#467: We CAN do Better than Fake Facts

  In an age where virtually all our nation’s public institutions have fallen into distrust, perhaps it is time to look beyond our borders. Perhaps a focus on some basic facts that are beyond dispute can provide a basis for public debate. 

We live in distempered times.  The general public, surveying the current events landscape, reacts with a wide range of troubled emotions: anger, embarrassment, fear, frustration, ridicule, disdain, even disbelief and shock at what is no longer shocking.  No matter our zip code, economic class, or political stripe, almost no one is happy with the current state of public affairs.

The climate for civil discourse is the worst I can remember--and I am a child of the 1960s, when U.S. cities burned and the nation’s capital was repeatedly besieged by impassioned demonstrators and three national leaders were assassinated.

I shared my Boomer generation’s desire for change, a desire to create a better world.  I saw many of our institutions--the government, the military, the police, the church, even the family--in crisis.  I found our country drifting into a spiritual malaise that sapped the moral energy we needed to revitalize our national values.  I saw the need for strong guiding values in the face of war, racism, and poverty, but by 1969 I had lost confidence in our established political parties.  I felt that, rather than providing visionary and moral leadership, the GOP and Democrats simply reflected the materialist and war-like values of their political bases.  Our leaders were following conventional wisdom of public opinion, rather than leading in a better direction.  I had lost faith in the system.

So I chose to abandon my own ambitions for a political career and to promote better values by working “outside the system.” For me, activism for a better world took the form of local action focused on faith-based communities. This was my response to that era’s crisis of values.

But 40+ years later we seem to face, not merely the crisis over values, but even a crisis over facts.  We are not merely divided by what we value, by what matters, we are even divided over what is real, what is true.

We see the signs everywhere as people dispute reality on a issue after issue.  We argue whether climate change is real or a hoax. Whether elections are rigged or fair.  Whether the current investigations are legitimate or witch hunts. Whether immigrants are a threat or a benefit.  Whether a travel ban means better security or unjust discrimination.

This begs a question: what relevance can faith have here? When people struggle to achieve common values, as happened in the 1960s, it made sense to look to faith-based institutions for moral guidelines—churches were prominent in the civil rights movement, and Martin Luther King was an ordained minister, not a public official.

But when people are reduced to fighting over facts--what use are faith-based institutions?

I am convinced our religious institutions can help us achieve common ground about basic facts that can renew our civil climate and revive the possibility of a productive public debate.  If we can agree on what’s true, we can then argue civilly and constructively about what should be done.  But how to agree on what’s true?

First, we step with a primary fact behind all others facts: Facts are mostly a matter of good sources.

None of us can verify every fact for ourselves.  We rely on GPS to know where we are going¸ and the speedometer to tell us how fast we are getting there.  We rely on meteorologists tell us a storm is on the radar, on clocks to tell us the time, on green lights to tell us it’s safe to go, on the Internet for nearly everything.  Every hour of our lives we depend on facts, but we get those facts, not from our own direct observation, but from sources we trust. We know the facts only because we believe those sources.   A wise philosopher once said that 95% of the most brilliant person’s knowledge is based on such belief.

It stands to reason, then, that our current crisis over facts is actually rooted in a crisis over sources.  In a word, what we believe depends on whom we believe-- and right now, our country cannot agree on whom to believe.

This is especially true when we speak of facts about public affairs.  Where people once prized freedom of the press, many now dismiss the mainstream media.  Where people once relied on “the fourth estate” of reporters and commentators, many (even our leaders) now turn instead to social media.  While the previous generation counted on investigative journalist to dig up the truth, we now turn to cable news panels to hear what we want to hear.

It makes sense, then, that to restore common facts we need to search for sources we can count on.

And forgive my career-shaped bias, but I find the Catholic Church a helpful source in the search for common facts.  I know this institution has been scandal- plagued for nearly a generation now (see CrossCurrents #442 https://swaincrosscurrents.blogspot.com/2015/11/442-spotlight-gets-story-right.html to see how persistently that scandal has crossed my own career path).  And last week’s allegations against Australia’s (and the Vatican’s) Cardinal George Pell once again has stained the church’s credibility.

