The Delusional Quest for Better Schools Through Democracy

Shennell McCloud is CEO of Project Ready, a Newark-based nonprofit that works to increase voting in the city. She’s also the author of a New Jersey Star-Ledger guest column, Our Kids Can’t Read But Voters Can Change That Tomorrow. Her pitch to parents whose kids’ school is grossly failing them is, vote.

The headline, of course, is highly misleading (to put it mildly). Written on April 24, 2023—the day before the election—McCloud implies that the long-running problem of disastrously bad reading skills can be fixed overnight. This, of course, is nonsense. 

It is a moral crime to tell parents that the solution to the crappy schools their kids are forced into is to vote in new school board members—and then tell them to send their kids back to the same crappy schools and, don’t worry, things will be better—some day. 

Parents have waited in vain for decades. Parents don’t need another election. They need the freedom to pull their kids, and their kids’ education dollars, and “vote” with their choice. “Your kids can’t read, so vote” is a cruel joke. The charter school option—which, interestingly, isn’t mentioned by McCloud despite its stunning success—is a good start, but it’s too narrow. Every parent should have the freedom to redirect education tax dollars to the educational option of their choice, including homeschooling. They already have the moral right. They should have the legal right. 

We need a new Civil Rights Movement. The first got rid of slavery. The second got rid of Jim Crow. We need a third—to get rid of the government school monopoly and give every parent, in every district, the right of school choice—real school choice, where education tax dollars fund  the child, not the government-assigned school district. 

How many decades of failure will we have to endure before we realize that no election and no school board will be able to fix anything. The problem runs too deep. It involves education philosophy, curriculum control, teacher training, teacher union political power, compulsory school attendance laws, taxes. The local public school that the child steps into is the last step. It’s merely the symptom.

I don’t mean to demonize the electoral process. Certainly, it’s necessary in the current government school system, and critically important to a free society. But voting is a derivative right that should never supersede parents’ inalienable rights. And parents shouldn’t escape responsibility, either. They can minimize the damage by circumventing the public schools. In his book Why Johnny Still Can't Read or Write or Understand Math: And What We Can Do About It, Philosopher and educator Andrew Bernstein describes the many ways parents can improve their child’s education, especially in basic areas like reading. But parents can only do so much, and should have much more control.

But the fact is, the public school system cannot be reformed. It is an “impregnable fortress” run by an “interlocking directorate” empowered by government force, just like slavery and forced segregation was. The fortress needs to be disempowered, and the parents empowered. 

The public school system has been around for a century and a half. It must be said. It must be acknowledged. The government run and financed public school system has had its chance and  it has failed. It’s time for a fully competitive, entrepreneur driven school system that does what every market-oriented economic sector does—puts consumers in charge. The parents are the consumers of education. It’s time we gave them the respect and power to exercise that role.

Related Reading:

Parents’ School Choice Rights Shouldn't Depend on Winning Elections

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

Newark's Successful Charter Schools Under Attack—for Being Successful

Contra Congressman Donald M. Payne, a ‘For-Profit Model’ is Just What Education Needs

Real School Choice Depends on Free Exercise of Individual Rights

Voting Rights are Not the ‘Most Fundamental Right’—or Even a Fundamental Right

The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools—Andrew Bernstein for The Objective Standard

QUORA: ‘Why are the laws called "Right to Work" when in fact they are really "No Right to Work", since they permit an employee to be fired with no reason given and usually no recourse?'

 QUORA: ‘Why are the laws called "Right to Work" when in fact they are really "No Right to Work", since they permit an employee to be fired with no reason given and usually no recourse?

I posted this answer:

I would make the issue clearer by reversing the question: “Why should an employee be permitted to quit a job with no reason given and leave the employer no recourse?” An employer need not give a reason to fire an employee, just as an employee need not give a reason to quit a job. Why should either have to justify their action to anyone? If it’s in one’s best interest, they are free to do it. Both, in fact, have a recourse (in a free, or even in today’s semi-free, market): The fired employee can seek another job, and the employer can hire another worker. An employer who fires a worker is not violating his right to work. Leaving aside prior contractual agreements, the former employee is free to seek work elsewhere. 

