Public Schools Have a Product Problem, Not a Marketing Problem

Seth Godin correctly points out that the kids in these videos are sabotaging their education -- education that children in other parts of the world would give almost anything for. However, in calling what is going on a "marketing problem," I think he is misdiagnosing the issue. Saying that children are failing in public schools because of poor marketing is like saying that prisoners dislike their surroundings because of poor gardening.

Thomas Paine famously said, "What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly," and that certainly applies to public schools. The children around the world who would eagerly accept a chance to get a useful education currently do not have access to one, and thus recognize the value of it.

Why don't American kids get it?
Although it's convenient to believe that it is because children in other countries are more wise than our children, it may just be because they do not have it -- and because they are not forced into it.

Children in public schools are, in every useful sense of the word, a captive audience. Not only does the law forbid them from dropping out prior to 8th grade, more than likely societal and family pressures forbid most of them from dropping out for years after.

To make matters worse, even many parents who care to do something about it have no option (either financial or by law) to take their children out of one school and put them somewhere that is not as disruptive as the videos indicate. To date, efforts to substantially change this situation by the law in the states have been struck down by various courts.

Are we hypocrites?
Though education, and in a much smaller sense "marketing," may help encourage people to exercise their freedoms more wisely, freedom itself needs very little marketing. People crave it for themselves, even if they don't consider the consequences of their actions with respect to their freedoms and the freedoms of others.

When you must forcibly remove freedoms  in order to teach the value of it, impressionable teenagers will learn more by your actions -- that they have no rights concerning their persons that they can act upon -- than by what you're saying -- that their rights are unalienable and should be stridently safeguarded.

What should we do about it?
In light of the above, the answer is obvious, although without the reasoning it's somewhat counterintuitive.

First, we accept as a general maxim that popular education is not only preferable, but also necessary to the preservation of liberty. But the preservation of liberty is the desired result of any popular education. This is sufficient to justify public funding in some form.

Second, we realize that this has a whole lot of implications to a whole host of subjects, such as mathematics, reading, logic, grammar, etc., or in other words, the pillars of a classical liberal arts education, starting with the trivium, since we recognize that, among other things, prosperity is conducive to liberty, and prosperity is increased when we have the ability to reason rightly.

Third, in order to increase the overall quality of education that serves this end, we must stop requiring kids attend. We cannot teach children that they should respect the liberty of others if we do not do the same.

This includes the requirement that we respect the parents' authority and responsibility to attend to their children's education. Thus, they must have the freedom to take their children to whatever school they feel meets their kids' entire education needs -- without being penalized through punitive and coercive taxation for doing so.

Are vouchers the answer?
Right now the leading proposal to deal with the product problem is to introduce competition through vouchers. Take a look at this article from John Stossel and let us know what you think.

My only problem with the current voucher proposals is that they require parents wait until a public school fails before they are allowed to move their kids. Freedom requires that they be allowed before their kids are made to fall behind by sitting uselessly in a classroom as they lose the short window of opportunity they have to learn what they, and America, need. - Cam Beck

Comments

[Paul Herring]

This goes way beyond marketing. You have to wonder what these kids parents would say if they saw the video. Saddly, I'm sure that some would say or do nothing, just adding more fuel to the fire.

We can't outsource our kids education to schools whether public or private. We must be involved. More than any other generation, we have the tools to communicate and particpate with our teachers outside the classroom. For parents who "just don't have time", I'd question their commitment to money and things over their children (in 90% of the cases).

Teachers should be held to a higher standard as well. They should be paid more and more should be expected of them. Their pay should be reflective of the performance of their classroom. Maybe that's not fair all the time, however, things aren't fair in my job either. It's life.

[Michael Lombardi]

To start, I would think people would be more offended by how the young adults are acting than that the teachers became so visibly frustrated.

2nd, although I don't condone the actions of the teachers, I'd like to see how anyone else in the same situation would handle the incident. When you can't kick a kid out of class, cut their pay, lower their grade, hit them, threaten them, ground them, put them in a corner or hallway, take away their personal property or any other form of discipline most people expect in the real world, teachers don't have many (if any) options. Some students see detentions and referrals as badges of honor.

3rd, you couldn't be more correct in your quoting of Paine. Somalians and Chileans aren't smarter than Americans--they're more grateful. Public school should be like university: you pay to go to the school of your choice (creates competition, which is good for cost and quality) and the government greatly subsidizes the education of the poor. The current system of property taxes funding schools means the poor are currently getting inferior access to materials.

In the interest of full disclosure, I was a high school science teacher a few years back and am pretty passionate about my views on education.

[Cam Beck]

Paul - One of the many tragedies of these examples is that even those students who wish to learn are impeded by this disruption. With current policy, they have no way to escape. Standing against the disrupting influences can lead to violent harm.

While those attending private schools and those who are home schooled habitually outperform those attending public schools, as you say, parental involvement is key. Obviously, this is more likely in the case of homeschooling, and also, upon reflection, private, since parents financially vested in their children's education are more likely to take a personal interest in ensuring their money is not wasted.

Michael - I agree. It's very difficult for outsiders to stand from an ivory towers and tell the teachers who must deal with these outbursts how they should conduct themselves. This is all the more reason, in my opinion, to ensure control of the school system lies closer to the parents and community whose children attend those schools.

National government and teachers unions abrogate that local control.

[Michael Lombardi]

Cam,
Don't get me started on the *iss poor job the government does with education--of course that goes back to your voting post from the other day. If the public is electing morons, they'll get moronic service out of their public servants.

As for teachers' unions: what a joke. Utterly ineffective, useless, out-dated, and counter-productive. I emplore any teachers out there to tell me what their union has done for them in the past 20 years. You can bet none of my paycheck ever went to the union; buying classroom supplies was a much more efficient use of money.

As a student, I didn't feel like private school was worth it. As a teacher, I thought if it gave you more control over behavior, it was a viable option. As a parent, I think private school is a very real possibility. I don't have the kind of money it takes to send a kid to private school, but I'm considering it.

[Cam Beck]

Michael - I'm a firm believer in the idea that we get the government we deserve. As long as we actively and passively ignore the responsibility to which our form of government calls us, little by little we will be perpetually denied the ability to influence it.

[Toad]

Big target here. I'll focus in on one small piece of it:

Public education varies tremendously from region to region. The Northeast traditionally has the best-- and the worst-- public schools because district lines are drawn on a town-by-town basis, whereas they are done on a countywide basis in much of the rest of the country. This means that a wealthy town like Scarsdale gets to fund its top-ranked public schools through local taxes (that its wealthy residents are only too happy to pay- $20K in property taxes vs $40K in private school tuition) Since the school districts borders are the same as the towns, there's no economic diversity, no "others" to deal with. Real estate in these towns (and there are many of them) is sold on the basis of "public schools that seem like private schools" with correspondingly high numbers of Ivy admissions)

Compare that to Sunbelt school districts, which are often county-wide. Lots of economic diversity means taxes can't easily be raised to fund schools and school boundaries can be shifted depending on changing demographics.

Okay. Descending soapbox now.

[Cam Beck]

Hey Toad - Your soapbox is welcome here any time. :)