Nonetheless, there is a case to be made for paying attention to the Catholic Church on public affairs--and if one does pay attention, the results are significant.

Let me cite two sets of well-established facts that could become the basis for a much wider discussion.

Fact Set One: Why pay attention to the Catholic Church?

Fact #1: the Catholic Church is the world’s largest organization of any kind, with more than a billion members and worldwide coverage. 

Fact #2: Its membership includes roughly 20% of all Americans, and these American Catholics have become an important swing vote in recent elections.

Fact #3: Despite the toll of the sex abuse scandal on the Church’s public reputation, the election of Pope Francis in 2013 brought a huge public relations boost to the Catholic Church.  Francis is among the planet’s most visible and respected—even beloved--public figures.  When he talks, people listen, and when he talks, he speaks for a consistent tradition of the Catholic Church’s vision for a better modern world dating back to 1891.

Fact #4: That vision presents a comprehensive analysis of world affairs, as well as set of principles for addressing our major challenges.

In my opinion, that vision, typically called Catholic Social Teaching (CST), represents the best single perspective on the crises facing our world and how they might be solved.  In particular, I believe that Francis is speaking to our time with a focus, a breadth, and a wisdom unmatched by any of our nation’s public figures. That’s why I pay attention.  And this leads me to a second set of facts. 

Fact Set Two: Facts about what Catholic Social Teaching (CST) actually says.

Fact #5: CST says promoting the common good is more important than pursuing personal benefit.

Fact #6: CST says people have a right to private property--but all our property must serve the benefit of others.

Fact #7: CST says that the market system must serve people, rather people serving the market.

Fact #8: CST says that healthcare is a human right, not a commodity or a privilege.

Fact #9: call CST says that immigration is a human right; while governments may protect their borders, they must respect the right of people to migrate.

Fact #10:  CST says that climate change is a reality, that it is a threat to God’s creation, and that the entire human family—but especially wealthy nations—face the moral imperative to address it.

Fact #11: CST says that economic inequality is the unacceptable sources of many evils, and must be fixed.

Fact #12: CST says that, while war may be justified under some conditions, the conditions of modern warfare make such justification rare or impossible.

Fact #13: CST says that religion is not to blame for terrorism. Rather, terror emerges from poverty, injustice, and fanaticism.

Fact #14: CST says that Islam, like Judaism, worships the same God as Christians.

Fact #15: CST says that taxation must serve the common good--even if that means redistributing wealth

Fact #16: CST says the world’s population comprises one human family and that this planet is our common home, so our goodness must be judged by our embrace of that family and our efforts to care for that home.

We’re all entitled to our opinions, but not to our own facts. So anyone can disagree with the statements above--but no one can say that these are not in fact the teachings of the Catholic Church. 

And those facts matter. For those of us who are Catholic, or those of us who admire Pope Francis, or those of us who simply seek a vision of a better future, these facts can be--as they are for me—a starting point for any discussion of public affairs. Even if we disagree with the positions they express, we cannot deny they represent the worldview of the world’s largest organization. And on that basis alone, they deserve our attention. They certainly deserve more attention than the fake facts flying all around us. We can do better than that. 

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017

#464: Is the Common Good the Enemy of Sovereignty—or Vice-Versa?

  A recent Harvard discovery suggests why this Sunday's French Presidential Elections French should interest Americans, and especially American Catholics.

"France for the French" vs. France, member of Europe

The French Election

Some observers have said the 2017 election for president of France is all about sovereignty, since Marine Le Pen wants to pull France out of the European Union and Emmanuel Macron wants to stay in the EU but reform it.

Le Pen’s supporters believe the EU Impinges on France's sovereignty as a nation; they want their country back, their money back, their borders closed, their industries protected, their immigrants expelled. They want “France for the French.”

