Students, Not Parents, Should Choose Schools
Have you ever known young people to be scared when their parents and their teachers talk? They have reason to be. The gap between these two powers—the one ruling their home, the other in charge of them at school—is one of the places they can find some freedom, and when home and school work together, they can take that freedom away. They can extend the power of teachers into the home, or the power of parents into school.
If others choose your school and the government forces you to go to the school that was chosen for you, you are coerced—whether the government made that choice itself or delegated it to your parents.
So if we’re going to talk about school choice in terms of freedom, as Neal McCluskey of Cato correctly says we should, we have to look at the matter carefully. The individuals whose freedom is most at stake in school choice are the students—the people who are actually spending a large part of their day in schools. To say that they “are subject to someone’s control no matter what,” as McCluskey does, is to brush aside their freedom. All you have left then is the “freedom” of the people who are fighting over the right to control them.
Once we put the freedom of young people at the center of the discussion, it’s obvious that school choice can make them a lot freer—if they are the ones making the choice. Then they can choose schools that operate according to their values. They’ll be taught things they want to learn; they’ll be free to express their opinions or be sheltered from those they find oppressive; and they won’t be punished for doing what they think is right, because they’ll have chosen schools where the people enforcing discipline share their views of what’s right. Or at least, they’ll have the opportunity to try to get into schools that suit them in these ways.
If you decide what school (if any) to attend, you’re not being coerced to go to that school. If others choose your school and the government forces you to go to the school that was chosen for you, you are coerced—whether the government made that choice itself or delegated it to your parents.
It’s not at all obvious that letting their parents choose will make them freer than letting the government assign them to schools based on where they live.
But if you assume that young people aren’t going to get to make the choice, it’s not at all obvious that letting their parents choose will make them freer than letting the government assign them to schools based on where they live. From the perspective of students’ control over their own lives, their opportunity to explore ideas, and even their protection from violent abuse, letting parents choose their children’s schools is dangerous. It would work out well for some students, but it would make others worse off than if the government simply assigned them to a school. Of the three basic possibilities—parents choosing, government choosing, and students choosing—only student choice, whatever disadvantages it may have in other respects, is unambiguously superior in terms of protecting students’ rights, assuming, that is, that the students really are the ones making the choices.
Consider how the relationship between student and school changes depending on who chooses the school: the student, his or her parents, or the government.
Student Choice
When you choose your own school, it has an incentive to be loyal to you. If you need protection against your parents, it has an incentive to provide that. For example, if you say you’re being abused at home, teachers and administrators will have an incentive to believe you and help you deal with the child-protection authorities; otherwise, you might seek a different school. Even in cases where the government wouldn’t call your parents’ behavior abusive, if you find your home oppressive, a school of your own choosing can be a respite from it—a place where the rules and culture suit you.
The rules and culture are likely to suit you because you get to choose them by finding a school that has rules and a culture you like. If you want the freedom to tailor your own curriculum, you can look for that; if you think it’s wiser to find a school with a great record and let the school tell you what to study, you can do that. If you think a firm disciplinary system can keep you safe from bullies, you can seek one; if you think such systems are likely to restrict you too much or punish you unjustly, you can seek a school with fewer rules, milder punishments, or procedures that place a higher priority on preventing the mistaken punishment of the innocent. If you value the freedom to express yourself through clothing, you can choose a school with no dress code; if you think such expression provides more distraction than value, you can pick one with a uniform. Whichever rules you end up under, you are subject to them because you chose the school knowing it has those rules.
If you want to learn as much science as you can, you can choose a school that focuses on science, even if your parents want to “protect” you from a godless understanding of the world. If you want to study a religion in depth in an environment that helps you live it, you can choose that, even if your parents are secular.
Similarly, you can seek a curriculum that suits your values, even if your parents don’t share those values. If, for example, you want to learn as much science as you can, you can choose a school that focuses on science, even if your parents want to “protect” you from a godless understanding of the world. If you want to study a religion in depth in an environment that helps you live it, you can choose that, even if your parents are secular.
And if you have the power to decide what school (if any) you’ll attend, by choosing a school you establish a relationship with that school that’s independent of your parents. Then, in that school, you have a space not just to make friends your own age, but to choose adult mentors and maybe even make adult friends. Because you’re choosing the school, the people you meet there are people who have enough in common with you to have created it, chosen to work for it, or chosen to attend it. And because your parents can’t withdraw you from the school, the ties you develop there can’t be cut whenever they want.
Those relationships are part of why your school can feel like home when home doesn’t. A classmate may be shocked that your parents physically punish you, even if the state doesn’t think the beatings are severe enough to be illegal. If you are gay and your parents keep telling you that’s sinful, an LGBT-focused school will give you the safe space your parents deny you at home; a school that prioritizes free expression will likely include many people who’ll tell you your parents are wrong.
Parent Choice
Contrast a situation where your school is chosen for you by your parents—the same parents who rule your life outside school. Now the school is loyal to your parents; it has an incentive to enforce their will against you rather than protect you from them.
Contrast a situation where your school is chosen for you by your parents—the same parents who rule your life outside school. Now the school is loyal to your parents; it has an incentive to enforce their will against you rather than protect you from them.
