adequate for what? Considering the second lets us answer the question: Adequate for whom?

First, to ask whether something is ‘adequate’ is always to ask whether it is adequate for some purpose. A hammer is adequate for driving nails. It’s less adequate for sinking screws, and not at all adequate for cutting boards.

Consider that anyone who can read at an 8th grade level can learn to read at a 12th grade level, just by continuing to read. And anyone who can read at a 12th grade level, and who has access to the internet, has the opportunity to learn anything there is to learn. (At that point, it’s no longer a matter of who is going to let you learn, or who is going to make you learn, but who can stop you from learning.)

So strictly speaking, getting a child to the point where he can read at an 8th grade level, and giving him access to the internet, fulfills the state’s obligation to give him the opportunity to educate himself. (Again, to be clear: It’s the state that the provides the opportunity. It’s the student who does the educating.)

Second, if the goal is to provide the opportunity to acquire the knowledge and learning that are necessary for participation in the named systems, it follows that taxpayers should not also be on the hook for things that are unnecessary for such participation.

Can someone who doesn’t play a musical instrument ‘participate intelligently in the American political, economic, and social systems of free government’? I think we can safely say that he can. How about someone who hasn’t competed in a sport? Or who can’t tell you about the plays of Shakespeare, or the pharaohs of Egypt? Or who can’t run a CNC machine, or evaluate an integral, or cut someone’s hair, or balance a tire, or read a novel in French, or write a Java program? Those are nice things to be able to do, nice experiences to have had, but they aren’t necessary.

In contrast, someone who has taken classes in these things, but who can’t read a textbook or instruction manual, who can’t follow a logical argument, who can’t evaluate a statistical claim cited in support of a proposed government policy, who can’t read and understand a 98-page court decision, and so on, cannot participate intelligently in those systems.

In short, sticking to the court’s original definition of adequacy requires us to focus, not on what knowledge students have when they leave school, but on their ability to acquire more knowledge on their own. Any definition that doesn’t focus on this is missing the point entirely.

But it’s not enough to ask: Adequate for what? We also have to ask: Adequate for whom? The state constitution says that we may sometimes be required to give up some of our rights, but only in order to protect other rights. If, as the courts have said, the idea behind all this is that education is ‘essential to the preservation of a free government’, then adequacy can’t be about charity (i.e., about what would be best, or valuable, or really nice for the children). It must instead be about protecting rights.

That is, opportunity and necessity must be the main criteria for determining what is, and isn’t, part of an adequate education; and for determining what should, and shouldn’t, be funded with taxes.

Changing focus from handing out charity to protecting rights gives us a principled way to decide what knowledge and learning are, in fact, essential to the preservation of a free government.

According to the court, the justification for tax-subsidized public schooling is this: We will take some of your money, but we will use it to keep you from being surrounded by citizens who are illiterate, innumerate, or irrational.

That’s the deal. Taxpayers have been living up to their side. It’s time for the state to start living up to its side as well.

To say that this requires a return to fundamentals is true, but problematic, because a lot of people interpret that to mean: ‘You want to teach kids just enough to let them work in factories.’

But as I’m using the word here, there are basically two fundamentals: You’re educated if (1) you can teach yourself whatever you want to learn, and (2) you can tell when other people are lying to you, or trying to mislead you.  Conversely, if you can’t do these two things, then you’re not educated, no matter how much seat time, or how many credits towards graduation, you’ve accumulated.

If we continue to organize schools around the teaching of a collection of particular subjects, over a range of particular ages — which is how the state currently defines an adequate education — we will continue to make children teacher-dependent, rather than self-reliant.

Not only does this fail to meet any reasonable definition of ‘adequate’, but it undermines the very idea of education. (As Yeats said, education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.)  It’s also incredibly expensive to hire people to teach students things that the students could — and should — be learning on their own. So we end up paying more, to get less. Does that sound familiar?

So we’re back where we started, still focusing on money, still looking for the right ‘formula’ for school funding — about to take another lap around that track, running hard without really getting anywhere. We can keep doing that, or we can learn from Phil, who escaped from his endless loop by changing his focus.

Let’s be like Phil.


[Thanks to NH State Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut for the original idea, and for his insights.]

Author

  • Ian Underwood

    Ian Underwood is the author of the Bare Minimum Books series (BareMinimumBooks.com).  He has been a planetary scientist and artificial intelligence researcher for NASA, the director of the renowned Ask Dr. Math service, co-founder of Bardo Farm and Shaolin Rifleworks, and a popular speaker at liberty-related events. He lives in Croydon, New Hampshire.

Share to...