Macron's supporters often do not actually support his politics or agenda, but they support France's continued membership in the EU. They know this means sacrificing some of the nation’s sovereignty: the Euro replaced the Franc, trade is subject to EU "free trade" regulations, the borders are open to anyone from the EU, even the traditional French license plates have been replaced by euro-style plates. But those prepared to vote for Macron believe that giving up some national sovereignty serves the common good of both the French people and Europe as a whole, especially in bringing peace to a chronically war-torn continent (see CrossCurrents # 463).

Catholic Social Teaching (CST) acknowledges the dilemma here. On the one hand, CST makes promoting the common good a top priority, which leaves little room for a self-serving agenda that ignores the effects on others. Pope Francis in particular has decried the “Exclusion” of others that occurs when policy is set to benefit some narrow part of any population.

On the other hand, CST also values “subsidiarity”—the principle of keeping decisions at the most local level possible, and solving problems by the participation of those closest to the problem.

The EU clearly aims to serve the common good of Europeans, but that means decisions get made, not at the local or regional or even national level, but at the international level which sometimes is far removed from the people affected. So common good and subsidiarity sometimes clash. How can this clash be addressed?

Some, like Julius Krein, editor of American Affairs, take a hard line view of sovereignty. He argues that internationalism of any kind cannot really achieve the common good: for him, the real common good comes only with national sovereignty:

“The only democratic institutions that we have are national institutions.  So if you get rid of the nation-state, what you’re really doing is getting rid of democracy.”

In other words, Krein considers that, to serve common good, all sovereignty must be national.  This is exactly what Le Pen is proposing in her campaign, and it is exactly what Macron is opposing.

Wednesday Night's Debate

But it strikes me that such a hard line is completely arbitrary and also completely contrary to our experience as Americans.  That’s why last week’s Harvard discovery is so interesting.

The Harvard Find

Two Harvard researchers, Danielle Allen and Emily Sneff, have recently reported the discovery of an early handwritten parchment copy of the Declaration of Independence--only the second such copy in existence.  They call it the “Sussex declaration” after the location of its discovery in England. 

The significance of the discovery is that this version is slightly different from the one in the national archives.  That original in 1775 reflected the practice of the Continental Congress of having state delegations sign official documents as a group, with state labels for each group.

But the Sussex declaration dates from the 1780s.  By then the War is over, and war debts have led to conflicts among the states, especially farming states vs. the coastal mercantile states.  Eventually these conflicts would lead to a constitutional convention, but already the clash was between federalists (who saw the new nation as a single united people) and anti-federalists (who saw it as a collection of states).  The issue here was whether sovereignty would belong to the nation as a whole, or whether each state would retain its own sovereignty. 

The Sussex Declaration

This newer version shows the balance shifting to the federalists. Allen points out the key difference:

“The Sussex Declaration scrambles the names so they are no longer grouped by state. It is the only version of the Declaration that does that…This is really a symbolic way of saying we are all one people.”

Of course, during the time between these two versions, the US was governed by the Articles of Confederation, adopted in 1777 and ratified in 1781.  The guiding principle here was to preserve the independence and sovereignty of each state.  It legalized the Continental Congress, but gave that Congress very little power. There was no president, no judiciary, no executive agencies, no tax base--which meant no way to pay off the war debts.  Even the Congress had only one body, comprised of state delegations.

Shifting Sovereignty

The Articles of Confederation failed, because the national government lacked enough power to perform its essential duties.  This provoked a Constitutional Convention and eventually led to the U.S. Constitution which governs us today.  The essential difference is that the U.S. Constitution shifted much of our sovereignty from individual states to the nation as a whole.  But the shift involve major compromises, including a Congress split into two houses; Senate representing the states, and the House of Representatives representing the people by proportional vote.

In other words, US history is rooted in a compromise which recognized that sovereignty needed to be shared between the nation and its member states.  When Krein says that our only democratic institutions are national institutions, he is simply ignoring our own history.

What is happening in Europe follows a direct analogy to U.S. history.  If we think of France as a member state of the European Union, we can see that the issue of sovereignty, and the conflict over how much sovereignty France should sacrifice to the common good of Europe, is precisely the same issue as the argument over States’ rights vs. Federal power in the US.

