In this editorial series, we’ll be considering the concept of “politicized education”, for the simple reason that education — public and private — is highly politicized. But like the goldfish swimming in a bowl who doesn’t notice the water, people involved in alternative education might not notice the politics they are swimming in.
For her September 9 article about Merit Academy in Woodland Park, outside of Colorado Springs — two communities noted for generally supporting conservative political issues and candidates — the executive editor of The Federalist, Joy Pullman, chose the title:
‘No Politics’ Classical School Opened By Conservative School Board Rocks Colorado Tests
We can note, in this title, an awkward situation. Ms. Pullman implies that a “Conservative School Board” is capable of opening a “No Politics” school. What she really means is that Merit Academy avoids “Progressive, Liberal Politics,” to the greatest extent possible while benefiting from public tax funding.
Ms. Pullman is seemingly unable to admit that every form of education has an underlying political foundation.
Yesterday, in Part One, I discussed — very briefly — the ideas behind so-called “Classical Education”.
In 1993, state Senator Bill Owens (R) and state Representative Peggy Kerns (D) introduced the original Charter Schools Act, which received bi-partisan support and was signed into law. The original philosophy of the Act was that charter schools would be smaller environments to experiment with educational programs and develop innovative ways to educate at-risk students.
Certain large, urban school districts were dismissive of the idea that ordinary parents, teachers and community members could create effective schools. As a result, many of the first charter schools started in suburban areas where parents had the capacity to develop a charter school, and also had ideas about innovative education models. Those models include (but are not limited to) Montessori, Waldorf, Project-Based Learning, Language Immersion, Military Academy, Early College, Core Knowledge, Arts Integration… and of course, Classical.
Colorado currently has about 260 charter schools, out of a total of about 2,000 public schools. Colorado also has about 2,700 private schools. Here in Pagosa Springs, we have four public schools, a hybrid public ‘family school’, two public charter schools, and at least four private schools. (This doesn’t include preschools.)
The way a school chooses to educate students is, by definition, a political choice. What is taught, and how it’s taught, are political choices made by people who naturally have political beliefs. When a Classical School — like The Classical Academy mentioned yesterday in Part One — bases its education model exclusively on the teachings of white males of European descent…
…this reflects ‘conservative’ political beliefs about what is most important in life and how society ought to be organized. I’m here using the term ‘conservative’ to mean ‘resistant to change’, and a belief that life in the ‘good old days’ — the way our grandfathers and grandmothers lived — was superior to how life is currently unfolding in 2024.
The good old days… when it was illegal to send information about contraception through the U.S. mail. When women, Blacks, and other “minorities” knew their place in society, and didn’t fuss about it. When no one talked about the high rate of domestic violence on Indian reservations. When committed relationships were exclusively between one man and one woman.
Can we maybe get back to the time before labor unions?
Even better, can we get back to how our great-great-great-great-great… great-grandfathers taught their students? Can we get back to how education was handled 2,500 years ago, in Athens?
The education model chosen for Pagosa Peak Open School — the District-authorized charter school that serves about 110 students in grades K-8, in a converted office building near Walmart — is known as ‘Project-Based Learning’. This model is built on the idea that students learn best, and retain knowledge and skills best, when they are involved in ‘hands-on’ self-motivated lessons. This is not a particularly modern approach. In fact, it’s the way that nearly all adults learn knowledge and skills, once they are set free of schooling.
Both ‘Classical Education’ and ‘Project-Based Learning’ are built upon ideas about how students learn, but if a Colorado school is receiving tax revenues and operating as a public school, what students are expected to learn is defined — as much as humanly possible — by bureaucrats working at the Colorado Department of Education.
The CDE regularly updates the Colorado Academic Standards in these subject areas:
- Comprehensive Health
- Computer Science
- Dance
- Drama and Theatre Arts
- Mathematics
- Music
- Physical Education
- Reading, Writing, and Communicating
- Science
- Social Studies
- Visual Arts
- World Languages
The ‘core’ of the Colorado standards is the Common Core State Standards, developed by people in the education industry and adopted by the state of Colorado in 2010.
From the CDE Social Studies Standards, introduction:
Thomas Jefferson and other founders of the republic emphasized that the vitality of a democracy depends upon the education and participation of its citizens. The need for an informed citizenry was the very impetus for the creation of free public education in the United States. If the nation is to develop fully the readiness of its citizenry to carry forward its democratic traditions, it must support progress toward attainment of the vision of powerful social studies teaching and learning…
We understand, then, that what a student is expected to learn in a Colorado public school has been defined by the State government. This is a political issue.
That’s a political issue from its very foundation — the assumption that the State has the right to define what students ought to learn in public schools. It’s also a potent political fact that the state government has assumed the right to enforce standardized testing upon all public school students, and to then rank schools and districts based on those scores.
But what students learn, when we’re not really paying attention or noticing, is just as important to our future…