Right to Work laws are not literally about the right to work, which is a moral right. The right to work means only that each individual has the right to work to support himself. It does not mean that someone must supply him with employment. 

In actuality, Right to Work laws say nothing about whether or not an employer needs a reason to fire an employee. Right to Work laws are a reaction to compulsory unionization laws, mainly The Wagner Act. That 1935 Wagner Act compels union membership of all associated workers, even if against their will, and compels employers to negotiate with the unions through collective bargaining even if against the company’s will. Right to Work laws, which were authorized by the 1947 Taft–Hartley Act, outlaw union-only shops, even if the company and union voluntarily agree. I understand the impetus for Right to Work laws. Nonetheless, I believe both laws—the Wagner Act and Right to Work statutes—are rights-violating and should be repealed. I wrote an op-ed for The Objective Standard explaining my reasons. 

Related Reading:

End “Collective Bargaining Rights” and “Right-to-Work” Laws

The Future of Organized Labor Should Be Volunterism

 Law-Favored Unions are Quasi-Criminal Organizations

Fast-Food Workers Seek Government Guns to Back Demands

Biased Reporting, Hypocritical ‘Educators’

A 3/5/23 Washington Post news story, Florida bills would ban gender studies, limit trans pronouns, erode tenure, is a case study on biased reporting and hypocritical educators. The article by Hannah Natanson, Lori Rozsa and Susan Svrluga, opens with, 

Florida legislators have proposed a spate of new laws that would reshape K-12 and higher education in the state, from requiring teachers to use pronouns matching children’s sex as assigned at birth to establishing a universal school choice voucher program.

Note my highlighted portion. Sex is an observed biological fact. It is not “assigned” by anyone. Calling it “assigned” is Woke unreason, not objective reporting. An objective reporter would fact-check the idea that sex is assigned by anyone, and immediately conclude the falsity of the idea, based on the evidence. Of course, unpleasant facts are, well, unpleasant. That’s why there is a move in the journalism field to abandon objectivity altogether, on grounds that it is “a distortion of reality” and even racist—if you can believe it. Rather than accept the truth, even if uncomfortable, why not abandon objective truth and create your own truth to fit your narrative? This is a manifestation of what Ayn Rand identified as the primacy of consciousness, which is the opposite of what objective journalism is based on, the primacy of existence.

Teachers peddling this line—that sex is assigned, rather than observed, at birth—are guilty of gross educational malpractice. The observational biological facts are plain, and it is these facts, not choice or whim, that determines gender. Telling children that gender is a mere arbitrary designation, or “assignment”—at birth or at any time—is to undermine the ability of children to distinguish between what’s real and what’s only in her mind. This is the path to destroying the child’s rational faculty before it is even fully developed. It is a crime. It is monstrous.

Getting back to the Florida legislation, Rozsa and Svrluga write:

Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, warned that the legislation — especially the bill that would prevent students from majoring in certain topics — threatens to undermine academic freedom.

“The state telling you what you can and cannot learn, that is inconsistent with democracy,” Mulvey said. “It silences debate, stifles ideas and limits the autonomy of educational institutions which … made American higher education the envy of the world.”

On this issue, I posted this comment, edited for clarity:

Mulvey whines that “the legislation . . . threatens to undermine academic freedom.”  Is he joking? Aren’t these the same schools that happily soak in torrents of government money? Well, he who pays the piper, calls the tune. Mulvey apparently wants to have his government money, and eat it, too. If the Professors want a free reign, then don’t take government money. Otherwise, accept that you are accountable to the legislature, the taxpayers’ representatives.

“The state telling you what you can and cannot learn, that is inconsistent with democracy” is an even bigger joke. In fact, that is precisely what democracy is—electoral majority rule, with the emphasis on RULE. Apparently, Mulvey wants to have his democracy, and eat it, too. Well, it doesn’t work that way. In a democracy, your freedom is subject to majority rule—or, as Biden put it, “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” Indeed. If the elected legislature, the voters’ representatives, tells you how and what to teach, that’s it. You do it. Is the right to vote the right from which academic freedom flows—or not? The right to vote is primary, according to democracy. Like it or not, that’s democracy. Contrary to Mulvey, The state telling you what you can and cannot learn is perfectly consistent with democracy. Why should only educators decide what to teach? Majority rules, right?

