Education and the US Government

Donald K. Sharpes

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780367472146
• eBook ISBN: 9781000057201
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Originally published in 1987, at a time when central government control of education in many countries was growing rapidly, this book on the historical determinants of US educational legislation was of great relevance. The book looks in detail at the history of the relationship between the US Government and the provision of educational services. It assesses the contributions made to educational legislation by key political figures such as Franklin, Washington and Jefferson. The author also examines in depth the role of congress and the president, the relationship between the federal government and the state legislature and the role of the judiciary in education. An account of the hard-fought battle for the right to equal educational opportunities for the American Negro and the American Indian is of considerable interest. Finally, the book compares the American educational system at the time with that of other countries.

Part One: The Origins of Federal Education

Democracy does not confer the most skilful kind of government upon the people, but it produces that which the most skilful governments are frequently unable to awaken, namely, an all-pervading and restless activity, a super-abundant force, and an energy which is inseparable from it, and which may, under favorable circumstances, beget the most amazing benefits. These are the true advantages of democracy.

Alexis de Tocqueville

Introduction

Those who look in any such direction for the realization of their hopes leave out of the idea of good government its principal element, the improvement of the people themselves.

John Stuart Mill

Democracy in America—and the democratic governance of education — is qualitatively different, both as a political and governmental system, and as an influence for preserving freedoms, from any other political system in the world. Education sponsored, endorsed or adjudicated by the federal government, however, is a part of that democratic process. Federal education is often considered a collection of odd facts, changing programmes, and variable funding priorities. It is often looked upon as an exercise in questionable politics that varies with the party in power, or the tussle between parties. Such activities apparently have no bearing upon the governance or the process of education in states or local communities.

This view is erroneous. The principles and practices of the federal government in education actually illuminate a major elemental democratic force: the effect of the Constitution in our lives.

One of the three characteristics of Americans that Alexis de Tocqueville described is their potential to evolve into a ‘tyranny of the majority’. The young aristocrat’s journey in 1831 only confirms what we know today, that our feelings about government are ambivalent, forming a tension between love and hate, wanting what government gives, but resentful of it for giving it. John Stuart Mill described this tension as an ‘antagonism of influences’, and claimed it was the only security for continued progress.

Today many Americans believe this tyranny is ‘big government’. But perhaps it is the supreme irony that the federal government, most notably in education, has prevented the domination of any one group, including the states, over education control.

Democracy does not mean letting state and local governments run their own affairs without federal participation. That, quite simply, is to ignore what the Constitution is — the creator of centralised, national government to protect individual rights and promote common interests and the ‘general welfare’.

Understanding the federal government’s role in education is thus understanding democracy in action. Informed intelligence about the democratic role of the federal government will never lead us to accept the myth that we can curtail centralised governmental functions without also eroding those liberties and freedoms we take for granted.

Political parties, federal executives and legislators will indeed differ on the precise role and emphasis the government should take in education. But the constitutional powers available to government to act educationally as it sees fit is a matter of historical record and becomes the central treatise of this book.

Democracy is still young in America. Our experience with federalism — the union of the states with the national government — is equally young compared with other countries.

The federal government does not need the states’ co-operation to achieve its purposes, and can execute laws without them — indeed can override their laws. Individual citizens have direct access to the federal judiciary. This freedom of direct appeal to the federal courts has equalised the mechanism for achieving justice. But it has also centralised the governance of certain freedoms, and created bureaucracies for decision-making at the highest levels.

Although federal interference is anathema to some, the polls confirm that the general public does not understand elementary civics or the Constitution. It ‘intrudes’, it has too much power, and it over-regulates, to use a few of the popular phrases of complaint about ‘big’ government.

On the other hand, realisable benefits in our time have been the extension of voting rights and privileges, civil liberties and rights, and equality of educational opportunity. The active pursuit of social equality (including schooling) cannot occur without democratically controlled change brought about by centralised government, or violent revolution. Our history has been that local and state schooling has, in fact, impeded equality of schooling. Local and state schooling has in many cases only reflected social class differences in the communities.

One interest group follows another, sometimes in proportion to the political party in power (since they have a hand in the election process), and exerts its influence more ardently once positioned in a power base. The tensions occurring now for equal rights for women, abortion amendments, foreign policy, nuclear deterrence, all confirm de Tocqueville’s prediction about potential ‘tyranny of the majority’. Americans are called upon to know what government is legally permitted to do, what its limitations are, and the history of government life in fields like education.

Education issues, like other domestic-policy matters, become a part of public policy by a variety of approaches: political campaigns (Carter’s promise to create a Department of Education; Reagan’s promise to abolish it); influential citizens; government agencies; domestic disturbances (busing riots, assassinations, media documentaries); and the persistent lobbying of special education interest groups seeking preferential treatment. So what is, or what should be, the federal role in education? One of the premisses of this book is that the federal role in education is determined by the politics of the federal government at any given point in time. But it is also determined by the three different branches of government acting with constitutionally different powers. In a very real sense there have always been three distinct federal roles in education: executive, legislative and judicial. The federal role, then, is not limited to, or dominated by any one branch of government.

This study is not merely a history of education in America. Nor is it a description of federal programmes and policies. Quite a number of these studies exist already. Rather, it is to elaborate on two pivotal concepts: that there is and always has been a federal role in American education; and that it is intrinsically a part of the democratic process and has been since the Constitution was formed and the republic founded.

It is more pertinent to point, not to the federal government’s derived powers on behalf of education, but to the bureaucracies it has created to carry out its functions. Some federal agencies, like that created by the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1974, have combined all the powers of government itself — executive, legislative and judicial. Some, like the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under J. Edgar Hoover, are a pure reflection of their chief. Others, like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), are run by the specialists and professionals. Yet others, like the Department of Education, serve at the political caprice of the President and the Congress.

