PROFILES

Published Monday, April 19, 2004
Wrestling with the Duopoly
Part One of A Series: Education and Election 2004
By David Meadow
APPIAN STAFF WRITER

Q: When it comes to education, what do you think Kerry and Bush are thinking in their heart of hearts –
A: How to get elected.

It’s another Presidential election year, the pundits are pundificating, and I’ve been giving them my ear. Specifically, I have asked a group of campaigners, candidates, policymakers, and current Fellows at the Kennedy School of Government to tell me what they personally believe should be the aim of K-12 education, and to weigh in on how the major parties succeed or fail in tackling the issue. The above exchange is paraphrased from an interview I conducted with Jesse Ventura, former Reform Party Governor of Minnesota and now Fellow at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics.

In this installment of a series I have put together on the upcoming election, I will focus on the libertarian perspective both on education itself and the government’s role, if any, in shaping it.

I had the pleasure of bouncing these ideas off of Michael Badnarik, a computer consultant and Libertarian candidate from Texas, and Jesse “The Body” himself. Mr. Ventura emphasizes the “small l” in his description; as far as he’s concerned, Libertarian Party members are a bunch of “anarchists” who don’t see any role for government. But both of these men hold that education has been wasteful and, in some cases, even counterproductive under a bloated government’s influence.

When asked about the purpose of education, Mr. Badnarik stated that school should enable people to “provide for themselves and participate in the country’s government.” As we will see, to Badnarik, this means distributing governance among the people, rather than swelling a class of professional governors. He does not even have faith that the government can run schools at all, or that schooling should be compulsory; education should really be up to parents, he believes.

Ventura’s philosophy on education spoke more to intellectual development. He said that school was a way for students to “learn the basic essentials so that they can go out in the world… function, and be literate, and knowledgeable in society.” Here’s some more detail from the interviews:

DM (to Badnarik): Do you believe that [education] should affect, primarily, their voting, or their ability to act in the grassroots sense?

MB: It should give them the ability to do their own thinking, and not to take the government’s word for everything.

DM: Uh-huh. So it sounds like critical thinking skills, mainly.

MB: Yes, absolutely critical thinking skills; right now, the Department of Education is in control of our schools, and the one thing that people cannot do is think critically. [Ed. note: the Federal government has much less control over a given school than does the local school board, but Badnarik thinks that the Feds have too much control at that.]

Pressed further, Badnarik established a direct link between quality of education and quality of government.

DM: Do you think the lack of critical [thinking] skills is what has narrowed the options in government – narrowed the range of candidates, and that kind of thing?

MB: Well, it certainly has perpetuated the idea of voting for the lesser of two evils.

Now let us look at how Ventura conceives of education. An independent character if there ever was one, the former governor stressed education as a means to achieve personal advancement and happiness, rather than as a medium specifically for keeping government honest.

However, he was quick to point out the political problem of education: vested interests do subvert it, and engaged citizens need to keep those interests in check.

Ventura indicts the unions as the “eight hundred pound gorilla” that politicians face coming into office. In addition to the locals being “spineless” and allowing the unions to have their way, candidates dare not offend the gorilla too badly, or they will not get far in their career.

DM: Do you see, perhaps, the [Democrats] being, in fact, slightly more friendly to education, in general?

JV: I don’t think that they’re any more friendly to education in general; I think they’re more friendly to the education union…. They’re friendly to whoever provides them their campaign finances.

Here we find an important distinction between these analysts’ perspectives. Badnarik holds that most of what the Federal government does is unconstitutional – that the myriad powers it has to tax citizens, regulate business, and create subdepartments goes above and beyond the call of our Framers’ precious document. He sees this behavior as way to bludgeon the masses into submission.

But if Badnarik hints at an ominous Big-Brother type government with a direct interest in “dumbing down” its populace, Ventura paints a less sensational, but perhaps more pathetic, picture: waffling elected officials who bend easily to vocal (but not very critically-thinking!) special interests.

For Ventura, if there is a link between bad government and bad education, it is a function of bureaucracy and incompetence more than it is a function of totalitarian groupthink.

JV: If educating the children was the number one priority, which it should be, well, then, why would one care if they got their education via home school, private school, or public school?…. I allocated a hundred and fifty million dollars, in Minnesota, specifically for lowering class sizes – not a dollar got there. The local school boards used it in their collective bargaining agreements to pay off the teachers’ salaries and benefits.

Ventura has little patience for those who will not do what makes economic sense. He would be much happier if schools taught children, at a young age, what makes economic sense. Then, perhaps, citizens would make more intelligent choices.

The leader echoes a sentiment that has being floating around in popular literature of late, notably in Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki: hardly any information comes down the public school pipeline, or even the private one, about how money and business really work.

When I asked about the purpose of education, Ventura said students need basic tools to negotiate our system just as they need theoretical exercises to stretch the brain. “We get far too little education about practical things today…. I wasn’t taught a thing about balancing a checkbook. I wasn’t taught a thing in high school about a loan.”

And there is great inertia in the bureaucracy that keeps this fact from changing. Ventura hastened to report that Minnesota had adopted a plan during his governorship, which the Usual Suspects would ultimately scrap, for students to do major projects using “real-world” skills like the ones above.

Three young boys presented their findings to the Governor at the state capitol. Their discovery about loans? “Pay cash if you can.” This was a rare example, Ventura thought, of useful information going to the people who need it.

Yet there is still disagreement over who should impart “practical” skills to children.

Ayn Rand, a great inspiration to many libertarian thinkers, saw a very specific purpose to education.

“The only purpose of education,” she wrote in her book The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution, “is to teach a student how to live his life — by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual [emphasis added]. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past — and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.”

There is no mention in the above paragraph of creating engaged citizens or of imparting values. It is worth noting that neither Badnarik nor Ventura mentioned character education. Ventura, being socially liberal, would probably be content with a school culture that generally encouraged people to take responsibility for their actions.

However, anyone will admit that self-serving bureaucracy has corrupted public schools to some extent, and to the extent it has, the schools are not setting a good example of responsibility. Both of my interviewees gave me the sense that, the less parents control their children’s education, the more of a farce it must be.

For those who aren’t aware, we should step back and take a look at just how wide-ranging the Libertarian Party is in ideology – never mind its fellow travelers. 2004 Presidential Candidate Mike Ross from Arizona is an avowed atheist and champion of just about every conceivable civil liberty, as well as being, perhaps, one of the anarchists of which Ventura speaks so dismissively.

“Well really I'm more of an Anarchist Libertarian then a Libertarian,” Ross says on his site, elect_mike_president.tripod.com. “My position is we should eliminate the government all together. If the Libertarian position is that taxes are stealing, then any government that uses taxes to fund its self should be eliminated.”

Ross stands in stark contrast to Jeff Diket, a "pro-life, anti-communist" candidate from Louisiana who proudly counts himself among the John Birchers and, on the question of gay rights, will "seek the support of advocates of family values instead of deviates" (www.politics1.com/libt04.htm).

Most libertarians who run for office, small- and large-L alike, run as gadflies in an attempt to expand the debate. But the Libertarian Party is the third-largest party in the country, and plenty of its members already hold public office.

If they wish to hold onto power, the mainstream parties simply cannot ignore the importance, to many citizens, of government non-interference in the economy, schooling, and private life.

If nothing else, this philosophy is a crucial component of that swing vote that politicians have flip-flopped so hard to capture. God help us.

David Meadow, a student in the Specialized Program, is a staff writer for The Appian.