From the point of Catholic Social Teaching, this means that American history can help show us how the tension between the common good and the principle of subsidiarity can be resolved.

We don’t need to look into the distant past to observe this history.  Recent events provided ample examples.  These show that debates over shifts in sovereignty reflect a tension that still exists in American Life.

Current Examples

1. Death Penalty. When Dhzokar Tsarnaev was tried for his role in the Boston marathon bombings, his trial took place in Massachusetts, which rejects the death penalty—and yet he received a death sentence, because his crime was determined to be a violation of Federal law.  Thus Massachusetts could not control the judicial process because the authority of the Federal government prevailed. The state does not enjoy absolute sovereignty

2. Sanctuary Cities. When Donald Trump attacks the notion of sanctuary cities, he is pitting the rule of local law enforcement in preserving public safety against the interests of the immigration authorities to locate and detain illegal immigrants.  Most states that have sanctuary cities are claiming that their law enforcement officials cannot be forced by the Federal government.

3. Healthcare. The current struggle to repeal Obamacare involves the question of whether the U.S. government will continue to mandate coverage, or the states will have the option to seek alternative plans.  Obamacare relied on the sovereignty of the Federal government; the repeals are pushing for state sovereignty.

4. Border Wall. Donald Trump’s border wall involves the Federal government imposing construction in many border states that oppose a wall.  Here again, the common good becomes the rationale for overruling local decision-making.

5. Tribal Sovereignty. When the Wampanoag Tribe tries to establish a casino on Martha’s Vineyard, this pits the tribe as a sovereign nation vs. the power of the local community, and invokes both state and Federal power to resolve the issue.  In this case, the dispute is about sovereignty on four different levels.

6. Gay Marriage. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized gay marriage, exercising its own authority to regulate marriage on the state level.  But when the US Supreme Court imposed its Federal authority over state laws and regulations, gay marriage became legal across the US. 

7. “Romneycare.” Obamacare’s rules for health care were remarkably similar to the rules that already existed in Massachusetts under the program supported by a Republican Governor Mitt Romney. Romneycare reflected the state’s sovereignty, Obamacare reflected the federal government’s sovereignty

The Moral of the Story

In all of these cases, the question of sovereignty has been resolved on a case-by-case basis.  It is true that some people would prefer the Federal government to always impose its will over states, while others would prefer that states always get to decide all matters for themselves without any Federal interference.  But the vast majority of Americans accept a constant balancing act between two (or more) levels of legitimate authority.

Thus life in “these United States” involves a chronic but healthy tension between the sovereignty of the nation and the sovereignty of the states.  Neither sovereignty is absolute, so a Federal System like ours requires repeated negotiation to redefine the shifting limits of each sovereignty.

And that is exactly what Europe is going through today, especially if we think of each country as something like our states. 70 years after the Treaty of Rome established the idea of a united Europe, its federal system is still being formed.

The European Union has reached a moment much like the crisis caused by the Articles of Confederation.  In other words, its governing treaties are failing to provide the right mix of sovereignty between the European Union itself and the member states. 

It seems that, if Europe is to serve both the common good and honor the principle of subsidiarity, it will need to find ways to democratize its operations and reflect comment local and national interests and preferences rather than make all decisions by some remote process that does not reflect public will.

But the failure of the Articles of Confederation did not lead to the failure of the United States; it required instead a reformed federal system. Europe faces the same challenge, and France’s commitment to meeting that challenge (rather than quitting to protect its own sovereignty) will say much about Europe’s future prospects.

 © Bernard F. Swain PhD 2017

#459: Why Can’t We Make America Idealistic Again?—Part 3

The 2016 election has forced me to reflect on the many ideals that both our major parties—and my own generation--have abandoned.

My generation, children of the ‘60s, invented the “generation gap” by committing ourselves to fundamental change. We expected that when our turn came, we would change the world.  And we knew “the whole world is watching.” And now our time HAS come, and the whole world IS watching. What do they see?

