I recently read Barry Goldwater’s 1960 booklet “The
Conscience of a Conservative.”
When I heard last week of President Obama’s letter to public
schools regarding “trans-gender” pupils and bathrooms and threats to take away
federal funding for those who fail to comply, it brought to mind Goldwater’s
chapter nine “Some Notes on Education.” In
citing his objections to any federal aid for education (see also chapter three “States’
Rights”), Goldwater wrote the following:
The first [objection] is that federal
intervention in education is unconstitutional.
It is the fashion these days to say that responsibility for education “traditionally”
rests with the local community—as a prelude to proposing an exception to the
tradition in the form of federal aid.
This “tradition,” let us remember, is also the law. It is sanctioned by the Constitution of the
United States, for education is one of the powers reserved to the States by the
Tenth Amendment. Therefore, any federal
aid program, however desirable it might appear, must be regarded as illegal
until such time as the Constitution is amended.
The second objection is that the
alleged need for federal funds has never been convincingly demonstrated....
The third objection to federal aid is
that it promotes the idea that federal money is “free” money, and thus gives
the people a distorted picture of the cost of education….
The fourth objection is that federal
aid to education inevitably means
federal control of education….
Goldwater then addresses the basic philosophical problems with
those who desire central control of public education. Here are a few sound bites from his comments:
In the main, the trouble with
American education is that we have put into practice the educational philosophy
expounded by John Dewey and his disciples.
In varying degree we have adopted what has been called “progressive
education.”
In our attempt to make education “fun,”
we have neglected the academic disciplines that develop sound minds and are
conducive to sound characters.
Most important of all: in our anxiety
to “improve” the world and insure “progress’ we have permitted schools to
become laboratories for social and economic change according to the predilections
of professional educators. We have
forgotten that the proper function of the school is to transmit the cultural
heritage of one generation to the next generation, and to so train the minds of
the new generation as to make them capable of absorbing ancient learning and
apply it to the problem of its own day.
We should look upon our schools—not as
a place to train the “whole character” of the child—a responsibility that
properly belongs to his family and church—but to train his mind.
I am struck by Goldwater’s prophetic sense of where things
were heading from his vantage point over fifty years ago and his warnings about
the dangers of federal control of education and the efforts toward social
manipulation to which it would lead. It is
also striking to think that the Republicans had men in those days who could
think in this way, who were philosophically and principally grounded, and who
could articulate those thoughts cogently.
They even put these sorts of men up for the highest office in the land
(though Goldwater famously lost in a landslide in 1964).
I think the most important immediate take away for Christians
from this recent bathroom letter episode, aside from any practical political efforts that might be
made by Christian citizens in opposition to it, will be renewed consideration of
the ethics of Christian participation in public schools. As has been quipped, “If
you send your children to Caesar, you should not be surprised when they come
back as Romans!” There has, of course, already been a significant exodus of Christians to
private Christian schools and to home-education. There will need to be more encouragement and
assistance in this in the future, as well as the defense of our rights to do
so, a battle which might be on the horizon.
JTR
