Not All Politicians Are Elected

It may seem as though I am painting all politicians with a broad stroke, and indeed I am, with some justification. Public education is under attack, as it has been arguably since the 1980s. Rightwing politics is the politics of privatization and corporatization; and that ethos has dominated across elected governing bodies, from local school boards to state legislatures to the halls of Congress, for forty years. So-called local control has not ensured that public schools operate for the common good because local governance, even when a community’s elected officials are centrist or liberal in orientation, often is overwhelmed by regulations laid down at higher levels and mired in the multilayered bureaucracy by which they are enacted.

Local school bureaucracies are as much to blame for the woes of public education as is the distant machinery of state and federal entities. Superintendents and lower-rank administrators often rise in the profession because they are politically savvy, rather than because they are knowledgeable about education or committed to public schools that truly serve their local community. The common law phrase “in loco parentis” has been applied to teachers, in particular, and other persons or organizations who function “in the place of a parent.” I suppose the phrase “in locum a legislatore” might equally apply to a superintendent or other bureaucratic functionary who serves “in the place of a legislator.” I have written previously that school leaders need to stop viewing themselves as vassals of the state and instead reclaim their intended role as servants of their local community.

Parents and teachers are justifiably frustrated when they see firsthand the demise of learning and the destruction of potential among their children and students because local leaders, instead of listening to and acting on community concerns, are marching to the faceless corporate cadence of distant masters. For example, testing instead of teaching is a counterproductive strategy if real learning is the goal. But that’s a big “if.” Learning for too many politicians is not the goal at all; control is. And money pays for control. Public education is expensive, and more and more public money is being funneled into private enterprises where a significant portion is used to line politicians’ pockets to keep them voting “right,” which is invariably counter to the common good.

The simple solution—though one that is hard to attain—is to vote out those politicians at every level who act contrary to public will and the common good. But that’s not really enough. Local communities also need to root out bureaucrats who work “in locum a legislatore” and by so doing fail to serve the public that employs them.