Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, and the School Choice Movement’s Normative Roots

ABSTRACT

In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the ensuring culture wars, the American school choice coalition has almost completely unraveled, but many school choice advocates assert that the coalition can be rebuilt. In this essay, I argue that the school choice coalition dissolved not because of politics or circumstance, but because the coalition’s libertarians, progressives, and conservatives have fundamentally different first principles in politics and education – first principles that are present in the works of theorists like Thomas Paine and John Stuart Mill. By studying Paine and Mill, we can understand that any education-reform coalition will be a temporary aberration rather than an enduring alliance.

KEYWORDS:

• education reform
• educational philosophy
• John Stuart Mill
• school choice
• Thomas Paine

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. In this essay, I use “school choice,” “parental choice,” and “educational choice” interchangeably to avoid repetitiveness. With all three terms, I am referring to the same concept – a policy in which parents are able to use public funds to make educational choices for their children as they see fit.

2. There are numerous quantitative, philosophical, and legal definitions for what constitutes adequacy, but any number of them apply in this instance.

3. These terms’ meanings have changed dramatically since the 18th and 19th centuries, but the first principles remain the same. Progressives still seek human liberation, conservatives still seek tradition and moderation, and liberals (or libertarians) are still primarily concerned with human autonomy. The categorization therefore remains applicable.

4. Attempts to decipher whether or not a particular political figure or statesman would have supported a modern policy are generally not useful exercises. My argument is not that Mill, in the broader context of the modern school choice movement, would obviously side with contemporary conservatives and that Paine would obviously side with contemporary progressives. I instead assert that modern policy debates descend from earlier philosophical conflicts, with clear historical and ideological departures along the way.

5. Adam Smith argued against public education as a monopoly in the Wealth of Nations, but he only hinted at an alternative (Robenstine, 2001). Paine’s proposal was far more concrete.

6. It is worth noting that Paine himself was an educator, serving as an English instructor for several months in 1767. See Conway (1893) for more information.

7. Paine never wrote a full treatise on what constitutes virtuous behavior, but The Age of Reason does include an account of religious duties. Paine, as it is clear in the following pages, detested organized religion, but he was also a devout deist, and firmly believed in a singular higher power that determined right and wrong. For Paine, “religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy” (2012, p. 4), and it is government’s commensurate obligation to adhere to these duties. This obligation presumably extends to education insofar as education contributes to new citizens’ formation.

8. Paine was a firm believer in human perfectibility, but he maintained that very few people would ever obtain perfect moral virtue – especially if they were constrained by monarchs or aristocrats. However, if a civilization operated in accordance with the First Principle of Civilization, and educated children properly, then it would be possible for all citizens to achieve perfection.

9. I think Paine’s affection for human liberty (including religious liberty) and autonomy would prevent a mandate, but this question will likely never receive a firm answer.

10. “Good” for Mill is pleasure and happiness. Happiness in this context is used as a synonym for material and moral satisfaction rather than its modern equivalent, the emotion of joy or elation.

11. This argument could also conceivably come from John Locke, but as Mill references Locke on numerous occasions, this does not necessarily pose a problem.