I recently attended Ian Underwood’s presentation titled “Back to Schools” at the Sullivan County GOP Committee meeting, during which he argued coherently and consistently for separating the concerns of what to include in government-funded schools and what to exclude.
The main thrust of the presentation was identifying how the reality of Education Freedom Accounts, EFAs, do not support the goals that many of their proponents claim and that the most crucial question, what is the goal of education, is obscured by the EFA discussion.
The presentation happened shortly after the SAU#6 deliberative session. During that deliberative session, the administrators were congratulated on their outstanding performance, and a school board member described the goal of education as raising New Hampshire residents focused on creating a fairer New Hampshire. It’s hard to imagine a situation more at odds with Ian’s perspective.
The incongruency between the deliberative session and Ian’s presentation caused me to think of how the vital questions raised by the presentation could gain the consideration they deserve from the taxpayers. If, as Ian claimed, EFAs are not a market-based solution to education issues, what would constitute such a solution? Then it dawned on me. There isn’t one because New Hampshire’s education structure mirrors a pre-market capitalism economy. It is a feudal model.
As the name and morphology imply, the State is the omnipotent ruler. The SAUs are fiefs granted by the State. The administrative staff serves as the barons who receive the rent the State extracts from the taxpayers, who are the serfs. The administrative staff direct the use of the rent in maintaining the fief. The teaching staff are the overseers who perform husbandry services on the students, who are the livestock. Changes in the size of the herd do not impact the amount of rent extracted from the serfs. Changes in the amount of rent do not affect the nature or quality of the husbandry services implemented by the overseers.
Feudalism ended in continental Europe primarily due to the black death reducing the number of serfs, which indirectly led to the rise of wage-based employment. Sadly, the persistent reduction in enrollment that New Hampshire has experienced won’t play a similar role now because the students are just livestock. The proponents of EFAs may eventually play a role analogous to Martin Luther’s, e.g., throwing the peasants under the bus in return for favorable treatment by the State. None of this fills me with hope for the future.
