Review of Stephen Arons's Short Route to Chaos*
Stephen Arons, (1997) Short
Route to Chaos : Conscience, Community, and the Re-constitution of
American Schooling. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1997, 154
pp plus notes, bibliography, index. ISBN 1-55849-078-7
Charles L. Glenn
Boston University
Stephen Arons, author of Compelling Belief: The Culture of
American Schooling (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), is
one of the most articulate and influential critics of the educational
Establishment from the secular Left. In his new book, he takes on the
Clinton Administration's efforts to establish national outcome
standards--Goals 2000--which he describes as "comprehensive,
centralizing, and insensitive to the diversity of goals that students,
families, and communities bring to education. Through the use of
federal grants and state regulations, it aims to bring every school in
every school district in every state into conformity with politically
prescribed standards of what should be learned by every child" (page 4).
Arons warns that "[o]nce accepted by the public, Goals 2000 will change
the balance of power in schoolhouses and courtrooms in a way unlikely
ever to be undone. That change in schooling will very likely undermine
the freedom of intellect and spirit that has been so essential to the
American experience" (page 98).
Over against this threat, Arons sets what he considers the
equally menacing efforts of the "Christian Right" to gain control of
American schooling in order to undermine freedom. This accusation isn't
documented or argued, simply asserted over and over. Is it true that
James Dobson (the current bete noir of Progressives) wants to take over
the public schools? No, in fact he is calling for vouchers so that
parents who wish them can choose religious schools "without financial
penalty" as an alternative to public schools. Does Dobson want to
reinstitute "school prayer" in the Engel v Vitale sense? Not at all;
he recently disavowed that, and wrote that students should be as free to
use religious speech as they are to use political or other opinion
speech, and no more. The reality is that the "education establishment" which
Arons opposes has created the specter of foaming-mouthed ultra
conservatives invading the public school, shrine of the American civil
religion, to justify its continuing monopoly.
Arons describes a number of recent controversies in which the
establishment and the religious Right have struggled over control.
Missing from his roster of combatants is the secular Left, which has in
fact won far more of the battles to influence the content of the
curriculum on issues like sexuality and multiculturalism. It would
presumably have been difficult for Arons to admit that the leading cause
of resistance by parents to what goes on in public schools has grown out
of these victories by the secular Left to shape the message those
schools offer. But for Arons, apparently, nothing the Left can do poses
a threat to freedom.
Libertarians on the Left, like Arons, are in a difficult
position. Most of those who agree with them about the dangers of a
government monopoly of education and a strong government role in setting
goals for schools are very unwelcome allies: they are conservative
Christians whose views they find highly distasteful.
Among the most frequent targets are secular humanism, the
separation of church and state, Darwinian evolution, sexuality and
health education. There is little tolerance for any worldview other than
that of heterosexual, white, middle-class Christians of Western European
origin; little respect for freedom of expression among students and in
student publications; and in general, antagonism toward teachers and
students who try to explore and evaluate life's most challenging
problems of personal, social, or moral conduct. (page 55)
On the other hand, Arons also wants to distance himself from the critics
of religious conservatives, as when he points out that People For the
American Way's report on censorship efforts "did not even mention that
the original selection of textbooks--by statewide, politically created
government agencies in twenty-three of fifty states, for example--is as
much an act of censorship as the effort to remove those materials once
they have been selected" (page 57).
So whom does Arons like and admire? Groups of parents and
others who hold contrarian views about how they want their children
educated, like the Satmar Hasidim in the Kiryas Joel case in New York
State, who can be romanticized because they are exotic and do not relate
to anything that can be perceived as threatening potentialities in
American life. But not conservative Catholics and Protestants, the
people who supported Pat Robertson. Unfortunately for his proposal to
"re-constitute American schooling" on the basis of community and the
free-exercise of conscience, it is obvious that the great majority of
new schools that would spring up under a free and equitable system of
educational funding would be based on religious convictions that most
Progressives would find very distasteful indeed. That's what freedom's
about.
Arons's opposition to centralization does not lead him to
support a return to more local control of schools, which he sees as
equally unfavorable to freedom: "like Goals 2000, local control can
secure neither freedom of intellect and belief nor equal educational
opportunity in public schools. It can advance neither the empowerment
of parents and communities nor the professionalism of teachers. It can
neither reduce unnecessary conflict over matters of conscience nor
increase the overall quality of education available to American
children" (page 103).
So what does Arons want? He has four concrete and sensible
proposals: school choice, school and teacher independence from
government regulation of instructional content, a right to
publicly-funded schooling, and equity in funding (page 144). These
proposals deserve to be spelled out, and the appropriate cautions
(consumer protection, for example, and equal access) and nuances
inserted. It would have been helpful if Arons--a legal scholar--had
confronted the difficult legal issues that would arise under a system of
real educational freedom. For example, should schools be entitled to
discriminate on the basis of religion, philosophy, sex, or race in
admitting pupils? In hiring staff? In dismissing staff who exercise
their "academic freedom" in ways contrary to the distinctive character
of the school? If not, how can schools preserve this distinctive
character? And if they cannot, will real choice exist for parents who
want schools with such a character, and for teachers who want to teach
in such schools? What about the pupil who questions received authority,
in a school which has been chosen by parents and teachers who want
education based upon such authority?
Arons devotes almost no effort to justifying his proposals or to
showing how they might be worked out, but turns immediately to calling
for a national discussion that would, he believes, lead us to a new
level of understanding and an education amendment to the U.S.
Constitution. Although conceding that this might "seem an unfavorable
time because the Education Empire and the Christian Right continue to be
locked in battle over ideology, power, and self-interest in the schools"
(page 148), Arons insists that "ordinary citizens" can and must "seize
the constitutional moment and depoliticize public education" (page 145).
It is exceedingly hard to see how such a discussion could--or
should--take place in a democratic society without being "political,"
nor does Arons offer any suggestions about how it might take place, or
under whose sponsorship. A sort of communitarian fuzziness afflicts
this erstwhile Libertarian.
Short Route to Chaos is unfortunately not an especially
convincing case for the dangers of government control of education
through national standards. That such a case could be made, there can
be no doubt, but it would have to show how such standards would enforce
more conformity than already exists as a result of professional norms
and the economics of textbook publishing. In fact, comparative studies
have found that schools in France and other countries with national
standards enjoy more real autonomy than do schools in the United States,
subject as they are to oversight and interference by more than fifteen
thousand local school boards. Of course, in France and most other
democracies parents can
choose publicly-funded non- government schools for their children,
including religious schools. This support for freely-chosen
community--for which Arons makes an eloquent case--does not appear to
conflict with the national education standards which most of these
countries have also adopted.
Americans are re-assessing a system of schooling which makes
less provision for conscience and community than do those of other
countries. Most of the impulse for this reassessment comes from the
disenchantment of parents with the quality and with the prevailing
secularism--rather than religious neutrality--of public schools.
Stephen Arons brings an important contrasting perspective which reaches
the same conclusions from a very different starting point. It seems
likely, however, that it will continue to be through Compelling Belief
rather than Short Route to Chaos that his voice will be heard.
*
Stephen Arons responds to this review in the
next article.
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times since January 9, 1998.