Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Educational choice is a social justice issue
Educational choice is a social justice issue
Apr 2, 2025 12:30 AM

Note:This article is part of the ‘Principles Project,’ a list of principles, axioms, and beliefs that undergirda Christian view of economics, liberty, and virtue. Clickhereto read the introduction and other posts in this series.

The Principle: #5F — Because protecting parental authority is an issue of social justice, society should promote policies that allow families the highest degree of freedom in making choices about the education of their children.

The Explanation:Social justice is a term and concept frequently associated with the political left, and too often used to champion positions that are destructive for society and antithetical to justice. Yet for Christians the term is too valuable to be abandoned. Conservatives need to rescue it from its erroneous connotations and restore its true meaning. True social justice is obtained, as my colleague Dylan Pahman has helpfully explained, “when each member, group, and sphere of society gives to every other what is due.”

A key sphere of society in which social justice is in desperate need of restoration is education. The poor deserve the same freedom to obtain a quality education that is too often reserved for those wealthy enough to rescue their children from failing schools. Children deserve a quality education and parents deserve the right to choose such an education or their offspring. For these reason school choice should be considered a matter of social justice.

The term school choice (or educational choice) refers to programs that give parents the power and opportunity to choose the schools their children attend, whether public, private, parochial, or homeschool. While there are some excellent public schools in America, many students are trapped in schools with inadequate facilities, substandard curriculum, and petent teachers. Most parents, however, cannot afford to pay for education twice—once in taxes and again in private school tuition. School choice programs empower parents by letting them use public funds set aside for education on programs that will best serve their children.

AsArchbishop Charles J. Chaput says, lack of a quality education is mon thread among persons in severe poverty. And once stuck in deep poverty it’s very hard for anyone to escape due to the lack of skills needed to secure and hold employment:

Few things are more important to people in poverty than ensuring their children’s education as a path to a better life. If the future of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania depends on an educated, productive public – and it obviously does – then providing every means to ensure a good education system es a matter of social justice. Prudent lawmakers from both major parties have understood this for years. They need to feel our support in the voting booth and throughout their public service.

The point is this: Proper funding for public schools is clearly important. But experience has already shown that this can’t be the only strategy because it doesn’t work for many of the students who most urgently need a good education. It’s therefore vital that our elected officials serve the real education needs of the poor by supporting school choice.

But it’s not just poor parents that need the right to control their children’s education. As Pope Francis wrote in Amoris Laetitia, “. . . I feel it important to reiterate that the overall education of children is a ‘most serious duty’ and at the same time a ‘primary right’ of parents.” All parents should have the opportunity to choose an education for their children they deem to be satisfactory. The government may, for example, be satisfied with judging schools based on standardized test scores. But most parents want more. As economist Tyler Cowen says,

[P]arents may like school choice for reasons other than test scores. To draw from the first link above, parents may like the academic programs, teacher skills, school discipline, safety, student respect for teachers, moral values, class size, teacher-parent relations, parental involvement, and freedom to observe religious traditions, among other facets of school choice.

Perhaps now is the time to remind you that how the buyers like the product is the fundamental standard used by economists for judging public policy? That is not to say it is the final standard all things considered, but surely economists should at least start here and report positive parental satisfaction as a major feature of school choice programs. In fact, I’ll say this: if you’re reading a critique of vouchers and the critic isn’t willing to tell you up front that parents typically like this form of school choice, I suspect the critic isn’t really trying to inform you.

Since the money for public schools is funneled through the government, the issue is often framed as if the government is the “buyer” of educational goods and services. If the faceless, impersonal bureaucracy is the “customer” then perhaps it does make sense to have standardized testing—which lumps all students together and reduces them to a statistical metric—as the criterion for satisfaction. But if we believe children belong to parents, and not the state, then we should allow the true customers of public education to determine if they are satisfied with the product.

“Parents will not be perfectly informed consumers of public schools,” says economist Arnold Kling. “But bureaucrats in Washington will be much less well informed.”