Out of kindness or fear of regulators it might protect you from abuse at home, should the need arise, but the sanction it risks from your parents if it tries—they might pull you out—is far more immediate than any punishment it might face from regulators if school employees pretend not to notice the signs you’re being abused or if they pretend to disbelieve you when you ask for help. Perhaps many teachers in parent-chosen schools will disregard this incentive, but that requires them to be more committed to your welfare than they would have to be to provide the same protection at a school you or the government chose. Even if school officials try to help you, your parents may move you to a different school to protect themselves. And of course, if the school shares your parents’ values, it may not see what your parents are doing as abusive even if the government (if it knew) would.
If your parents send you to a school that shares their values, it may not share yours. If they don’t value, say, sports or music, they may not look for a school that has strengths in that area, even if you want to be an athlete or a musician; you might even end up in a school that doesn’t offer sports or music at all. If they’re creationists, they may deny you a basic education in science.
If your parents believe in strict rules sternly enforced, they may impose that on you. Thus, for example, a dress code, which in a school of your own choosing would be a matter of your contract with the school, becomes something that is forced on you. That force may come in the form of hitting you with a paddle if the school uses corporal punishment. Or you may be ordered to report for in-school suspension—with the cops prepared to force you back into the school building, and thereby to your punishment, if you leave.
And if your parents choose your school, they can take you out of it, severing the relationships you’ve formed in it. Of course, those relationships may be less valuable than those you’d have formed in a school of your own choosing anyway.
Government Choice
A school chosen for you by the government isn’t likely to suit you as well as one you chose. However, because it’s not accountable to your parents, it may still protect you from them. It still creates a period in your day when you’re out of their control. And the more independently the two authorities function, the more you can look to each to check the other.
That means that if your parents abuse you, teachers are people you can tell; if you’re not sure whether what your parents are doing is legally abuse, you can talk to your teachers. If your parents take away your phone so you can’t call the police or a sympathetic relative, you can talk to your teachers anyway: Your parents have to let you talk to them; keeping you out of school might trigger an investigation. Even if you don’t raise the issue, your teachers may notice signs of abuse. Of course, sometimes this leads to a child being separated from a parent he’d rather stay with, but it can also protect a student who needs protection.
The values that guide the school will be whichever values win in the endless conflicts over public education. And since decisions are made at different times by different people, those values won’t necessarily be consistent. For example, you may be taught evolution (as secular people would want), but also taught to dress modestly and abstain from sex (as many religious people prefer). You won’t have to begin the day with a prayer (a win for the secularists), but you will typically be asked to say the Pledge of Allegiance (including the phrase “under God”).
For at least some students, that means the school will operate with values they don’t share. Course content won’t suit their values. They’ll be forced to submit to school rules to which they would never have consented. Government choice will work out badly for them in many of the same ways parent choice can for people who don’t share their parents’ values.
But for some students who don’t share their parents’ values, that means the school will be a respite from the indoctrination they’re getting at home.
At school, you may encounter ideas that aren’t welcome in your home. If it’s a public school, the First Amendment requires it to allow at least some diversity of opinion, at least in theory.
At school, you may encounter ideas that aren’t welcome in your home. If it’s a public school, the First Amendment requires it to allow at least some diversity of opinion, at least in theory; the diverse backgrounds of the students it draws in are likely to produce some diversity in practice even if the school has contempt for the Constitution (as many do). You may learn about alternative viewpoints in informal conversation with other students. And no matter how homogenous the ideas expressed in a school, if those ideas conflict with those your parents are teaching you, you now have at least two perspectives to consider; if your parents have been isolating you from the very idea that there are different perspectives, seeing these two perspectives may help you realize that there are even more out there. It may help you realize that you can’t accept what you’re told uncritically, but must try to figure out what is true.
And because you and your schoolmates are required to be in school, school is a place where you can form friendships with people your parents wouldn’t have chosen—even people they don’t like. You might meet your first atheist, your first devoutly Christian, or your first transgender friend. And even apart from the issue of whom you choose, school gives you a place to build relationships that your parents can’t cut off as easily as they can stop you from visiting someone’s home.
Advancing Liberty
Of course, parent choice does have some advantages over government choice. Students who share their parents’ values, or whose parents are willing to ratify their choice instead of imposing their own, will get schools that share their values. Insofar as there is universal (or nearly universal) agreement on what schools should teach, competition will tend to produce schools that do a better job of it. Some public schools are so bad that few parents could choose worse ones. And while a parent-chosen school isn’t positioned as well as a government-chosen school to protect you from an abusive parent, your parents are better positioned to protect you from an abusive teacher if they have the right to move you to a different school than if only the government can.
Whatever may be wrong with a particular education provider, if there are many competing providers, no single institution will get to impose its errors on all students.
Whatever may be wrong with a particular education provider, if there are many competing providers, no single institution will get to impose its errors on all students. If bad values are taught, they won’t be taught to everyone. To the extent that people’s beliefs reflect their schooling, letting parents choose their children’s schools preserves into the children’s generation the same diversity of opinion the parents’ generation has. From a societal perspective, that’s a benefit. So is reducing the power of government over matters, such as education, that in a fully free society wouldn’t be the government’s business.
But while both parent choice and government choice have advantages, advancing liberty means putting people in control of their own lives. Putting parents in control of education is expanding people’s control of other people’s lives instead. School choice should mean student choice.
This article first appeared in The Libertarian Republic under the title When School Choice Doesn’t Make You Free.
About the Author: Alexander R. Cohen
« Is a Secular Morality Inherently Superior to a Religious Morality? The Cause of Acausal Physics »
