Redeeming Virtues In Schools

From Chicago high schools to rural Texas middle schools, an energized cry for school prayer now echoes from pulpits, political leaders, parents and students. The long-running moral conflict over public schools has found new energy in the wake of September’s terrorist attacks. But the solution is not simply to put prayer in public schools. Instead, we must help students practice real virtues and empower parents to choose among private schools with strong moral or religious priorities.

All sides believe that certain values—civic, moral or religious—should be taught in school, and they recognize the classroom’s impact on the moral outlook of America’s children. Most parents want nothing more dearly than to ensure that their children grow up to be men and women of integrity, honesty, industry and charity.

But the public school system espouses only a diluted version of secular humanism and a weak idea of tolerance. It has become a moral vacuum. Inspiring teachers are prohibited from discussing their moral or religious convictions with their students, and some students absorb this sour nihilism in dangerous ways. Recently, four teenagers in the Boston area were arrested for plotting a sick, heartless killing spree in their high school. Mass murders, gang activity and violence in public schools are now all too common. When will we learn that students in schools without positive moral aspirations will sink into festering amorality, alienation and even sociopathy?

Public schools are supposed to teach civic values, but they need to integrate a stronger call to moral virtues like charity, self-discipline and integrity. It is nearly impossible, however, to find agreement on how this should be done, and whether these virtues require a religious component. Schools are caught in a political tug-of-war between church leaders and humanists, facing the daunting task of creating religious neutrality while teaching strong moral values. Those whose beliefs and opportunities are hurt most are poor families whose children are forced into failing urban schools and cannot afford an alternative.

The solution is to empower parents to make choices about their childen’s education. Why does our public system force the poor of our society to send their children to racially segregated and academically defunct schools? Given the opportunity, parents will make wise choices about where to educate their children. Nearly three-quarters of inner-city blacks support school choice and yearn to send their children to private or religious academies instead of dilapidated government schools. Policies that allow parents to choose a religious curriculum for their child will ensure real freedom of religion where beliefs are not marginalized or degraded, but encouraged. In seeking to both improve education and provide moral foundations, success lies in political solutions that emphasize parents’ ability to choose among schools and promote healthy competition among institutions.

Some people worry about public monies supporting private schools. But if families must foot the entire bill for private education themselves, then private schools become an opportunity available only to the privileged elite. As the Black Alliance for Educational Options likes to say, “School choice is widespread, unless you’re poor.” We should adopt policies that empower poor parents and create opportunities for their children. Real school choice will help make high-quality academic and moral education available to poor families.

Many value public schools for their appreciation of tolerance and diversity, implying that private schools do not impart these civic ideals. In fact, private schools do promote civic virtues and are actually more integrated, diverse and tolerant than government schools. Education expert Jay Greene found that nearly twice as many private school students enjoyed racially mixed friend groups. The Latino National Political Survey found that Latino adults from private schools are much more tolerant overall, whereas those from public schools were significantly more likely to believe that gay activists should be denied political rights like running for office or holding demonstrations. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is infuriated with the state of urban public schools as islands of poverty and racial segregation. The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the California public school system for its failure to educate, from which poor minorities have suffered most.

Despite decades of ostensible “reform” and ballooning budgets, urban schools, even more than other public schools, remain awash in moral and academic failure. They are perpetuating segregation, intolerance, inequality and religious discrimination, while poor parents plead for the opportunity to send their children elsewhere. Can we really tell them to “just wait” for another round of reforms, hoping the bureaucrats do it right this time? It is easy to say “wait” when one’s parents can afford private school and when the government doesn’t force one into a broken system where morality and literacy are absent.

Delaying school choice any longer and prolonging parents’ powerlessness is an intolerable injustice by which America condemns itself to endure the cancerous growths of racism, mediocrity and moral decay.

Richard T. Halvorson ’03 is a philosophy and government concentrator in Pforzheimer House.