The Public Good.
I believe that we have forgotten, and in particular forgotten how to talk about, public works and public goods. We've forgotten, I think, how to talk about anything that doesn't involve markets and trade and transactions. But the world, and particularly, community is built on much more than transactions. And part of what it's built on is public good in the public interest. This is more than government. It's about how we live, about what makes it worth living here.
We believe in public education because a democracy requires an educated citizenry. Because one of the requirements of the public sphere is that we be active and engaged. Public education shouldn't apologize for teaching values. It should be about teaching values. There are certain very important values that you agree to when you agree to be a citizen of the United States of America. Do we know these? Do we teach them to our children? They are not John Wayne in the old west. They are not make more money than your neighbors and buy a lot of stuff. They are not make sure everyone is just like you or like you wish you were.
No, this is what they are: Every person in this country has certain unalienable rights that cannot be abridged. Everything else flows from this. One other important piece: we are a government of the people, by the people and for the people (We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union...).
That's it.
Two things.
Pretty simple, really. Oh there are other important things--separation of church and state, voting rights, equal rights, Roe v. Wade--but most of these other important things follow from the big two:
Everyone in this country (every human being, really) has certain unalienable rights that cannot be abridged.
And,
Our government was created of the people, by the people, and for the people.
It's possible to build a pretty good country on those two things alone. But it's important never to lose track of them. It's important never to put business or profit or capital or partnership or new revenue sources or anything else in front of them. It's critically and vitally important to remember that we are a nation of people--not governments, not laws, not capital, and not corporations. In the end, when nothing else is left, what we have is not big cars and shiny suits or yachts or mansions. What we have is how we treated each other and what we did when it mattered.
So what does this have to do with education? How hard can it be to learn two short lines? But what we learn is what to do with them, how they look from day to day, whether they are words we mouth or important things we try to live up to. What the compromises and hard choices and gray areas are and how to deal with them. Our public education, when done well, teaches us how to be human. And it teaches us how principles, when believed in and applied with wisdom and grace make it possible to build a powerful, prosperous nation for everyone.
This wandered a bit away from public works and public goods, but trust me, I'll come back to them again.