Evangelical preacher and editor of Sojourners magazine Jim Wallis describes his encounter with Great Britain's National Health Service on a recent trip to London. His delightful account of the experience dispelled his own expectations of long waits, shabby facilities, and endless red tape that many Americans reflexively associate with "socialized medicine."
Wallis sums up his treatment for a broken metatarsal bone this way:
"I was back at Ann’s [the woman with whom he and his wife were staying] in just over an hour from when I left—with my
letter, my boot, and my tale of smiling, pleasant, and efficient health
care workers. And somehow I began to believe that back in America we
weren’t being given the whole truth."
Sure, it's just an anecdote, one person's experience, and it "proves" nothing. But Wallis' story is instructive nonetheless. This post, however, isn't about America's dismal health care system or the urgent need for single-payer governmental health insurance. It's about socialism, a term used pejoratively to describe any effort by "we the people" to run and fund vital social programs publicly rather than privately.
Take schools for example. In a comment to a post on Blue Oregon about the state of health care in rural Oregon, public schools were used as an example of the failure of government run programs:
"Socialized public schools are a dismal failure, the same w/socialized
disease control, socialize freeways are falling apart... ."
Critics of public education are typically more subtle, citing a government monopoly on schooling to justify privatization schemes like charter schools. But the notion that public schools have fallen flat in their educational mission has been repeated ad infinitum by school privatizers. Like the lies told about our invasion of Iraq, if public school failure is voiced often enough, people begin to believe it.
I'm the first to say that public schools can do a better job, that the way we teach and and the way we organize our schools are in need of reform. But the truth is that public education has been a monumental governmental success is bringing literacy and democracy to American citizens. The proof is that virtually everyone reading this is the product of public schooling. That includes me, with thirteen years in K-12 Portland Public Schools and at least seven more at Portland State University. My one deviation into private schooling was a short stint at Stanford for an M.A.
None of the alternatives to traditional public schools --charters, vouchers, market-based competition-- have proven as effective in educating all children regardless of circumstance. It's time to stop the relentless criticism and the repetition of groundless depictions of public schools as "failures."
A good place to start is with calls to Congress to overhaul, or throw out, No Child Left Behind, a blatant effort by the Bush Administration to tar public schools as inadequate and to divert the tax money that supports them to the private sector. That would be a major step in the right direction. It may even affect the mess Portland Public Schools has made of school choice and open transfers.
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