KINDER'S COMMENTARY: EDUCATION `REFORM' SUPPORTERS DON'T LIKE CRITICISM

A friend living in a distant part of Missouri recently sent me a copy of a letter he received from a school board official. The school boarder complained that my friend, by criticizing Senate Bill 380, the 1993 education "reform" bill, was guilty of "politicizing the issue of the improvement of public education in our state." My friend solicited my thoughts, and I have prepared a lengthy -- you don't want to know how lengthy! -- reply. An excerpt from that reply follows, specifically dealing with the charge that we critics have "politicized" the matter.

"... I take it from this that any attempt to critique public education `reform' in our state, or to ask tough questions, or to offer alternative views ... -- that these are all babies to be strangled in their cradle. This is a set of constraints for restricting the discussion of vital public issues in which I can never acquiesce. I am especially dismayed that you would characterize any dissent from the path on which Missouri has embarked to be `politicizing' such issues. Like it or not, in a democracy, issues are resolved -- if they ever are -- in the crucible of rough-and-tumble, public debate and by means of fair, free and open discussion. Not to put too fine a point on the matter: we fight about it.

"Far from being an evil to be avoided, this is the very lifeblood of our form of government. Necessarily involved will be sharp and conflicting views, honestly expressed. Lay the facts before the people and let them decide. A close reading of history will reveal that Abraham Lincoln was accused of the 19th century version of `politicizing' the slavery issue (and much worse, besides). In a sense, this is true. True, that is -- but irrelevant. Likewise, wasn't Winston Churchill perhaps guilty of `politicizing' the issue of Britain's lack of military preparedness throughout the 1930s, as he, nearly alone, warned of the coming storm, of what he later called `the unnecessary war'? How else do vital issues get discussed?

"Permit me a more recent analogy. In the fall of 1993, President Clinton proposed a health care plan that would have effected an unprecedented government takeover of one seventh of our economy. Critics arose, offering principled opposition, not only to the Clinton plan in all its particulars, but to the very premises on which it was based. These critics exposed themselves to the charge that they were `politicizing' the issue of health care in America, a subject (like education reform, perhaps?) too important for such treatment.

"... You seem to be arguing for consensus where Missouri's education reforms are concerned. It can be argued ... that the worst mistakes democracies have ever made have been during times of widespread consensus. The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which supplied the pretext for an undeclared war in Southeast Asia, comes to mind. Or consider Churchill again. The policy toward German aggression followed by the Chamberlain government throughout the 1930s reflected a widespread consensus of the time. It was called appeasement. The word called up no pejorative connotations; its backers proudly proclaimed their support for `appeasing' the Fascist dictators. It is only in light of the subsequent catastrophe that the word favored by the British consensus of the period has become a byword for a shameful policy of weakness and betrayal, of pathetic and abject fecklessness. The consensus was quite proud of `appeasement' at the time. Thank God Churchill was sufficiently courageous to endure ridicule and scorn, spending a decade challenging it, only to finally come to power just in time.

"More recently, consensus on the federal level has paved the way for catastrophic failures. Rep. Ferdinand St. Germain was chairman of the committee that had oversight for the savings and loan industry. His amendments to FSLIC bills, passed amid uncritical consensus in 1980, paved the way for financial disaster short years later. I believe cause and effect can be demonstrated. Countless other examples can be cited. ..."

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.