I think that human flourishing is the primary goal of education, but I also think that human condition is that of plurality, so you can’t talk about human flourishing without talking about citizenship and inter-relations.

This is one of those issues DuBois had right, we need to train men as men, not men as laborers. I also think that part of what it is to support public education is to send your kids to public schools, and work with your local public school to make it a school worthy of sending your kids to. It’s easy to write a check or talk the talk, but public education and community responsibility means putting your kids where your mouth is. There are costs to citizenship. We understand that with respect to military service, but we have yet to understand this with respect to our other civic institutions.

There’s one point where I’m in total agreement with Thomas Sowell, and that’s the curricula in public schools isn’t rigorous enough. Actually, it’s antiquated; designed to produce a suitable Jack or Jill for tightening a bolt or a screw. In my experience with inner city and suburban high schoolers, it seems many sense they’re not really being taught anything of value, so they just check out.

I think the principal here is making a case for the corporations to invest themselves directly into public education. It’s now possible for many school districts to accommodate a charter school funded by, say, a Humana for training medical professionals, or a Verizon for training telecom professionals. It’d be a very practical and shrewd political and economic partnership, at the very least.

I guess you could worry about good history and civics instruction in public schools. But until you’ve made sure your students are strong readers who can handle practical math, I’m not sure how much they’re going to benefit from that instruction. Is someone who never reads a newspaper and doesn’t understand how interest works going to make good decisions when voting? How?

Here’s where I’m at with education: the public schools in the inner cities are do such poor jobs that they ought to just stick to the basics and let the parents handle what they should be handling. If they aren’t doing the job, let other people handle that, not the schools.