"I do not think that my situation is unique. There are many parents who
have
an idea what they want their kids to be taught and who are doing similar
things as we do. There is no doubt that parents' visions are very diverse.
Those who have close ideas could have organized schools provided the
government gives back the tax money for this and provides support for
independent school movement (like continuous training for the teachers,
educational materials, etc). Who is against it?"
This comment from Matvey very much sums up what I meant by argueing choice
is very much a product of progressive education. Education being a service
that is carried on behalf of the student or parent which gives things like
vouchers a sense of logic. This view of education is based on the
interactive notion of individual and society that has a long history in the
liberal tradition of the United States. It also is based on the idea of
"childhood" as ownership in which the parent is the sole socializer of the
child. A product of the liberatarian idea of "freedom" as long as it
doesn't infringe on someone else's rights, as if any freedom does not
infringe on another.
If instead we see education or even socialization as a "boundry object" or
maybe a farmers market in which a diverse society with complementaty and
conflicting aims come together to carry out this process, we can see it
differently. It is not an attempt to resolve or synthesize those tensions,
but rather a place in which the drama of those tensions can take place.
Laclau and his reference to the particular and universal seems pertinant
here. He argued against the modernist idea of universality which he saw
based in Christian philosophy in which a particular (ideology) was reified
as a universal. Universal/particular was a dialectical unity in which the
universal only existed within that unity, but existed nonetheless. The
universal was something that was dynamic and changed because of the
interaction with complementary and competing particulars. Two roads that
were unacceptable in a democratic society was a universal that was socially
reified and one in which the universal no longer existed.
Two approaches in regard to education that seem unacceptable would be a
socially refied universal (non-challenged dominant culture) and jumping
into the arena of particulars without a universal which I see choice as
argueing; although this most likely would not occur (a more likely scenaria
is another reified universal). Yes, parents views are diverse, and
children, communities, societies, business etc. but it seems to me by
subordinating education to any of these particulars has a degree of danger.
It implies ideas, values, beliefs as a noun that do not become transformed.
It also implies education as a process that only affects one particular and
not others, and my experience is socialization is much more dynamic than
that.
Should society fund "particular" projects in education such as choice? If
we see education as an enlightenment project whose primary goal is self
actualization then ideas such as consumer choice have a sense of logic. If
on the other hand, we see education as a stage in which different
particulars perform it is very destructive. Public education in the U.S.,
and elsewhere I am sure, have reified a particular as a universal in which
the universal only transforms other particulars and is not transformed by
them. Personally, I lean toward a vision of public education that is
organized in such a way that the universal and particulars are both
transformed. This is not possible in many current practices in public
education or the particulars of choice and other reforms. In answer to the
question, who is againt it? Me.
Nate