Napoleon’s Educational Dynamite

When Reagan education secretary Bill Bennett and the NEA start singing from the same hymnal, it’s time for a reality check. Both have now called for the federal government to promote uniform national curriculum standards, but neither has made a compelling case for doing so. Obviously, its important to set high standards for all students, but that does not mean that it’s a good idea to set precisely the same standards for every single child of a given age. Children are not all identical widgets who can be run along an educational conveyor belt and learn every subject at the same pace. The best thing we can do for our kids is to treat them as the individuals they actually are, helping them progress through their studies at the best pace they are capable of – and that pace is not going to be the same for every student.

The idea that the federal government should be dictating a single standard for what every child in America should be learning violates both liberal and conservative ideals. It is at odds with the progressive view that learning should be adapted to and guided by each individual student, and runs contrary to the conservative ideals of limited government and individual liberty.

To find a political tradition that really is compatible with this idea, you have to go back a ways. Hippolyte Fortoul, the education minister of Napoleon III, apparently liked to boast that he could pick up his watch at any time of the day and tell you what every high-school student in France was learning at that moment. So we’re taking our policy cues from 19th century French imperialists now?

More on why federal government education standards are a bad idea here.