 Now, so many years later, it seems to me that our generation has lost the capacity for idealism.  On issue after issue, our baby boomer leadership (in national office since 1992) has discredited new initiatives as “too idealistic”--meaning impossible to achieve--while allowing other nations to pass America by. In many fields, our allies in Europe and Asia and Canada and elsewhere have been inspired by our pioneering efforts. As I watch other nations embrace American innovations and build better futures on them, I ask myself over and over, “Why can’t we?”

This time I look at our investment in infrastructure and employment.

White Lake

I’m too young to remember the Great Depression, but early on I knew its effects.  We spent summer vacations camping at White Lake State Park in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, and one day I overheard my father answer a visitor’s question about the pristine, powder-fine sand covering the beachfront and the lake bottom.

“It was the CCC,” he explained.  “They drove trucks out onto the ice in the winter, dumping hundreds of truckloads of sand.  In spring, the ice melted and the sand settled to the bottom.”

The CCC--Civilian Consolation Core--was one of a cluster of depression-era projects begun under FDR’s “New Deal.” Such projects brought four national benefits: First, they created jobs when millions were unemployed;  Second, they recycled tax money back into the economy as workers spent their new income;  Third, they reduced inequality by moving funds from those who could pay taxes to those who could not;  Fourth, they built things the country needed--roads and bridges, dams and public parks--that otherwise might not be built.

But such projects required massive government spending, and this meant bigger national debt, or higher taxes for some, or both. The will for such spending reflected the main ideal of the New Deal: to utilize the power of government to offset the economic damage and human suffering caused by the failures of the free market.  In a word, the New Deal took public action to mitigate the defects of capitalism.

In the 1940s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, this idea brought long periods of peacetime prosperity, low unemployment, a thriving middle class, and a robust expansion of our national infrastructure.  Roads and highways and bridges spread throughout the USA’s vast expanse as cars became the preferred mode of travel.  Private bus and trolley systems gave way to public transit in many cities. New state and national parks were opened.  Clean water systems proliferated.  As the population grew and expanded out of our city centers, our infrastructure—and our work force and its wages--grew with it.

Over the last 40 years, that growth has slowed.  Wealth once again has become more concentrated, real wages have fallen, taxes have been more regressive, and infrastructure spending has not kept pace with the aging structures we had built before.

By 2013, when the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) evaluated 16 categories of infrastructure, they gave out 11 “D’s,” four “C.s,” and only one “B”--for an overall score of D+.  U.S. spending on infrastructure had reached a 20 year low of 1.7% of GDP.  One result: our bridges, most built to last 50 years or less, now average 42 years old; 11% of them are structurally deficient and 14% more are obsolete. 

Our bridges and highways are suffering the effects of chronic under-funding: the gas tax has not been raised for 24 years, and the Highway Trust Fund is on the verge of bankruptcy.  The current rate of infrastructure decline could cost the economy 700,00 to 800,000 jobs over the next five years.

Meanwhile, our allies continue to spend on infrastructure. After World War II, the rebuilding efforts depended heavily on U.S. support, especially the Marshall plan.  But by now, updating and modernizing naturally requires continued high spending levels.  The difference is, they are doing it while we are not. 

Take the example of our oldest ally, France.  With a population less than 20% of the US, their infrastructure spending is more than 30% of ours.  And if you target specific areas, like rail, the spending gap is even greater.  France spends more than three times the US on rail infrastructure.  This month’s Amtrak crash--easily avoidable if speed-control technology had been installed--is but one example of the price we are paying.  Anyone who attempts one trip on US trains, and another on French trains, can readily see how far we’ve fallen behind.  

  If we look at another area, investment in roads, the US not only trails France but 7 other allies, PLUS Russia.  We just can’t keep up.

Why can’t we?

The head of the ASCE cites “inertia” as the explanation.  The US lacks the leadership, the political will, the courage to keep up with its allies, he says.

But inertia works both ways.  We are at rest, so we stay at rest.  Others are in motion, so they stay in motion and leave us behind.

 But we were once in motion too.  Why did we not keep moving?  Why did we stop?  Inertia cannot explain that.