People need to realize that government funding is tyranny. Fundamentally, it’s as simple as that. When funding is obtained voluntarily from willing consumers, educators can decide, and consumers can accept or go elsewhere. The state has no role, except to police the market for force and fraud. True academic freedom is the separation of education and state, under a constitutional republic with a democratic process of limited powers. In other words, the original American system, a free society based on unalienable individual rights, from which everything else, including the right to vote, flows. 

Related Reading:

Washington Budget Debacle Highlights Extent of Our Dependence on Government

Joe Biden—the Real Protégé of Jefferson Davis

The Dangerous Totalitarian Premise Underpinning the Justice Department’s Suit Against Georgia’s New Election Law

How About: Hands Off Our Money and Our Choice?

Bad Schools and What to Do about Them, with Andrew Bernstein, author of Why Johnny Still Can't Read or Write or Understand Math: And What We Can Do About It by Jon Hersey for The Objective Standard

What the Nazis Borrowed from Marx by Ludwig von Mises in Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War

DeSantis Reminds Public Universities of Uncomfortable Truth About ‘He Who Pays the Piper’: Public universities are complaining about Ron DeSantis's latest move. But do they have any right to object? By Lawrence W. Reed

What the Parents’ Rights Movement is Really Really About

Washington Post columnist  Jamelle Bouie has a piece attacking the so-called “Parents’ Rights” Movement. In What the Republican Push for ‘Parents’ Rights’ Is Really About, Bouie writes:

You may have heard the phrase “parents’ rights.”

It sounds unobjectionable — of course parents should have rights — which is probably why it’s become the term of choice for the conservative effort to ban books, censor school curriculums and suppress politically undesirable forms of knowledge.

When House Republicans introduced a bill that would require public schools to notify parents that they are entitled to see course material and lists of books kept in school libraries, they cited “parents’ rights” as the reason.

“That’s what today is all about: It’s about every parent, mom and dad, but most importantly about the students in America,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy said. Several Republican-controlled states have either proposed or passed similar measures.

[My emphasis]

Of course parents should be notified.* It’s morally unobjectionable. Parents in particular, and taxpayers broadly, are the bosses. The government public schools are the employees. This is not “banning”, censorship, or “suppression.” This is about people knowing, being able to question—and on expressing objection or approval—what is being taught, and how it is being taught. And that requires full knowledge about books, curriculums, and political advocacy.

Knowledge requires the freedom to act on that knowledge. That points to what the parents’ rights movement is really really about.

Mr. Bouie is setting up a straw man. Parents’ Rights is more than a mere GOP bill. It is a movement toward universal school choice. Fundamentally it’s about the education tax dollars funding and following the student, not the school district. It’s about parents and guardians being free to direct the course of their childrens’ education, and about educators and entrepreneurs being free to offer their services in a truly competitive free market in education.

The vicious and scandalous reaction against the parents’ rights movement is a law-empowered establishment’s desperate action to protect its coercive monopoly power over education—which in many respects amounts to an indoctrination, not education, cartel. Of course, not everything labeled “parents’ rights” is necessarily about individual rights, or free market education. While p;arents certainly have a right to question any school’s educational policy and standards, that should be between the parents and the school—and in a free market that wouldn’t be the government’s business. Given the government's monopolistic control of most of America’s schools, getting information can be problematic. But does that justify the House Republicans’ “Parents’ Bill of Rights?” I think not. The last thing America’s schools need is more Federal intrusion into the schools.

