We need schools

I had dinner last night with a former parent. When I say former, he is still a parent but his children are no longer my students. He is a self-described "conservative" so of course I had to ask. What does that mean in terms of school? His first response was that education is a private family matter and so schools should either be fee-paying for-profit or not-for-profit, or free provided by charities or religious organizations. He argued there should be no public schools and therefore no taxes to pay for them. I disagreed.

I first asked him about the history of US public education. He knew not so I told him that in general terms, what he had described had been the case until the late nineteenth century. The result was that a few people had education, more had some and most had little or none. Those that had had education maintained access and thereby mainitained wealth and power;  there was no meritocracy and there was no general opportunity for those who had not. 

I then told him of the first public education law in the US, the Massachusetts "Great Deluder Act" or something similar enacted in 1450 or so. The citizens felt that their children need to read, write and reckon so that Satan, the Great Deluder, could not tempt them. It was both religiously and pragmatically rooted.

My dining partner has a pool and someone comes once a week to clean it and to adjust the chlorine. This person needs to be able to read the ph thingie and the dilution instructions on the chemical packet. S/he also needs to be able to drive, to produce invoices and report earnings and so on. 

He also has his trash collected, uses Uber and Doordash. He drives and has yet to be hit by a truck or bus driver. All of these roles are minimum wage and yet none of these people could have got the without being able to read, write and reckon. Coincidentally, my tablemate used to pay as little as he could for his pool magician but found he needed to pay more to get more reliable and better service. Coincidentally, this person was also better educated.

My menu companion conceded that mobility and social/economic growth or even stability would not exist without education, and that if this were restricted by ability to pay many or most would not participate. He also conceded that expecting someone to teach themselves so as to drive his trash-truck or vacuum his pool is unlikely.

He agreed that we need publicly-funded and publicly-provided schools. We agreed to dine again to chew over what such schools hold look like.