Dark Horses

Although nature presumably abhors it, the Federal Government adores the void called public education: that Black Hole of the intellect, of common sense, of sheer human competence. A dense but useful small volume, Private Schools and the Public Good: Policy Alternatives for the Eighties (Notre Dame, $14.95; paperback, $7.95), edited by Edward McGlynn Gaffney Jr., offers evidence leading irrefutably to the conclusion that our educational establishment, and the bureaucratic, political, and judicial ones that support it, having no understanding of education in the true sense of the word, will go to any length to stifle and destroy alternative institutions.

The ostensible reason for this almost viciously hostile stance toward private education is that, if it flourishes, it will —by its superior performance, presumably—bankrupt and ruin the public enterprise. In truth, the motive offered by Lester O’Shea in his Tampering with the Machinery (reviewed in this space last issue) is probably the fundamental one: if we don’t know how to provide the have-nots with a good education, the least we can do is wreck what the haves get.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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Although nature presumably abhors it, the Federal Government adores the void called public education: that Black Hole of the intellect, of common sense, of sheer human competence. A dense but useful small volume, Private Schools and the Public Good: Policy Alternatives for the Eighties (Notre Dame, $14.95; paperback, $7.95), edited by Edward McGlynn Gaffney Jr., offers evidence leading irrefutably to the conclusion that our educational establishment, and the bureaucratic, political, and judicial ones that support it, having no understanding of education in the true sense of the word, will go to any length to stifle and destroy alternative institutions.

The ostensible reason for this almost viciously hostile stance toward private education is that, if it flourishes, it will —by its superior performance, presumably—bankrupt and ruin the public enterprise. In truth, the motive offered by Lester O’Shea in his Tampering with the Machinery (reviewed in this space last issue) is probably the fundamental one: if we don’t know how to provide the have-nots with a good education, the least we can do is wreck what the haves get.