The desire to be in charge is as human as pride. It’s easy to see it in others. We scoff at arrogant, controlling dictators. We criticize parents who use guilt to influence their grown-up children. We commiserate about friends who manipulate others to get what they want.
Yet, when it comes to politics, we tend to think our leaders must have some unusually evil intention when they pass laws that conflict with our values. But politicians are just people. The consequences of their human defects, because of their position and power, just reach farther.
People often try to control others because they think they know what’s best. Their intentions feel like love, though they may really be driven by fear or distrust. Similarly, most individuals in power whom I’ve gotten to know genuinely feel that by controlling others they are helping people and making the world better. It’s a proud presumption, as familiar as that feeling of superiority we all experience when passing judgment on others for their choices.
The presumption says: “I can make better choices for you than you can make for yourself.” Whether or not that is true, only the government―not overbearing relatives or unpleasant friends―truly has the power to enforce its choices. And nowhere are issues of government control more contentious―and the consequences far-reaching―than in children’s education.
Education policy affects every child, and all sides of the debate trumpet kids’ interests as the heart behind their cause. And most sides believe it. With parents, the argument tends to orbit around values, that is, whose values should be taught in public schools. This struggle to decide whose values should be taught can be seen in states as different as Texas and California.
Rather than controlling how others’ children should be taught, those decisions should be removed from the political realm and returned where they belong―with the family. Each parent should be able to choose a school that offers the kind of education they want for their kids. That is the beauty of “school choice.”
Arguments for school choice usually focus on how empowering parents through education scholarships or vouchers, tax credits, and digital learning programs create scientifically proven gains in math, science, and reading. But its most virtuous effect is on human dignity.
School choice is the only means by which society can respect parents’ rights to raise their children. Parents have a natural right to raise their kids according to their values and to shelter them from an overwhelming barrage of bureaucratic mandates and politically sanctioned value systems. Likewise, school choice is the only means of reform which gives harbor to teachers and school administrators from that same hurricane of red tape that keeps so many of them from fully channeling their talents and passions to prepare kids for life.
The argument I most consistently hear from opponents of school choice is that many parents are unable to make good decisions for their kids. Thus, the most vulnerable children will suffer. However, this argument has been proven wrong in empirical studies that show regular public schools improve with vouchers that allow kids to attend private schools. Yet, that is not why we should support school choice. We should support school choice because we respect freedom itself. We should support school choice because we respect the rights of parents to do their best for their kids.
Those who fear that school choice will leave vulnerable children more vulnerable shouldn’t in the name of love or compassion empower the state to curtail parents’ ability to choose. Rather than cater to our natural arrogance and wrongly call it “loving our neighbors,” why not instead practice real love? Real love demands freedom to choose to love and to sacrifice. If you see something wrong, go out and change it through human relationships―by loving your neighbors, not by stealing their liberties. Talk to your neighbor’s kids. Volunteer to tutor a friend of your family. Support parents who are struggling. Change the hearts and minds of those close to you with the sweat of your brow, not with the cold impersonal hand of government regulations.
Christina Martin is a policy analyst for the School Choice Project and Director of the Asset Ownership Project at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization.