As Kling adds, “Perhaps the [school choice] movement ought to be called the ‘Make schools accountable to parents’ movement.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Key to Economic Flourishing
It is nice to know that we here at Acton have friends in high places. This article at Catholic Exchange by George Weigel points out that Blessed John Paul II had some keen insights into what makes economic life flourish: “John Paul taught that what the Church proposes is not simply the free society, but the free and virtuous society. It takes a certain kind of people, possessed of certain virtues, to make free politics and free economics work toward...
Vatican banker: Western economies risk ‘continual decline’
On NewsMax, Edward Pentin reports that “the president of the Vatican Bank has said that emerging economies may be the only countries experiencing economic growth over ing decades, while Western nations are crippled by lack of productivity, petitive labor markets, and aging populations.” Ettore Gotti Tedeschi said the “next decades risk seeing exclusively the growth of emerging countries, and not just because of their low cost of production but also due to their advanced technological level and capacity to create...
Beginning of the End of Corn Ethanol?
Ethanol subsidies, once considered a sacred cow, are facing the possibility of being axed from the budget. The Senate cast a deciding vote, 73-27 in repealing the 45 cent per gallon subsidy to refiners for blending gasoline with ethanol, and the 54 cent per gallon tariff on imported ethanol. Cutting the ethanol subsidy and repealing the tariff still face an uphill battle as it must pass the house and get the signature of President Obama, who has vowed not to...
The Poor as Neighbors: Option & Respect
R.R. Reno at First Things has written a moving meditation on the preferential option for the poor: “In the Gospel of Matthew we find Jesus warning us about how our lives will be judged. His words are pointed. We are to feed the hungry, e the stranger, clothe the naked, and visit the prisoner. For what we do to the poor and the destitute—“the least of these my brethren,” says Jesus—we do to the Lord himself. It’s a sobering warning,...
Valedictory: Sacrifice and Financial Success
Earlier this month, I spoke at mencement of Trinity School at Meadow View, a truly impressive private high school school in Falls Church, Va. Most impressive was the valedictory address given by the graduating senior Beau Lovdahl, who is on his way to Princeton in the fall. The story he relates here underscores the philosophy of the Acton Institute in many ways and I wanted to share it with PowerBlog readers. I hope you enjoy reading it. Beau Lovdahl Valedictory...
The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Judy Hill and High Cotton Ties
A few weeks ago I made a phone call to Judy Hill at High Cotton Ties simply because I had a strong feeling she had pelling witness to offer about entrepreneurship, vocation, and creativity. Picking up the phone was a wise decision. She agreed to an interview for readers of the PowerBlog. I had ordered a few bow ties from High Cotton Ties and was extremely impressed with the unique design and high quality. I had no idea of any...
The Diabolic Comedy
Jeffery C. Pugh has landed every blogger’s dream: the book deal for a best-of collection of his musings. Devil’s Ink: Blog from the Basement Office is an answer to the question “What if Satan kept a blog?”—one of several (the opportunity to pun is apparently irresistible) all of which immediately parison with C.S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters. Pugh anticipates parison in his book’s preface, saying he offers “another way of looking at evil,” a modern way that reflects how the...
Gregg: Europe’s Not-So-Revolutionary Youth
The European Union’s finances are in a dismal state, and are requiring governments to revaluate the “welfare state.” Samuel Gregg articulates in his article appearing in The American Spectator, “Europe’s Not-So-Revolutionary Youth,” that a youth movement called les indignés or los indignados, depending on where you are, is resisting the reforms being proposed: This time, however, things are different. With barely-disguised reluctance, governments across Western Europe are proceeding with relatively minor reforms aimed at reducing the European welfare state’s costs....
Fighting Hunger Together
Bread for the World CEO David Beckmann once said, “We can’t food-bank our way to the end of hunger.” As I said then, if “changing the politics of hunger” means that more people are getting food assistance from the government rather than food banks munity efforts, count me out. But on a more hopeful note, this story from NPR tracking how Walmart has partnered with Feeding America, the largest food bank network in the nation, to get food that would...
Gregg: Social Contracts, Human Flourishing, and the Economy
In a new article on Public Discourse, Samuel Gregg explores social contract theory and how that may apply to the current budget battles: In very broad terms, social contract theory is a way of understanding the relationship between governments and the people. It holds that, having agreed upon the need for a government, individuals create a state on the basis of mutual promises. This permits the state to claim that its authority is based on a delegation of people’s rights...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved