Robert Pondiscio had a superb piece recently that’s circulating widely, both on the left and the right. In it, he points out that many public school teachers are trained to see themselves as agents of societal change. The examples he gives are almost exclusively liberal or left-wing: teachers as “change agents” challenging alleged “systems of oppression” to “transform society,” commit to “diversity,” and adopting a “social justice orientation” that turns the classroom into a “platform for identity.” He also chides as equally-misguided recent Republican responses attempting to, as he sees it, fight fire with fire.
Besides the most fundamental and correct point of his piece — that humility is a necessary virtue for teachers — Pondiscio suggests that teachers (and policymakers) should aim above all for neutrality. But, I’d argue, this is mistaken. Properly understood, public schools are not, cannot, and, in fact, should not be neutral.
A Brief History Lesson
In the summer of 1787, the Constitutional Convention was drafting a new form of government in Philadelphia. At the same time, the original U.S. Congress was still governing, and on the 13 of July they passed the Northwest Ordinance to govern much of what is now the American Great Lakes region. Besides facilitating the orderly transfer of federal lands to American farmer-settlers and outlawing slavery, the Northwest Ordinance established that “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
To support the education of American children, the Northwest Ordinance built upon the Land Ordinance of 1785 which had guaranteed a plot of land in each township to be set aside “for the maintenance of public schools.” Public education dated back to colonial New England, but this marked a national prioritization of the institution. Indeed, the Land Ordinance made public education “go national.” Since then, public schooling has been as American as apple pie. We have the American founders to thank.
Why did they do this?
To teach those things (in this case, “religion, morality, and knowledge”) “necessary to good government.”
Pondiscio rightly echoes this purpose for public education, arguing that teachers are “not to change society but to sustain it,” and “to transmit the shared knowledge, language, habits, and civic norms upon which self-government depends [emphasis added].” Teachers must acknowledge “that their authority rests not on self-expression, but on self-restraint [emphasis added].” Indeed, as Pondiscio says, “Public schools are not platforms. They are civic institutions.” Public schools are the government and teachers are “state actors.”
Which brings us back to the present purpose of America’s public schools: to provide education that is necessary for citizens to have a “good government,” to “sustain” society, to “transmit” that “upon which self-government depends.” In other words, the very raison d’être of America’s public schools is to support the government, i.e., the government established by the U.S. Constitution and the principles and civic norms upon which it rests.
Hellbound and Down 