Somehow I ended up with a copy of the August 17th issue in my hands, my eyes drawn to the Opinion page. On that page I saw the following provocative title on an opinion piece by the paper's Managing Editor, an Erika Neldner: "Ethics trump politics."
At least I thought it was provocation that drew my interest, but then I realized it was more confusion than anything else. Was she saying that ethics do trump politics? Or was she saying that ethics should trump politics? Or was she drawing attention to a case in which ethics did trump politics. My curiosity and confusion piqued, I proceeded to read the piece in order to re-settle my previously settled (and relaxingly incurious and unconfused) mind.
It turns out that Ms. Neldner was chastising the local GOP outfit (the Cherokee County Republican Party or CCRP) for its "reprehensible" "recent action" in which she claims the CCRP was trying to unduly influence the Cherokee Board of Education to pressure GOP members of that board into "violat[ing] the Cherokee Board of Education's ethics policy by going against their judgment of what's best for the children."
My interest is not really in the substance of the point that Ms. Neldner was trying to get across. Indeed, for a variety of reasons I won't discuss, she does a poor job of making her case. What I'm more interested in examining is the underlying thought process (or lack thereof) behind the entire piece.
It begins as follows:
With an introduction like that can we expect the remainder to be a manifesto for eliminating the government monopoly on schooling, or at the very least, a plea for increased school choice via vouchers or tax breaks for those who wish to send their children to non-state schools? Of course not!
The issue at hand was the CCRP's assertion that any Republican board member that did not vote for a new Cherokee county charter school would be stripped of their membership in the local party... well actually, it wasn't even that bad. Here's Ms. Neldner again:
Now, I know nothing of the CCRP, so I'm predisposed to give them the benefit of the doubt: As far as I can tell, this is just a political organization doing whatever it can to make a statement about, and prevent future execution of, a mistake in its name that in their minds -- contra Ms. Neldner -- did in fact do harm to "the children."
However, in Ms. Neldner's mind, this is what constitutes a "reprehensible" "action" that seeks to pressure the Cherokee Board of Education to "violate the Cherokee Board of Education's ethics policy by going against their judgment of what's best for the children." Apparently it's impossible for the CCRP to simply disagree with what is in fact "best for the children." No -- they must be evil bastards who can't help but get their dirty politicking mitts into education for ... what reason? Oh, well never mind -- we don't want to pull back that curtain.
But let's put that aside and, for the sake of argument, presume that Ms. Neldner is right -- the CCRP are a bunch of meddling know-nothings and malcontents bent on harming "the children." What is the cause of this intrusion of politics into the classroom, and what is the solution? Here is Ms. Neldner's logic:
She cites an SB 84, passed by the Georgia General Assembly, "last year," which she asserts "basically says local board of education members should be treated differently than other elected officials." She then quotes the bill:
More to the point, what do you expect to happen when your schools are themselves the result of a political process? What can you expect when nearly every aspect of education is essentially controlled by the state? Furthermore, HOW DARE YOU use the political process to take a monopoly control over education, and then assert that the resultant schools cannot and should not be influenced by politics? If I am of the opinion that politics already influences education too much, then you're damn right I'm going to use the political process to undo that influence, or failing that, do whatever I can to bend the end product toward what I think I and my children need.
Rather than being too hard on Ms. Neldner, though, I should give her some credit -- the desire to get politics out of education is a good one. But this gets to the crux of my comments: her solution isn't to remove politics from education, but quite the opposite -- to double-down on legislative 'fixes'.
Statist tendencies almost invariably come down to one overall contradiction: that in order to solve issues that were at worst caused by the state, or at best not helped by the state, the solution is to expand the size and scope of the state.
It begins as follows:
The recent action by the Cherokee County Republican Party (CCRP), as it relates to the Cherokee Board of Education, is reprehensible, and it needs to keep its politicking out of issues where it doesn't belong.
A little more than a year ago, just after the July primary election, I sat at this very same desk and penned a piece about taking politics out of education.
A year later, politics has reared its ugly head in education once again, and my opinion hasn't changed: there is no room for politics in education.[Emphasis mine]
With an introduction like that can we expect the remainder to be a manifesto for eliminating the government monopoly on schooling, or at the very least, a plea for increased school choice via vouchers or tax breaks for those who wish to send their children to non-state schools? Of course not!
The issue at hand was the CCRP's assertion that any Republican board member that did not vote for a new Cherokee county charter school would be stripped of their membership in the local party... well actually, it wasn't even that bad. Here's Ms. Neldner again:
The CCRP recently met and approved an official resolution urging the four school board members, who dissented in the vote to approve the Cherokee Charter Academy, to either reconsider their decision to locally fund the school or renounce [sic] their membership from the local Republican Party.[Emphasis mine]
Now, I know nothing of the CCRP, so I'm predisposed to give them the benefit of the doubt: As far as I can tell, this is just a political organization doing whatever it can to make a statement about, and prevent future execution of, a mistake in its name that in their minds -- contra Ms. Neldner -- did in fact do harm to "the children."
However, in Ms. Neldner's mind, this is what constitutes a "reprehensible" "action" that seeks to pressure the Cherokee Board of Education to "violate the Cherokee Board of Education's ethics policy by going against their judgment of what's best for the children." Apparently it's impossible for the CCRP to simply disagree with what is in fact "best for the children." No -- they must be evil bastards who can't help but get their dirty politicking mitts into education for ... what reason? Oh, well never mind -- we don't want to pull back that curtain.
But let's put that aside and, for the sake of argument, presume that Ms. Neldner is right -- the CCRP are a bunch of meddling know-nothings and malcontents bent on harming "the children." What is the cause of this intrusion of politics into the classroom, and what is the solution? Here is Ms. Neldner's logic:
She cites an SB 84, passed by the Georgia General Assembly, "last year," which she asserts "basically says local board of education members should be treated differently than other elected officials." She then quotes the bill:
"... this elected office should be characterized and treated differently from other elected offices where the primary duty is independently to represent constituent views.... Local board of education members should abide by a code of conduct and conflict of interest policy modeled for their unique roles and responsibilities."Notwithstanding the fact that the incident which Ms. Neldner describes in fact seems to contradict that any such ethical lapse occurred (the board did NOT vote to approve the charter school), the thrust of the article seems to propose that this bill failed to do its job. Finally we get to Ms. Neldner's solution:
... it's time for lawmakers to remove that eight-letter dirty word [politics] from our local school boards and make them non-partisan.Call me skeptical -- or even cynical -- but doesn't this seem like a dubious proposition? If passing a law failed to remove politics from education, does it seem likely that passing another law would work a second time around? Can one magically erase political considerations simply by hiding the political affiliation of the office-seekers?
More to the point, what do you expect to happen when your schools are themselves the result of a political process? What can you expect when nearly every aspect of education is essentially controlled by the state? Furthermore, HOW DARE YOU use the political process to take a monopoly control over education, and then assert that the resultant schools cannot and should not be influenced by politics? If I am of the opinion that politics already influences education too much, then you're damn right I'm going to use the political process to undo that influence, or failing that, do whatever I can to bend the end product toward what I think I and my children need.
Rather than being too hard on Ms. Neldner, though, I should give her some credit -- the desire to get politics out of education is a good one. But this gets to the crux of my comments: her solution isn't to remove politics from education, but quite the opposite -- to double-down on legislative 'fixes'.
Statist tendencies almost invariably come down to one overall contradiction: that in order to solve issues that were at worst caused by the state, or at best not helped by the state, the solution is to expand the size and scope of the state.
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