It seems we lost the vision that fueled our motion.  FDR’s “New Deal” responded to crisis by taking action.  It established the ideal that the common good of the nation takes priority whenever and wherever markets fail.  It established the ideal of using public funds to maintain basic fairness.  It established the ideal of a social consensus to recover from depression, recover from war, and create the vast infrastructure, high employment, and steady growth that made our great nation grow.

When economic crisis hit again with the Great Recession in 2008, massive public works projects like the CCC and other New Deal initiatives could have provided millions of jobs to rebuild our infrastructure.  Instead, our roads and highways and bridges and dams continue to age and decline, and our rail system is a pale relic of its former self.  And as the example of Flint, Michigan shows, even our water systems are at risk.

Catholic Social Teaching makes the common good, and the universal destination of all goods, prime parts of its vision for a more humane world.  My generation once promised a commitment to those ideals.  But since 1992 my generation’s leaders have not delivered on that promise.

As our allies outspend us and build the modern infrastructure that their future requires, I have to ask:

“Why Can’t We?”

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016

#458: Why Can’t We Make America Idealistic Again?—Part 2

The 2016 election has forced me to reflect on the many ideals that both our major parties—and my own generation--have abandoned. Last time I reflected on Transportation. This time: Education.

My generation, children of the ‘60s, invented the “generation gap” by committing ourselves to fundamental change. We expected that when our turn came, we would change the world.  And we knew “the whole world is watching.” And now our time HAS come, and the whole world IS watching. What do they see?

 Now, so many years later, it seems to me that our generation has lost the capacity for idealism. 

Far from fulfilling our mission to change the world, we have betrayed our mission by failing to even sustain the ideals of our past.  On issue after issue, our baby boomer leadership (in national office since 1992) has discredited new initiatives as “too idealistic”--meaning impossible to achieve--while allowing other nations to pass America by. We now risk leaving our country less idealistic than we found it!

Ironically, this does not mean that idealism is dead. In many fields, our allies in Europe and Asia and Canada and elsewhere have been inspired by our pioneering efforts. As I watch other nations embrace American innovations and build better futures on them, I ask myself over and over, “Why can’t we?”

This post is the second in a series that surveys such issues.  In each case, I reflect on our past embrace of idealistic change. I observe how we have fallen behind our allies as we have quit on that ideal while they have taken our place and sustained such idealism. In each case I ask “Why can’t we?”

This time I look at education.

Perhaps my idealism derives from where I live, since Massachusetts has in many ways been a land of idealism since its founding.

Boston Latin School Then....

 My three children are graduates of the Boston Latin School, the first public school in America, founded in 1635.  It was designed for Boston’s elite, and funded mainly by donations, but was followed in 1644 in Dedham Massachusetts by the first public school supported completely by taxes.  In 1820, Boston English School became the first public high school in America, offering a publicly funded 12^th grade education to all.  And an 1827, a Massachusetts law required that all grades of public school be open to all students free of charge in every town and city in the Commonwealth.  This means that, for nearly 300 years, publicly funded universal education has been the law in Massachusetts.

This ideal soon spread across America, which became the first country in the world to establish universal public education for its people.  And for most of our history as a nation, we have led the world in literacy and the educational attainments of our population.

By the period immediately following World War II, the majority of Americans were achieving a high school education in schools that were free of tuition.  In addition, many others had access to professional training programs (such as the apprentice program in which my father trained during a 39 year career at General Electric).

Of course, over the last 50 years, a high school diploma has been losing its career value, as increasing numbers of Americans have gone to college. 

In most high schools across America, the majority of graduates are now going on to some college study.  Soon the majority of the working age population will have received a college education. College is now the rule, not the exception as it was for my father’s generation.

By now, for many careers, a high school diploma is no longer competitive in the workplace.  This means that, for most Americans, a K-12 education cannot provide the career benefits that it used to.  Yet the United States has not extended publicly funded, tuition-free education beyond high school. 

This means that our world-pioneering ideal of public education, providing free schooling for all, has been frozen in place since 1821!

