One way to evaluate whether some claim works or not is to ask whether you could do it elswhere. Take for example the peace studies class offered at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in Maryland. There, a very noted peace activist, the retired columnist Colman McCarthy, volunteers his time to teach the class from a book of essays he edited which the school system approved, while the high school uses some (presumably licensed) teacher to check attendance and issue grades. That's fine, and I can even manage to admire McCarthy's generosity of time.

Now let us imagine:

• Mitch Berg offers a class in World War II military history as taught through old Avalon-Hill games (believe me, he'd do it for free);


• Sam Walton offers to teach young students in a business class the finer points of national distribution systems (since we're imagining, imagine he's alive);


• Milton Friedman offers to teach economics students ... well, anything.

Would the fact that none of them are licensed teachers raise a fuss in that setting? But somehow McCarthy gets a pass by teaching under cover of some other school district employee.

As Bill Quick points out, the first agenda of public education isn't education.

Categories: education