He wants to make the Hoosier state’s voucher system—already one of the most expansive and expensive in the country—even bigger.
“Expand school choice programs, reform the Choice Scholarship Program, and double the Education Scholarship Account Program for families with special needs,” reads the first item on his agenda for Indiana schools.
His aim with that item is to give parents more control over their children’s education.
The same goes for the last item on his list:
“Empower parents with access to education information, support direct notification if a child requests a name or pronoun change inconsistent with their biological sex, and protect girls’ sports from biological male competitors.”
The goal here is to make parents the arbiters of what their children learn. That way, Mom and Dad can protect youngsters from confronting uncomfortable realities, including perhaps the fact that many families don’t have both a mom and a dad or that not every mom and dad are kind and supportive of children who are different in any way.
In his commitment to put parents in charge of schools, Braun marches in lockstep with Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita.
Not long ago, Rokita’s office launched what it calls the “Eyes on Education” portal, which encourages parents to report anything—yes, anything—that troubles them about their children’s school experience.
Presumably, these parents are to do this so that the office of Indiana attorney general could take some undefined action against a school system, school or teacher who taught junior something that troubled Mom and Pop.
Braun and Rokita, it is clear, want parents—or at least the parents who voted for them—to be happy with their children’s schools.
Having parents pleased with their kids’ education, one supposes, is a good thing.
Parents, after all, should care more about their children’s well-being than anyone else. They should be their kids’ most determined advocates and fiercest defenders. They should be the students’ greatest champions.
But even when that’s the case, it still raises a question.
If the ultimate goal of our education system is to make parents happy, then why aren’t they paying for the whole experience themselves? Why do we ask—no, demand—that everyone from the octogenarian who never had children to the 19-year-old store clerk who hasn’t started a family yet chip in to cover the cost of junior’s schooling?
Why, if education policy is about pleasing parents, do we ask all taxpayers to pay the freight?
There’s an answer to that question.
America’s—and Indiana’s—commitment to funding a public education system and guaranteeing schooling to every citizen is Jeffersonian in nature.
Thomas Jefferson wanted what he considered the three most important achievements of his eventful life to be etched into his tombstone.
His presidency did not make that list.
Nor did the Louisiana Purchase that nearly doubled the size of the fledgling nation.
His tenures as vice president, secretary of state and a Revolutionary War governor of Virginia also failed to make the cut.
What Jefferson did want listed were his authorship of the Declaration of Independence and the statute of Virginia for religious liberty … and as “Father of the University of the Virginia.”
There was a line linking Jefferson’s three points of pride.
All three were assertions of his determination to bring into being an independent nation made up of independent and freethinking human beings.
Jefferson often is dismissed as a dreamy, altruistic idealist—when he isn’t condemned as a racist hypocrite, that is—but he was more hardheaded and realistic than any political leader working today.
He understood that the creation of this nation, which was something new under the sun, would require Americans to learn how to encounter, talk with and work with people and ideas with whom and which they did not always agree.
That’s why he placed such a high value on liberty of conscience and speech—and took such pride in establishing an educational system that prompted Americans to see and acknowledge that not everyone on this earth thought the same.
Jefferson knew that a belief in a thought that could not withstand contact with contrary notions wasn’t a principle but an unreasoning prejudice.
He wanted schools to be incubators for tough-minded citizens in a self-governing society.
Not placebos doled out by easily threatened conservative politicians.