Public Schools vs. Private Schools - Culturally

Public Schools vs. Private Schools - Culturally appropriate education

Review of the literature

Education and culture

Teaching dispositions

Outmoded educational model

Would vo-tech be a better public school goal?

Developing the person instead of the mind

Opposition to change in public schools

Alternatives to public and private school

School reform has been a constant theme of public debate for much of the past two decades. Standardized testing, which was supposed to solve the problem of poorly prepared students graduating from high schools is not accepted as the panacea it was first supposed to be. In fact, it appears that a new model of education is needed, and some people have suggested home-schooling as a good substitute for public schools. However, not all parents are qualified to homeschool their children, nor are most able to afford private schools, which have a better reputation for properly preparing graduates for what lies ahead of them. There must be a solution, however, and in this project, several possibilities will be proposed and discussed.

Chapter I. Introduction (Statement of the Problem)

There are two, or possibly even three, co-existent educational systems in the United States. The largest of these is the public education system, followed by the private schools and increasingly popular home-schooling.

The third system will be mentioned only tangentially, as the real problems with U.S. education are considered to reside in the public schools. In recent decades, there have been various schemes put forth regarding vouchers for families who want to send their children to private schools but cannot afford the fees; none of these has borne fruit. In any case, it is doubtful that the private schools could absorb the numbers of students who would want to attend if vouchers were a reality. The problem with the public schools has been identified by most of the public and by many researchers as one of curriculum. The schools, they said, are not producing students with sufficient academic qualifications to do well in college. The cure, more than once, has been identified as compelling students to do well on standardized tests. That required teachers to teach with the intent for students to do well on those standardized tests. In addition, that is one problem with public education in the United States. Teaching a dog to do tricks is not education; teaching a student to excel in the limited scope of standardized tests is not education, either. In fact, even that has become recognized by enlightened educators, and a deploring phrase, "teaching to the test," has developed. (Eberhardt, 1999, unpaged)

Politics also enters the picture, with elected officials, rather than educators, deciding what is taught in the public classroom. None of this is what differentiates the public school from the private school, nor is it money alone that separates them. Rather, it is the fact that U.S. public schools are run according to a standard developed in ancient Greece that is no longer workable, while private schools can take as their model any educational format that pleases them, or that produces the sort of graduates the school intends to produce.

This brings up another question: What sort of graduates do public schools intend to produce, and why? And what sort of graduates to private schools intend to produce, and why?

The simple answer to the first and second questions is the same: Schools intend to produce graduates capable of living and working successfully in their own culture. This paper will demonstrate the ways in which the public schools fail to do this for the vast majority of their graduates, and the ways in which private schools succeed at preparing graduates to succeed.

Hypothesis: Private schools teach their students to succeed not because of a great deal of money poured into education, but because the schools are both free to teach the curricula they choose, and they are preparing students to return to their own cultures and succeed. Public schools, on the other hand, are not free to teach any curricula not aimed at improving standardized test scores, and the successful public school student is not prepared to return to his or her culture in a trade, but to transition out of it into an anachronistic academic culture.

Chapter 2. Review of the Literature reveals that money is not the deciding factor in the relative failure of public schools when measured against private schools. Rather, an unworkable system and expectations unrelated to modern life have predestined public education to fail. The ability to alter curricula and every other facet of the school at will has, on the other hand, allowed private schools to succeed for hundreds of years already, and has also positioned them well to continue to succeed in an even more rapidly changing society. That something will have to be done, however, is unavoidable: teaching will have to remove itself from fact-based teaching (that is, standardized test-oriented teaching) because "specific information is outmoded almost as soon as it has been learned," according to a report by Eberstadt. (1999, unpaged)