That aside, parents have always had the moral right to govern their childrens’ education. They deserve the legal right. Parents’ Rights is fundamentally a civil/individual rights movement. The GOP is not the driver of this historic movement. It’s parents who are alarmed by the erosion of education going on in the government schools they are forced to fund and supply with students. Which raises this question for defenders of the establishment. If your schools are so good, why do you need to collect your revenue and customers by force of taxation and compulsory attendance laws? Don’t you think people would voluntarily choose your schools? I think the answer is obvious.  

* [Note: I posted a comment, which is a greatly condensed version of this essay, editred to fit into the Washington Post’s 1500 character limit.

Related Reading:

Book-Banning vs. Age-Appropriate Educational Material

Parents’ School Choice Rights Shouldn't Depend on Winning Election.

Toward a Free Market in Education: School Vouchers or Tax Credits?

• How can a tax-credit program keep government from regulating private schools, and is such a program politically viable?

• Would the Federal Government Permit States to Implement a Tax Credits Program?

A Newark, NJ Mother Demonstrates the Educational Power of Parental School Choice

Real School Choice Depends on Free Exercise of Individual Rights

The Enemies of Charters Versus the Parents and Their Kids

Chris Christie’s School Choice Achievement.

Educational Freedom, Not Just Education, ‘Has to Be the Top Priority for Candidates'

"Letter: ‘Vouchers Will Hurt Public Schools.’ So?"

Contra Michelle Purdy, Education is about Independent Thinking, Not Indoctrination.

QUORA: ‘What does economics have to say about the statement “If a company can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage, they shouldn't be in business.”?

 QUORA: ‘What does economics have to say about the statement “If a company can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage, they shouldn't be in business.”? Is that an economically sound argument?’

I posted this answer:

By “they shouldn't be in business,” does the questioner imply that anyone who doesn’t think the employees are not being paid what he imagines equals a “living wage” can physically threaten or attack the business and its owners, including the use of violence, unless they raise the wages or close the business? Or by “they shouldn't be in business,” does the questioner mean they shouldn't be legally allowed to be in business?  If the first, you are a criminal. If the second, you are worse than a common criminal; you are a fascist.

I don’t think economics has anything to say about this statement, because this is a moral, not an economic, statement. Economics is the science that studies production and trade. Morality covers individual rights, which underlies the premise of the question. (economics and morality are actually integrated, but in modern thinking they are not.)

A job is a two-way street. It is a mutual, voluntary agreement between employer and employee. A worker is entitled to compensation he agreed to, and what the employer agreed to pay him. An employer is entitled to a worker’s labor only according to the compensation a worker agreed to accept. If a worker agrees to work for something less than what some busybody calls a living wage, it’s the worker’s business, no one else’s. It would be immoral for any outside interest to force any labor contract agreement on unwilling parties. 

“Living wage” is a political, not economic, term. When an employer and employee agree to an employment agreement, it is none, and shouldn’t be any, of anybody else’s business, including the government. The premise “If a company can’t afford to pay their workers a living wage, they shouldn't be in business” is neither an economically nor morally sound argument.

Related Reading:

Taking vs. Earning a "Livable Wage"

Tuesday’s ‘Fight for $15’ is about Imposing Demands by Government Aggression

Earned Pay vs. Need-Based Pay--or, Justice vs. Injustice

"Greed" is a Two-Way Street

If We’re to Have Labor Laws, Should They Work Both Ways?

"Greed" is a Two-Way Street

Business vs. Workers' Jobs: Who Makes Who Possible?

Minimum Wage Doesn't Belong in the Constitution--or Law

QUORA: Why does the Pledge of Allegiance say the USA is Republican not Democratic?

 QUORA: Why does the Pledge of Allegiance say the USA is Republican not Democratic? 

I posted this answer:

First, the Pledge doesn’t mention “Republican,” as in the Republican Party. It says “the Republic.” This is a scientific, philosophical term, not a narrowly political term.

The Pledge says Republic because America, in its Founding principles, is a republic. But we must dig deeper. In “Federalist No. 14”, James Madison explained the difference between a republic and as democracy: 

In a democracy, the people meet and exercise the government in person; in a republic, they assemble and administer it by their representatives and agents. A democracy, consequently, will be confined to a small spot. A republic may be extended over a large region.

