Private vs. Public, Idios vs. Polites, Spectator vs. Citizen, Success vs. Virtue

In her "Why Women Should Vote," Jane Addams (1913) drew a stark contrast between the pastoral and the urban, attending especially to the greater responsibilities shared among those who lived in close quarters. Whereas the farm wife could sweep scraps of food and other refuse out the doorway to either be enjoyed by animals or rot in the sun, such an arrangement would quickly prove problematic in the denseness of a city: The accumulation of trash in the streets would inevitably breed disease among the children for whom the streets are their playground. Tending to one's own household is not sufficient in a city. Some functions would require concerted efforts that necessarily pull one's attention beyond her own household into what might be called the "public household." This, of course, has implications beyond why women should vote, and the message is clear enough, but I'll state it anyway: There is an important distinction between the private and the public, and to ignore the latter is to endanger the former. There are practical and compelling reasons for private individuals to act as public citizens, especially as modern society becomes more complicated (i.e., as the relationships and interactions among individuals within society become more intertwined).

David Labaree (1997) writes in "Public Goods, Private Goods: The American Struggle Over Educational Goals" that he, like Addams, sees some value in choosing to view education as a public good, even if doing so means relinquishing some of the comparative advantage one might obtain from viewing education as a private good. Such magnanimity is difficult to imagine in a society marked by a kind of selfishness that Edward Banfield (1958) referred to as "amoral familism" in his Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Whereas the family of raccoons that visits my back porch each night will snap at each other viciously in competition for bits of kibble meant for the cat, Addams, Labaree, and Banfield equate "private" with "household" or "family" rather than "individual," as seen in the case of the raccoons which, although foraging as a family, fight among themselves once a cache of victuals is found. However, as one family member might attend Harvard, whereas another might attend Middle Tennessee State University, the raccoon version of sibling rivalry (and comparative advantage) could easily apply to humans as well within Labaree's vision of education as both a private good and a public good.

In his Teaching Democracy: Unity and Diversity in Public Life, Walter C. Parker (2003) urges us to think of the pluribus (many) and unum (one) as complementary and necessary components of a pluralistic, democratic society. According to Parker, too much emphasis on the private individual is "idiotic"--a term he uses not in the common sense, but in the sense derived from the Greek idios, from which "idiosyncratic" is also derived. Parker's "idiotic" citizen is not really a "citizen" at all, though he or she may pay taxes, enjoy public services, and so forth. In contrast, there is the "political" citizen, and, as with "idiotic," the term "political" is derived from the Greek polites. So, whereas Addams finds modern society recommending a concern for the "public household" in addition to that for the "private household," and whereas Labaree finds a melding between education as a "public good" and a "private good" in terms of credentials and relative worth of similar degrees, Parker problematizes the overenthusiastic embrace of either idiocy or politics: After all, is the do-nothing idiot any more dangerous than the politically active neo-Nazi? "Citizenship," then, entails more than just activity in political life; it must be informed by the "inescapable network of mutuality" (M. L. King, Jr., quoted in Parker, 2003, p. 8). Likewise, King himself was influenced by the Vietnamese monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who very eloquently summed up the interconnectedness, interactions, networks, and rational/social nature of humans that Dr. Rhodes emphasizes frequently: "You cannot just be by yourself alone. You have to inter-be with every other thing" (Hanh, 1988, p. 4, quoted in Parker, 2003, p. 9).

Parker further extends the private:public relationship by introducing us to the success:virtue relationship. Referring to the work of Paul Theobald (Teaching the Commons, 1997), Parker notes that the inter-being envisioned by Hanh and King is unlikely to bring about a unity of social purpose in a culture where individual success is valued so much more highly than virtue. As an example, Parker offers the justifications often given by SUV drivers--"safety for my family," "freedom," etc. That such safety and freedom endangers not only others but--through damage to the ozone layer--the drivers' families and freedoms as well--demonstrates a willingness to ignore the "public," even when doing so ignores the interests and survival of the individuals as well.

Clearly, it is necessary to explicitly teach people to see the connections--the "inter-being"--that show success to be something less than virtuous, and virtue to be something more than success.

The Utility in Keeping Things Vague: A Comment on Anderson's Advocacy Leadership

In his review of the opening pages of Gary Anderson's (2009) Advocacy Leadership: Toward a Post-Reform Agenda in Education, fellow blogger EJ over at lbjeduclass.blogspot.com notes that, although Anderson provides ample background to scaffold readers' understanding of neoliberalism and where it came from, he offers little in the way of theoretical grounding for his own concept of "advocacy leadership." A commenter subsequently hinted that the initial "slipperiness" may serve a purpose, but that Anderson does eventually get around to giving us a better sense of where advocacy leadership fits in the bigger scheme of things.

In a book-length work that, as the title suggests, advances a particular agenda, there are benefits in starting out by positing your agenda in contrast to that which it is not--in this case, neoliberal control of schooling and school reform--since the case against neoliberal control of education is (1) easily made and (2) makes the reader more friendly to the alternative. Regarding the first point, neoliberalism is the straw man that has proven himself to be a formidable opponent; that is, when one actually describes the amoral policy and its effects on the societies in which it has taken hold, it appears to be an impossibly cruel and oppressive caricature of anticommunism. That brings us to the second point.

Despite some headway during the Great Depression, communism (and socialism, with which it is popularly conflated) has been viewed by many Americans as a great evil. President Ronald Reagan even dubbed the USSR "the Evil Empire." Posters portray President Barack Obama bearing a Hitlerian moustache and labelled with the word "socialist," thus simultaneously depicting this one man as the embodiment of America's two greatest enemies (of the 20th century). Even the American reading public (as opposed to the nonreading public) would be a hard market for peddlers of alternatives to free-market ideas. And, unfortunately for advocates of change for the public good, free-market ideas tend to be a big part of the problems they seek to remedy, so any suggestion they anticipate being of worth (keeping in mind that pragmatists are not averse to using whatever tools they believe will work) is going to have to (1) address the inherent inequities of unregulated capitalism while (2) not sounding so lefty that it is dismissed without serious consideration.

The vagueness permits the case to be made for (what I anticipate will be) a reining in of laissez-faire economic principles vis-a-vis public education. Once the case is compellingly made and its alternative is shown to be workable and congruent with the [espoused] American ideals of liberty and justice for all and of all (wo)men being created equal, then the provenance and AKAs of the agenda can be revealed. 

Anyone who denies that the presentation of an idea can be more important than the merits of the idea itself hasn't been paying attention. A reader need not know about Derrida's differance to be swayed by an argument that employs the concept in creating an acceptable space between neoliberalism and all that is not neoliberalism (lumped together), and is therefore communism. That one is not the yin to the other's yang--or, in Cold War terms, that there is not a zero-sum balance to concern ourselves with in this instance--can be a liberating notion for those of us who grew up being schooled to believe that the free market was worth fighting and dying for ("Are you now or have you ever been a Communist?"). Of course, those who lost loved ones in the hottest years of the misleadingly named Cold War may still cling to the belief that admitting that there can be any benefits to be derived from even mixed economies or limited spheres of "no-profit zones" (such as in education) would somehow mean that their family's sacrifice was "in vain."

Just as analogies can be used to educate and elucidate, so too can analogies be used to close the public's ears to anything a pragmatist might offer in good faith. In the latter, history can truly be a burden to the present and the future. That is, the way history has been and is being taught can truly be a burden to the present and the future.