CJ Pearson Breaks Down Left vs Right on Education: Who Should Control What Your Kids Learn
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CJ Pearson Breaks Down Left vs Right on Education: Who Should Control What Your Kids Learn
CJ Pearson examines the fundamental divide between left and right on education policy. While both sides agree education matters, they clash on who should pay, who should control curriculum, and whether parents or teachers know what's best for children. From school choice to college funding, from teachers unions to free speech on campus, Pearson explores how progressives favor government control while conservatives champion parental rights. With cities like Washington DC and Baltimore spending $21,000 per student annually yet producing dismal results, the debate over education reform has never been more urgent. Where you stand on these questions shapes the future of American education.
The Fundamental Question: Who Pays and Who Controls?
Both the left and the right recognize the importance of education, but their approaches to delivering it differ dramatically. The central divide comes down to a simple principle: whoever pays, controls. This is a rule of life that applies to education as much as anything else.
Those on the left believe the government should pay for a person's entire education, with costs shared by everyone through taxation. The right argues this creates an inherent problem—if the government pays for a child's education, it will inevitably control that child's education. For those who believe parents should decide how their children are educated, parents must be more directly involved in how schools are funded.
Parents vs. Teachers: Who Knows Best?
The left argues that teachers, not parents, should control the curriculum of schools because they are the professionals. In practice, this means teaching what teachers unions want taught—everything from race-based education to sex education to sexual identity. The National Education Association, essentially the largest teachers union, tweeted: "Educators love their students and know better than anyone what they need to learn and to thrive."
Those on the right believe that parents, not teachers, are the most important figures in a child's life. Parents know better than anyone what their children need to learn and to thrive. This fundamental disagreement about authority shapes every other debate in education policy.
The Money Problem: Spending Without Results
The left wants the government to spend more and more money on education. Those on the right argue that a lack of money is not the primary issue. In Washington DC and Baltimore, annual education spending per student is $21,000. The results are nothing short of terrible.
The right believes that most problems arise in education because teachers are not properly trained to teach, there is no diversity of thought in classrooms, academic standards for students are astoundingly low and are still rarely met. When you add in problems that come along with powerful teachers unions that care more about protecting teachers' salaries—including those of bad teachers—than educating kids, it creates a recipe for disaster.
School Choice: Competition as the Solution
The right believes that the best way to improve schools is to introduce competition. This is the idea behind school choice—that parents should have the ability to send their kids to whatever school they choose, and that their tax dollar should follow their child and not the other way around. While the right wants school choice, the left opposes it.
Higher Education: Who Should Pay for College?
When it comes to higher education—meaning college or university education—the left says that everyone who wants to go to college should be able to go for free. A better educated workforce would be better able to compete in the information age.
The right says nothing is free, and that it is unfair for people who don't want to go to college to pay for people who do. Why does a plumber have to subsidize someone else's college education? Furthermore, there is not a lot of evidence that a college degree means much anymore, especially one in the so-called social sciences.
Social Justice vs. Intellectual Development
The left believes that learning about social justice issues is just as important as learning anything else. A New York Times article from 2018 reports that 86% of college administrators believe their school should be as concerned with students' personal values as with their intellectual development.
The right says that this kind of thinking leads students to care more about their feelings than facts. This is the source of the left's obsession with so-called hate speech, which is really any speech they don't like. But without free speech, the right contends, no meaningful exchange of ideas is possible.
Free Speech on Campus
The left says that speech deemed as hateful or intolerant is tantamount to committing physical violence and should not be allowed on campuses. The right says that conflicting ideas and discourse are healthy and allow for more well-rounded education.
The Bottom Line
The left trusts the government to properly educate young people and teachers—the experts, not parents—to decide what students learn. The right says the poor state of American education proves the government is undeserving of such trust. The right wants teachers to focus on the basics: things like reading, writing, and math. The left says universities should not allow speech they deem as hateful or intolerant. The right says that conflicting ideas and discourse are healthy and allow for more well-rounded education.
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