Education and culture

Bruckerhoff proposed that in public education, schools need to take into account many aspects of childhood, learning and culture. What he meant by this is that curricula would have to be reformed "to draw on sacred and secular traditions so as to nurture children's personal knowledge." (Bruckerhoff, 1995, 387+) This is difficult in public schools because there may be several ethnic and cultural groups represented. However, he insists that this is a factor missing from the educations of public school students. He proposes that public education in a democratic society is the institutional means for children to gain an understanding and appreciation of the family in its relationship with the local community as well as within a complex cultural heritage. Nowhere in his proposal does he mention outstanding test scores as a means to properly educate public school children. Rather, he proposes that the purpose of education is to help a person "make sense of his or her human condition." (Bruckerhoff, 1995, 387+) Bruckerhoff suggests that this can be done when public schools have a core curriculum that supports family life, "presents personally meaningful subject matter, and respects local culture." (Bruckerhoff, 1995, 387+) That may have happened briefly, when music education was an integral part of public school curriculum in the 1890s, when most Americans went to church and sang. (Jorgenson, 1995, 31-38)

Bruckerhoff argues further that even if this were the desire of the community, and it could get past the politicized school boards, the curriculum would still be determined by experts, those who think they must use their knowledge and political acumen to guard children from errors, most of which are culturally tied. In the name of keeping schools free of bias, they insist that students learn the experts' own biases. He argues that excessive and flawed government intervention in public schools has treated poor children like objects and recipients of the donations of their superior knowledge, and has devalued families. He notes hat the political solutions in public education have been disappointing because one essential element was missing: respect for those values embedded in local culture. (Bruckerhoff, 1995, 387+)

Teaching dispositions

Edgar et al. agree, although they lift the idea of 'local option' in education, as a means of putting public education on a par with private education, several steps beyond Bruckerhoff's relatively simplistic prescriptions. They argue that:

Moral sensitivity, fair dealing with others who are not part of one's clan, ethical decision making, responsibility, the delay of personal gratification for a larger good, benevolence, civic responsibility -- these represent dispositions in our minds and in the minds of many others who believe public schools should assume the task of teaching such dispositions. (Edgar et al., 2002, 231+)

Bruckerhoff would agree. He noted that children from advantaged families (those above the poverty line, although from any ethnic background), have values that supersede the public school curriculum. He groups their cultural identification with "dominant high-status cultures," while the disadvantaged child comes from families whose values are rooted in folk cultures which either clash with that of the public school, or don't engage with it at all.

He believes public schools, to prepare students to succeed in life, must somehow cope with those cultures. Edgar et al. would say that they need to 'teach dispositions' instead. If public schools were able to "bring students to know and understand themselves in relation to other people as well as things," then, the public school of tomorrow, he contends, would look more like the parochial and private schools of today. (Bruckerhoff, 1995, 387+)

Outmoded educational model

Almost contemporaneously, Clinchy was pointing out that in fact the schools of today look more like the schools of ancient Greece than anything that is workable for today's society.

He points out that the early 'schools' of the Greeks involved the teachers (Aristotle, et al.) removing their students from society, going out into the countryside to discourse about the meaning of life, and even the meaning of words...and the meaning of wondering about the meaning of words. In short, it was all -- even the math and science -- philosophy. In fact, it could not have been anything else, as science as we know it would be invented hundreds of years later by people a lot less erudite. Those early Greek 'schools' were the foundation not only of the detached method of education extant in U.S. public schools today, but of the campus style of learning as well. Universities and even high schools are generally separated from their communities by acres of greensward. Clinchy argues that this is not for peace, quiet and beauty alone, but to separate the students from everyday life. To be sure, private schools are often at least as well set apart as public schools, but the effect is different. The public school student generally is out of his or her element while on-campus, as they will live in urban or suburban proximity to neighbors and their community. Private schools students, Clinchy points out, are more likely to come from four-acre zoning affluent communities, so that 'campus life' is little different from home, and their cultural community. (Clinchy, 1994, 745+)

This approach and the resulting disconnection was sealed into education during the medieval period, when all books were written in Latin, as well, meaning they were not readable by the common citizen, even if the common citizen could have gotten hold of them. At that point, knowledge and learning was controlled by monasteries, which also controlled what people believed. However, there was another form of education at the time as well; trade and craft education, taught within the community by the guilds. In addition, it is out of this community, Clinchy argues, that the inventions that changed the world have come. One such invention was the printing press; Gutenberg was not a university graduate, but a guild member. (Clinchy, 1994, 745+)

Would vo-tech be a better public school goal?

