Dr. Robert Putnam’s book Our Kids says schools don’t impact outcomes “that much” in our communities. That after researching multiple communities and districts and controlling for various socio-economic factors, schools just do not have much sway in closing the opportunity gap, reducing economic disparity, or improving social mobility. In other words: if you could take the best school from the best part of your town and plop it in place with the “worst” school or the roughest community, the kind of change you’d think or expect would not happen.
I’m inclined to agree with this assessment. Years ago when I worked in a summer education program with high school students, we could absolutely take Fs and turn them into As and Bs at the same standard as before…if you took the kids away from home, put them in a safe dorm, fed them three times a day, and structured every minute of the day from sunup to sundown. Then when they went back home…they collapsed again.
School administrators and political leaders across the country have been looking for the holy grail of education reform since at least the 1950s and frankly it does not exist. I’m pretty sure we’d have found it by now and the reason we keep opining about it is because the world is both softer and harsher than ever before, and the need to know more and do more is higher than ever.
So much blame gets passed to teachers and schools for the perceived or real shortcomings of a local school that it overlooks the obvious root: our culture stinks.
This has been rattling in my mind for a while as I’ve been wrestling with a much larger question: “What has conservatism ever done that’s, you know, good?”
What is conservatism good for?
I read a lot of history and it seems to me the watershed moments that truly “change for the better” are all driven by progressives.
Once you separate out Republicans and Democrats and recognize those economic and social platforms have switched and changed throughout US history, you cut down to progressivism and conservatism. And when you think about what we look at today as “a very big deal” and “good”, you start to notice a pattern:
- George Washington and the founding father’s fight to form a new country
- The expansion of the country and growth of the nation
- The abolition of slavery
- The protection of wilderness and forests and wildlife through refuges and national parks
- Equalizing the economic playing field by fighting against monopolies and trusts
- Destroying the Nazis
- Ensuring protection in income and health in old age
- Expanding civil rights to live up to the national ideal
All of these things are downright progressive. You have to be one helluva progressive to think, “You know, we should start our own country!” And at every turn — literally every one — conservatives were there arguing “No.” “No, we should remain with the Crown!” “No, black people aren’t people!” “No more European wars! America first!”, “No, it’ll cost too much to feed grandma!”
So I have been wrestling with this question of what the hell conservatism is good for for weeks, trying to understand or find even one instance in this country’s history where a conservative stopped something or did something that was worth a damn and not downright ignorant, racist, sexist, or you know, terrible. And I can’t point to one single thing.
It is the conservatives that, to some credit, are trying to champion “education reform,” whereas the progressives look more conservative, to name just one issue.
In Our Kids, the nugget is there: rich families will almost always have better outcomes because they have the time, money, and shared resources to ensure they do. It takes an extraordinary parent who is poor to raise up a child in that environment to elevate their social mobility. It is doable, but it is not being helped by either movement to the extent it should.
A school can’t provide jobs to all the unemployed moms. A school can’t help a family save or prevent a broken marriage. A school can’t feed kids three times a day (not well, anyway). A school can’t ensure a community is civically engaged. A school is but a mere part of this larger culture, and not even the biggest.
Conservatism wants to protect the family by ensuring two-parent households, an economy that’s good for business to ensure the parents can fund their kids upbringing, and ensure a culture of norms and rules.
Conservatism—quite validly—would say, “Yes, a family is generally best when a parent stays at home with the kids.” It is better for the kids, usually at the expense of one parent’s career, usually the mother.
Conservatism would say, “If we’re going to have laws, let’s enforce the laws.” David Heinemeir Hansson wrote about this the other day in Denmark:
When we were living in the city for three years following the pandemic, the most startling difference to major US cities was the prevalence of unattended children everywhere, at all hours. Our oldest was just nine years-old when he started taking the metro alone, even at night.
How many American parents would feel comfortable letting their nine-year old take the L in Chicago or the subway in Manhattan? I don’t know any. And as a result, you just don’t see any unattended children do this. But in Copenhagen it’s completely common place.