The Founders established a republic of a revolutionary new kind—a Constitutionally Limited Republic based on the recognition and protection of inalienable individual rights. While the people elect their governmental representatives and agents, the power of those representatives is constitutionally limited only to powers necessary to secure the equal rights of all of the governed individuals, whose rights are “unalienable”, in accordance with the Declaration of Independence. This means placing individual rights,—which sanction freedom of self-supporting action, not outcomes—outside the scope of democratic rule. This was unprecedented in human history. 

So, why does the question of democracy vs. republic still roil America’s political discourse? Some history needs to be explored.

A full-blown, total democracy has always been fundamental to the Democratic Party’s conception of the United States of America. From its founding in 1828, the Democratic Party has radically reinterpreted the American Founding as a democracy, not a limited republic. Consistent with democracy, the new party supported slavery. as long as it is imposed democratically. 

In the 1850s, the debate over whether slavery should be extended into new Western territories split these political coalitions. Southern Democrats favored slavery in all territories, while their Northern counterparts thought each territory should decide for itself via popular referendum. 

Note that both Democratic Party factions supported slavery. Both sides, true to the Party’s reactionary America-as-a-Democracy re-conception, believed the slavery issue should be decided democratically, rather than in accordance with the republican principles of the Declaration of Independence, as the Abolitionists demanded. Slavery, the Democrats believed, should be decided either unilaterally across America by Congress (which is elected) or by a popular referendum at the state level. Either way, democratically. By contrast, the Abolitionists believed that slaves deserve freedom based upon the inalienable individual rights to life, liberty, and property—meaning, as human beings, neither they (nor any minority) could ever be enslaved by vote.

This is the fundamental difference between democracy and the republican system that the Founders put into place. 

The Democratic Party, to this day, has not changed its stripes. President Biden reiterated his Party’s principle recently, declaring in a major speech that “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” That was no rhetorical slip. The Biden Justice Department sued the state of Georgia on the same fundamental premise. In defense of the DOJ’s suit against Georgia, Attorney General Merrick Garlanddeclared that "The right of all eligible citizens to vote is the central pillar of our democracy, the right from which all other rights ultimately flow.” The Democrats’ raging hypocrisy notwithstanding, the overturning of Roe v. Wade is fully consistent with the Democratic Party’s basic principles. The SCOTUS stripped the inalienable right to abortion away Constitutional protection and put it into the hands of the democratic process at the state level. That could not happen if the Court had adhered to America’s republican principles.

In direct violation of America’s Founding republican principles, the Democratic Party stands for the idea that all of our individual rights are subordinate to the people’s vote. The right of the majority to enslave a minority, and the right of the majority to control the reproductive functions of a woman’s body, are precisely what “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow” looks like. That’s also what democracy looks like. It’s own hypocrisy notwithstanding—it was GOP-appointed judges that imposed that horrendous Dobbs ruling—the Republican Party has traditionally been on the side of the limited democracy of the Founders’ republic, which protects certain fundamental rights, such as the right to one’s own body and the right to be free from involuntary servitude.

Neither party has been fully consistent on their respective principles. But as to the question “Why does the Pledge of Allegiance say the USA is Republican not Democratic,” it’s because there is a deep fundamental difference between a republic and a democracy. Despite the pronouncements of the reactionaries, America was Founded as a Republic based upon the protection of inalienable individual rights to life, liberty, and property in pursuit of personal happiness. This is directly opposed to the idea that “the fundamental right to vote is the right from which all other rights flow.” That would be democracy. In a republic, the right to vote flows from those fundamental rights.

Related Reading:

America; Democracy or Republic or Both--Why it Matters

Senator Mike Lee is Right: America ‘is not a Democracy’

Democracy is Democracy

Democracy in Action in Egypt

Rights and Democracy

Constitutional Republicanism: A Counter-Argument to Barbara Rank’s Ode to Democracy

Mesmerized by Elections, the NJ Star-Ledger Forgot that Tyranny is Tyranny

The Conscience of the Constitution: The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Liberty—Timothy Sandefur