Fighting for survival
by Lynn Harsh

Most people were shocked and angered by the Washington Education Association’s recent malevolent media attack of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. Many teachers were embarrassed by their union’s juvenile behavior. But what Washingtonians saw in print and heard on the radio is the true nature of teacher union officials, and it is what we have put up with in court for years. Stinking vitriol is the expected response of a monopoly fighting for its survival.

It does seem teacher union officials ought to behave better. We want to believe they will be honest, above-board and professional. After all, they purport to represent some of the most important people in our society – teachers.

But then, this would ignore thousands of years of human history. It is in our nature to fight for survival.

Despite protestations to the contrary, the teacher union protects a system rather than a product and the people who use it and produce it. It is their system, nonetheless. Once this is understood, it makes the WEA officials’ reaction perfectly understandable.

But from a consumer or professional educator’s point of view, this system so earnestly protected by the union results in lost opportunity of a very serious nature.

A comparison
Think about it in another context for a moment. What is more important for survival than food? What if the production and distribution of food were regulated entirely by politics and bureaucracy rather than stores competing for our business?

The results would be predictable. Producers and suppliers would cater to politicians rather than customers. The cost of food production would be high, its quality would suffer and its distribution would be inefficient. Still the producer would not lose income, since we customers could not take our business elsewhere. There would be no way for us to obtain greater value for our money; no way to make choices more appropriate to our needs.

Likewise, food producers and distributors who worked hard to give customers high quality products would receive no extra compensation or personal advancement.

Consumers who had the inclination and ability might grow most of their own food at home. People with lots of money could pay others to grow special food for them outside the system. But these consumers would still pay a “food tax” to the government’s official system to support those who may not be able to afford food otherwise.

Movements to broaden the numbers and types of food producers and distributors would be fiercely resisted by those with current privileged position. Enormous pressure would be brought against politicians who dared suggest alternative arrangements. Money overcharged to consumers would be used to develop campaigns accusing reformers of favoring the sale of low quality, potentially dangerous food to millions of innocents.

The slick messages from the status quo would find their mark in a public that has known no other system of food production and distribution. They would be afraid to change such an important element of life... for a time.

But when formerly malleable people would begin to rise up to ask embarrassing questions about quality, cost and access to food, the status quo would attempt to smash them and ruin their reputations. These reformers would be deemed “dangerous.” Innocent people, many of them hard-working producers, would be trapped in the middle; frustrated with the official system, but seeing no safe alternative.

Change would eventually come, but painfully. In the meantime, precious consumer and national resources would be drained while the battle raged.

But education is different
Is it? How so? Is it not one of the most important tools for living we can give our children?

I would like to offer a few concepts to chew on.

Is this statement true? State-sponsored education of children is necessary to create productive, well-balanced American citizens.

This notion has been with us for a long time. Horace Mann, long called the father of America’s public school system, said in an 1867 lecture that the system would “build up the nature of the child into a capacity for the intellectual comprehension of the universe and a spiritual similitude to its Author.” Furthermore, he said children would acquire the “bloom and elasticity of perfect health, manners born of artlessness and enthusiasm, and a countenance so inscribed with the records of pure thoughts and benevolent deeds, as to be one beaming, holy hieroglyph of love and duty.”

Excuse me, Horace: Were you chewing Camas leaves? Why would we ever want to put that kind of impossible burden on a public institution like our schools? Most of the attributes Mr. Mann described are the prerogatives of a child’s parents. It does not follow that failure of some parents to provide such capacity means public institutions must – or even can – do it.

Children can be well educated or mal-educated in any educational system. State-sponsored education holds no guarantees.

Public schools are necessary to protect diversity. True?

History does not support this argument if the system in question is a state-sponsored monopoly. One has only to look at some modern-day middle eastern countries to see the inherent dangers.

In his well researched book, Market Education: The Unknown History, author Andrew Coulson says, “Coercion, not diversity, has historically been the cause of balkanization in education systems. Time and time again, heterogenous societies have been able to exist in comparative harmony thanks to the freedom of parents to obtain the sort of education they valued for their children without forcing it on their neighbours. State school systems, by contrast, have consistently been used by powerful groups (whether democratic majorities or ruling elites) to discriminate against weaker groups.”

Plenty of choices exist in the current public school system. Is this statement true?

Al Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers union once said 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.”

So, does this mean EFF is against public schools? No, but public schools are just not oriented to the public very much anymore. They have become battlegrounds where grown-ups engage in endless turf wars. The system costs too much, has little flexibility, sidelines parents, and constricts teachers in terms of professional freedom and wages.

Those who want the end result of a well-educated citizenry (meaning excellent educational opportunities are available to all children), but who think alternative delivery methods should be discussed, are branded as heretics, union-busters or children haters.

Sadly, the monopoly’s survival instincts have created this intolerant misdirection.

It is patently dishonest not to debate reform ideas publicly – even those we do not like.

So what is the Evergreen Freedom Foundation’s “secret agenda” regarding K-12 education? Well, apparently, this is a hot secret. Let me spill the beans. Our goal is to “establish student-centered education in Washington state by providing educational choices for all parents, children and teachers, in a safe environment, where high academic achievement can flourish.

Shocking? I hardly think it should be. For details of how we would propose to reach that goal, visit our website www.effwa.org. And for our detractors reading this article: don’t try to read in-between the lines. We mean what we say right on the lines.

Living Liberty is the Evergreen Freedom Foundation's monthly newsletter. It provides updates on the issues and projects EFF is currently working on. You will also find commentary on state and sometimes federal government issues.

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Contact: Marsha Richards, Communications Director, (360) 956-3482

Evergreen Freedom Foundation P.O. Box 552, Olympia, WA 98507 Phone: (360) 956-3482, Fax: (360) 352-1874 Email: effwa@effwa.org