This is the prize of having little tolerance for antisocial behavior in the public space. When you take away the freedom from crackheads and bums to smoke up on the train or sleep in the park, you grant the freedom to nine-year olds to roam the city and for families to enjoy the park at dusk.
The Nordic countries American progressives look toward as a beacon of what’s possible in healthcare, education, and economic equality fail to reckon with the simple fact that Norway, Denmark, and the like are real monocultures. Danes live with Danes and nary a person outside that norm filters in much. It’s much closer to the “America First” crowd’s notion that America should be for the traditional “White stereotype” they perceive.
The fact that America has functioned at all for as long as we have with this many backgrounds under one roof is cause for celebration. No place else seems to function like we do. The Chinese don’t. The Russians don’t. The next closest are probably the Canadians and the British.
This got me thinking about what a blend of the good parts of Conservatism and the good parts of Progressivism could be like if not for the worse extreme ends of both.
The best parts of conservatism and progressivism
- Yes, families are vitally important. They are the single most important component to a health community. Recognizing that, let’s require both parents to stay at home after the birth of a child for a while. Let’s also recognize families come in different forms thanks to technology and healthcare advances and redefine family to mean “a structured unit of people in the same household caring for each other.”
- Conservative economist Milton Freedman argued that the minimum wage was racist because when the government sets a wage, it takes away a man’s only bargaining chip to get ahead in an economy: his wage. Why hire a black man if there’s a white guy there to do the same job at the same price, goes the argument. Today, I’d argue our lack of universal healthcare is problematic for the same reason. No one can get ahead of the spiraling costs and start new businesses or play with innovative ideas if they’re stuck tied to an “established employer” for sake of health coverage. Uncouple FDR’s progressive-era healthcare-with-employment idea.
- Marriage is important because it provides a basis for commitment to one’s family, community, and kids. No, no one should stay in a marriage that isn’t working, either. But culturally, maybe marriage should be harder to get into.
- Civic engagement and charity is critical to our communities, so maybe we should progressively require a conservative ideal: kids and teens should have to undergo a sort of “national service” akin to AmeriCorps, itself a progressive idea from Kennedy and LBJ. A real “What can you do for your country” moment. And that should carry into adulthood by requiring compulsory service individually or through employer service days. Take it a step further and require compulsory voting like the Australians.
- Stop trying to put the onus for all this on schools and instead recognize that if we want to really break out of the mold we need a mix of conservative idealism and progressive funding: maximize the school year from 6 months to at least 10, and extend the school day to include extracurriculars that are high-quality (none of this “sit on the side of the gym” crap). This would be massively expensive and require an enormous infusion of building capital funding and staff pay increases to feed and shelter students for longer. There is but one way to secure good schools, and that is to pay for them. But both sides get what they want: more time in school presumably would lead to better achievement, less “learning loss,” and fewer kids wandering around alone and bored at 3 in the afternoon to reduce crime.
- Conservatism provides for competition and that the best ideas should win. Then apply this to competitive voting districts, too.
In this context, it seems like conservatism has done nothing but lose for generations since it’s arguably true that families, civics, and community-first notions have done nothing but degrade since the 50s. And the things conservatives have championed as policy initiatives like Charter schools or more religion in the public sphere have been DOA and largely ineffective anyway. They’re nibbling around the edges of what’s functionally useful like enforcing laws to ensure true law and order in the “small stuff” like speed limits and shoveling your sidewalk and chomping at the big stuff they should be avoiding, like white nationalism that serves nothing for no one now or later.
Likewise, progressives should be eager to get away from equally damaging short and long-term disappointments like broad overreaches in power that degrade healthy cultural norms, merely treating symptoms (e.g., “more money for schools for…something”), and a seeming lack of concern over long-term welfare benefits with no emphasis on ensuring a culture that encourages people get off them when no longer necessary.