Bureaucratic government in a democracy may well be considered a necessary evil. But the challenge to democratic federal involvement in education is to purify the bureaucracies of some of the laws governing them, and to limit the scope of their execution.

It is my belief that the role of the federal government in education is democratic, that is, subject to the pressures of the body politic, from special interest groups including educators. But that role is also constitutional, in that the federal government’s power is explicit and inherent in the powers of the Constitution. The federal role in education is also in the tradition of federalism: a shared partnership with state authorities, yet separate and distinct from them.

A brief definition of each of these key terms is in order. I define democracy as that form of government which permits participation of a people through constitutional powers they possess implicitly. Governments are created to assist the people in ordering their collective lives, and to protect their powers. The Declaration of Independence says that to secure these rights, ‘governments are instituted amongst men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed’.

I define politics as the legitimate exercise of a constitutionally free people in governing themselves, either singly or in groups.

I define the role of the federal government in education to be constitutionally valid based on the powers conferred on the respective branches by the Constitution. The federal government does operate schools, colleges and educational systems and establishments (as we shall see later); Congress has the right to pass legislation of any kind affecting the public good; federal courts can interpret the Constitution that expands or limits based on law, the kind of schooling individuals receive.

I define federalism as the mutual sharing of the powers resident in the Constitution, and in the people, among national and state governments. The Constitution confers powers to a federal, a national government, and asks the states to share their power to make it work. It would not be far-fetched to claim that the ambiguous nature of this relationship and sharing of powers has been used by politicians of all persuasions as the central theme of their political campaigns: they run against Washington (both Carter and Reagan did), or against the federal government, or against the ‘encroachments’ of state government. Garry Wills (1978) notes:

It [the Constitution] created new powers, not so much over individuals as over these old loci of power, the states. Indeed, the main task was to get those old centers to surrender certain prerogatives; and the effort at reassuring them led to lingering ambiguities in our use of the very term ‘federalism’.

One of the reasons I believe that education was not specifically mentioned in the Constitution (although the phrase ‘to promote the progress of Science and the useful arts’ could be so interpreted) was not because it was a forgotten or neglected topic. Indeed, education was frequently in the writings of the principal designers of the republic. It was because, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, education was too closely identified with religious instruction. At that time there was no common school tradition, and it would have been politically and ideologically incompatible to promote religious schooling. The major participants in the drama that created the democracy all thought too highly of education to have purposely excluded it without political cause.

I am not among those who believe that the federal government infringes on local control of schools. There are of course instances of inordinate and excessive administrative work associated with the acceptance of federal funds. Local authorities are not bound, for example, by the same constitutional obligations for protecting individual freedoms as is the federal government. Educators, and the general public, have not fully accepted the statutory responsibilities of the federal government in education as they have, say, in transportation, air traffic, agriculture, housing, and health. Our view of the role of federalism in education should not result from lack of understanding the Constitution, the tradition of law in education, or the historical precedents that have all guided how we have educated our people.

The Reagan Administration’s 1982 Budget Request makes this point about policy direction:

Education policy has historically been the prerogative of State and local authorities. In recent years, the Federal government has become increasingly involved in this non-Federal responsibility. The Administration proposes to shift control over education policy from the Federal Government to State and local authorities.

There is no doubt that the federal involvement in education has expanded dramatically, yet the growth of educational programmes in education has not meant less control. The federal government has not taken power away from public schools; it has in fact added to programmes that were in many instances non-existent in local schools. Education is, and always has been, a matter of federal concern and responsibility.

Moreover, the expansion of federal programmes in education from 1964 to 1981, although unprecedented in size and number, was not basically a sudden and radical departure from the history of the federal government’s commitment to education. In fact, as we shall see in Part I, the origins of that commitment and role stretch back to the founding of the republic. If a democracy depends on a population enlightened and educated, especially about is government, then our knowledge of how the federal government works on behalf of education can only strengthen our belief in the ultimate survival of both education and government.

A careful scrutiny of government, from what ever vantage point, is always in order. Active knowledge about government is the first requisite of an enlightened citizenry. I have used the historical approach in this study, because history reveals just how much a part of our past we are. History reveals truths that illuminate our present conditions.

I do not presume to be able to foretell what will be future federal government policy in education; but I am confident from this domestic-sector analysis that it will build on past precedents, and be supplemental to, and often connective of local schooling. Some may believe that the federal government should have no role in education; yet the present evidence is that it has been actively involved since the origins of American democracy and prominent in the writing of the founders.

One of the avowed purposes of the constitution framers was to have citizens knowledgeable about government itself, as a hedge against potential totalitarian abuses. That policy is now in acute disarray as evidence accumulates that students and teachers alike are more ignorant than past generations of what government is, how it operates, what its limits are. There is more than nominal ignorance about the three branches of government and their respective powers.

The bandying-about of political slogans often clouds the public conception of the function of national government. Each generation must relearn the civic lessons that led to the formation of rational government, that new kind of government in partnership with independent states. This study forms a part of that process of educating for democratic understanding.

1

Education in the Confederacy and in the Constitution

It is difficult to understand the relationship between federal and state government in education unless we can somewhat faithfully reconstruct the fundamental concepts that prevailed among the moulders of the documents now guiding our governmental activities.

As the Declaration of Independence notes, the British king had ‘a history of repeated inquiries and usurpations, all having in direct object, the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these States’. It was thus predictable for the states to eclipse the power of the executive in government. Ten states had governors serving only a one-year term, and Pennsyl...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Part One: The Origins of Federal Education
• Part Two: The Federal Judiciary and Education
• Part Three: The US Congress and Education
• Part Four: The Federal Executive and Education
• Bibliography
• Index