The result is that the United States is no longer the leader in providing public education for its people.  Instead, our allies are bypassing us by establishing free (or heavily subsidized) higher education.  For more than a generation, this has been happening in Canada, France, Germany, and throughout much of Europe.  The result is that most young people in those countries can acquire a college education without acquiring any debt.

American students, by contrast, face the daunting prospect of assuming levels of debt comparable to the mortgage on a house.  I remember my shock when, as my oldest child entered college, the chief financial officer of her school predicted the day when entering freshmen would sign a 50-year loan to pay for their education!  The very image of an 18-year-old committing to debt that would last past retirement age boggled my mind. To this day, my European friends are horrified to hear of U.S. college costs.

So we should not be surprised, as our allies pass us, that more and more American students are leaving the U.S. to study abroad.  In 2012, 46,500 Americans were enrolled in degree programs in 14 countries. (NOTE: These are NOT “semester abroad” students who return to their U.S. schools; these students are receiving foreign diplomas). 68% of these were in the United Kingdom and Canada, with France and Germany close behind.

Germany has become especially popular because university study there, even for international students, is tuition-free.

Jeffrey Peck, the Dean of the Weissman School of Arts and Sciences at Baruch College, City University of New York, described the “ideal-gap” between Germany and the U.S.:

"College education in the US is seen as a privilege and expected to cost money and in Germany it is seen as an extension of a free high school education where one expects it to be provided,"

The Germans are not simply altruistic in this regard. The hope is to attract skilled foreign students who will stay in Germany. Sebastian Fohrbeck, of the German Academic Exchange, reports that 50% of foreign students stay in Germany.

Other US allies are nearly as generous.  Public universities in France, including the Sorbonne, cost approximately $250 per year of study.  Belgian universities cost $960.  Finnish universities cost $1500.  Italian universities cost of $1000, Spanish universities cost $1500.  And Norway, like Germany, is totally free.

Back home, the average cost of public universities for out-of-state students is $23,800 per year.  The average cost of private universities is $31,231 per year. The old idea of "working your way through college" has become a bad joke.

The results of such astronomical fees should not surprise us. Americans have accumulated $1.2 trillion nationwide in college-related debt.  300,000 Waiters and waitresses in  the United States are working to pay off such debt.  30% of such Americans are indebted despite having dropped out of school.  Altogether, 40 million Americans--more than the population of 200 countries--are burdened by college debts.

We’re now looking at an entire generation of Americans who are forced to choose between 3 unhappy options.  First: they may go without college and suffer the competitive disadvantage for the rest of their careers.  Second: they may get a college degree and carry lifelong debt for up to 50 years.  Third: they may go to a foreign country for less costly or even free study--and many of them will remain there, draining away the brainpower of our country.

Do not be surprised if the numbers who choose option #3 keep growing—many after dropping out of an American university due to its cost. (Ironically, the colleges rich enough to guarantee students they will have no debt are largely reserved for the highest-achieving high school students. In other words, we are back to Boston Latin’s model of school for the privileged elite).

.......and now: Boston Latin School today

 So while we were once first in education, first in publicly funded schools, first in educational attainment, first in literacy--now our allies have bypassed us, and we face the challenge of catching up.

Yet in our political life, in our public policy, the idea of “free college” is regarded as an impossible ideal--something it is unrealistic to expect or even campaign for.  We seem to be a people no longer willing to fund what the public needs.  We seem to be a people no longer capable of maintaining our own ideals.

And so, as I observed with transportation, so with education: I look around the world, I observe what our allies have been doing to pursue the very ideals that we originally inspired in them.  In so many countries where education was once a privilege reserved to a tiny elite of the population, our American experiment in public education inspired them to see education as a human right (as the Catholic Church teaches) and to invest in the spread of free education for all. And they have kept that ideal alive as times changed.

So as I observe what they have accomplished, and compare that with our failure to keep our own educational ideals alive, and hear so many fellow Americans proclaim that such a goal is romantic, naive, and unrealistic, I feel compelled to point to our allies’ real-life experience, their success at making the ideal a reality, and I ask the sad question that keeps coming to my mind: “Why Can’t We?”

NEXT time: Employment

© Bernard F. Swain PhD 2016