Rick Hess and Mike McShane have provided the education world with a thoughtful, accessible, perceptive, and—in its way—persuasive book on improving education. Though sub-titled (and marketed as) “a conservative vision,” it’s both more and less than that. More insofar as it reads as a wise counselor’s guide and contains much of value for readers of whatever philosophical orientation—but also less in that it’s light years away from what passes for conservatism in the public square today, at least when education arises in the legislative chambers of red states, in school board squabbles, or in Fox News harangues.
This wide-ranging volume covers considerably more ground than I realized when reviewing a derivative Hess-McShane essay that I was asked to comment on (and that we Fordhamites recirculated in last week’s Gadfly). It goes from home and family to preschool, to K–12, then to higher ed and beyond, including a side-trip into (mostly-recent) history and a welcome discussion of “core values.” That’s where the authors attempt to define conservatism in education: “a disposition and a series of commitments,” leading to eight “beliefs” that ring true for me, though they don’t easily compress into an elevator version.
Understand that this is no policy manual or programmatic cookbook, and the authors admit that it’s hard to apply their beliefs to on-the-ground policy choices. Tensions and conflicts are inevitable. For me, the gnarliest tension turns on the fact—Rick and Mike agree—that education is both a private and a public good, hence responsibility and authority are necessarily shared between individual and family (and perhaps employer) on the one hand and community/government/society on the other. Any attempt to allocate those “shares” is guaranteed to provoke discord.
Because the authors’ style is conversational, not policy-wonk—hence no need to prescribe allocations—they deal comfortably with such complexities in various policy realms, often by saying to resist sweeping, one-size-fits-all strategies and instead decentralize many decisions to parents, local communities, diverse schools, and other “little platoons.”
That’s easy to buy into—and I mostly do—but I’m also mindful that readers unable to suppress their wonkish leanings will fret that such counsel isn’t too helpful to lawmakers working on, say, preschool policy or crafting an ESA or voucher program for their state. While Rick and Mike can avoid—for example—formulating the balance between parental freedom and results-based-accountability, lawmakers must grapple. Similarly, when turning to pre-K, they write that “Academic preparation is important, but it has to be balanced against the need for little folks to, you know, play.” Absolutely, positively. But if one has those little folks in their center or school for X hours a day, where is that balance located? And if one is a policy type, do you focus your program on kindergarten readiness—maybe even hold providers accountable—or more generically on “child development” and softball the curricular stuff? (That’s long been the core Head Start debate.)
Yet serving up practical answers to wonks and operators would be a different book. What Rick and Mike wrote instead begs the wonk to pause and think about underlying purposes, values, and tradeoffs. A good thing, yes, because folks tend to do too little of that today before drafting bills, crafting amendments, and promulgating regulations. This book is more akin to a “principles of economics” discussion, maybe even The Wealth of Nations, than a guide to starting a business and maximizing its profits.
On reflection, the only part that leaves me a little grumpy is its ten-page “bit of history,” just because I read some of that history differently. For example, the authors seem critical of southern governors of the 1980’s because their ed-reform proposals didn’t differ much from Democrat to Republican, from which Rick and Mike conclude that “the right didn’t have much to offer.” In the 90’s and early 2000’s, they again fault conservatives for sharing much of their K–12 agendas with liberals, deferring to liberals, sometimes joining forces with them, rather than advancing a distinctive conservative agenda.
That’s not my recollection. Mine is that two of the seminal ed-reform strategies of the era—standards-driven accountability and school choice—emerged from and were primarily advanced by conservatives, and that the surest way to get anywhere with those strategies across much of the land was to work in bipartisan fashion. Conservatives were leaders more than followers, initiators more than copycats, doers more than critics.
But I’m old, maybe too preoccupied with “back then,” which occupies a scant ten pages out of 140. The remainder found me mostly agreeing, loving their anecdotes and examples, often drawn from unexpected places, and welcoming some great big points that you won’t find in other books. Consider the authors’ important distinction between “formative” and “performative” education. I’d heard Rick deprecate the “performative” without quite grasping his meaning until I grappled with this version—and if it’s not yet obvious to you, that would be reason enough to grapple.
Liberals need to, for sure, but it’d be nice if a lot of conservatives did some grappling with these pages, as well, for too many of both casts are performing—and telling us to applaud—rather than focusing on the formation of children into competent adults.
So go and grapple.
