Perspectives

Is public education still needed?

At $61 billion, is biggest state expenditure worth it?

By Jaymes P. Dunsmore

From the April 2008 Print Edition

With California facing record deficits, there is no better time to question the necessity of the state’s largest expenditure: public education. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 2008-2009 budget proposes $48 billion for K-12 education and another $15 billion for higher education, together constituting 45 percent of his $141 billion budget.

Nearly half of every dollar spent by Sacramento goes to education, begging the question, Is public education a legitimate and worthwhile expenditure? The answer, I believe, is an emphatic yes.

Public education is crucial to providing for the common defense, promoting economic growth, ensuring the survival of our democratic republic, and fulfilling all the promises of equality and opportunity.

In 1957, the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik made it clear to most Americans that public education was a matter of national defense, and the increased national commitment to teaching math and science produced a generation of scientists, who, by 1969, had conquered the moon. A commitment to highquality, free public education played a key role in maintaining America’s technological superiority during the Cold War, and is even more important in our modern war on terror. We will not have the scientists we need to create the technology that will keep us safe tomorrow without a strong commitment to providing the best for the students of today.

Likewise, public education is equally important in ensuring future economic prosperity. As globalization allows for manufacturing and other blue-collar jobs to be outsourced overseas, access to higher education is even more important. We will not maintain our global economic dominance unless we have the best-educated workforce.

Public education is essential not only to our national defense and economic prosperity but to the preservation of our democracy as well. At the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a Mrs. Powel asked Benjamin Franklin, “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”

“A republic, madam,” replied the good doctor, “if you can keep it.”

Franklin’s response underscores the challenge of our nation; the responsibility for maintaining our democracy lies with each of us. However, a republic can only be kept by a well-informed, educated citizenry. Public education is not only economically in our best interest, but it is our best defense against the regression to autocracy that has befallen republics throughout history.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, public education is essential to making real the promise of equality made in the Declaration of Independence, which has made America the land of opportunity for all. If we truly believe that “all men are created equal,” we must recognize that all men are not born into equal circumstances. While some are born into incredible wealth, others are born into crushing poverty. If there is to be equality among the wealthiest and the poorest Americans, and those in-between, all must have equal opportunity for advancement, which is dependent upon equal access to education.

The idea that any person, regardless of his or her birth, can move upward socially and economically through hard work and perseverance, which has become known as the American Dream, would not be possible without the freedoms we enjoy: among them, freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom of enterprise, and free access to education, which is the right of all Americans.

Of course, our system of public education is far from perfect, and reforms are badly needed, especially within K-12 education.

We must reduce the power of unions, which serve neither the best interests of students nor teachers, and institute a system of merit-based pay. We need to be able to reward the best teachers and encourage more to enter the profession, and we have to be able to eliminate those who are failing to educate our students.

We also must allow parents more choice in their children’s education. Parents should be able to decide what is best for their children, whether that is homeschooling, private or parochial schooling, or other options, and we should have a voucher system to support that choice.

While these and many other changes are needed, it is equally important that we change the way we think about K-12 and higher education. We need to recognize that spending on education is an investment in our future and in America. Much like the military, public education is a legitimate and necessary expenditure for the defense of our nation and the preservation of our democratic republic.

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