Clinchy argues that this is the sort of education not being provided in today's public schools, and should be. Zweigenhaft has taken that idea a step beyond and has studied the relative post-graduation achievements of both public and private school students, and has proved that in fact, private schools do an excellent job of preparing students for their life roles, while public schools can do only one of two things: prepare students for academia, that is, to remain outside their communities, or to fail as academics and be suited for nothing much. Certainly, based on Zweigenhaft's work, it is possible to argue that the public schools create a great divide, doing some service to the most intellectual of their students, and failing to return the less intellectual to their cultures with any hope of success in life.

Zweigenhaft struck out to do his own research on the basis of what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu called a theory of 'social reproduction.' Bourdieu thought that those in power pas son not just their material wealth, but more importantly, the 'cultural capital' and 'social capital' those children will need to succeed. Zweigenhaft uses Edgar' concept of 'dispositions' as well. He also thinks that public schools avoid teaching needed dispositions because it is true that "early training in sophisticated computer skills may have valuable advantages" for those who can learn them over those who cannot. However, that still does not deal with the cultural disconnect of the vast majority of public school students who will not be whiz-kid programmers. In fact, this sort of training may be as close as one gets in public school to the guild model, returning success-oriented people to their culture. Otherwise, public school creates unsuccessful returnees to their culture, or ultra-achieving intellectuals who opt out of their cultures entirely to join the 'groves of academe.' Zweigenhaft notes that they are acquiring cultural capital in a different culture through academic achievement. On the other hand, he notes, private schools equip virtually all of their students with the 'social capital' they will need to manipulate and succeed in their world.

Zweigenhaft explains that bright public school students are much more likely than bright private school students to attain high academic honors and advanced degrees. The private school students built relationships instead. He notes:

For those already at the top of the class structure, relationships with others who will hold power are likely to be much more important than doing exceptionally well academically. (Zweigenhaft, 1993, 211+)

Developing the person instead of the mind

While class-structure-based relationships are certainly more than simply good interpersonal relations, Edgar et al. note that Lickona had been, in 1991, advocating teaching character and social-emotional skills in school for more than 20 years, arguing that "developing good interpersonal relations are an authentic aim of public schools. The case for teaching dispositions in the public schools has also been advocated by many noneducators from a diverse range of disciplines," including philosophy. (Edgar et al., 2002, 231+)

Opposition to change in public schools

In fact, some writers note that it is educators -- products of universities that are even more like the Athenian model than public schools -- who are most against changing the system. Lieberman notes that no reforms are likely to take place if they ignore the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, the national teachers' unions. Teachers' unions, he also notes, "typically have more power to block change than unions in the private sector." (Lieberman, 1986, unpaged) He also said that he had seen no suggestions as to how to obtain union approval for public schools becoming more like private schools.

Alternatives to public and private school

That being the case, Lieberman argued for 'family choice' measures -- vouchers -- that could allow more parents to enroll their children in private schools. That led him to believe that a change of that nature would lead to more competition, and the competition would lead to better education. He wrote, "In my view, a market approach is indeed our best bet for achieving educational reform, and public policy should encourage it." (1986, unpaged) While it has not become widespread, there have been several small excursions into for-profit educational ventures that are not private schools. Some of them may be effective in revamping the curricula, or at least, allowing more of those laboring under it to achieve sufficient school success to move on to an institution of higher learning and become members of the intellectual elite, rather than sons and daughters of trades people without a trade. They would not be returning to or connecting with their original culture (as the private school students do), but abandoning it entirely.