By Ande Jacobson
I was lucky. I grew up in a time when public education was thriving. There were still some differences depending upon where one lived. Still, everyone had access to public education for K-12, and public colleges and universities were affordable. At that time, the federal government covered about 80% of the public education costs while states, students, and other private funding covered the remaining 20%. Beyond the minimal costs, I lived in a state that had an excellent public education system at the time. There were general requirements that ensured that graduates had a core of knowledge that allowed them to be productive citizens. Beyond fundamental math, reading, and writing skills, high school graduates had a basic understanding of how our government was structured and functioned, and at least a passing familiarity with our nation’s history, the good and the bad. That gave them the basic skills necessary to pursue employment, to vote responsibly, and if desired, to pursue higher education.
Although the Jarvis-Gann initiative passed in my state in 1978 and served to harm the K-12 education system a few years after that when the state’s surplus education budget was exhausted, the state’s entire public education system suffered an even worse funding blow along with the rest of the country during the Reagan administration when he championed flipping the funding percentages so that the federal government only covered about 20%, and states, students, teachers, and other private funding sources had to cover 80% of the costs of public education. At the college level, this started the student debt crisis the country now faces when the costs soared to make up for the lack of federal funding they once enjoyed.
Many years later, my understanding of how widespread common knowledge was also came into question. At work through a convoluted sequence of events, I began to gather some data regarding a subject that I thought was common knowledge but turned out wasn’t, the Marquess of Queensbury Rules, or more precisely what those rules governed. I had been in a contentious meeting where my young colleague running the meeting declared that if the arguing didn’t cease, he’d be forced to institute Robert’s Rules of Order on the group. Things calmed down at that point, and the meeting continued. When I went by his office later that day, he apologized for his outburst. I told him that we were actually in pretty good shape because he only threatened to formalize the meeting and didn’t have to resort to the Marquess of Queensbury Rules which would have been much worse. To that I got a blank stare in response. He had no idea what the Marquess of Queensbury Rules were and in fact had never heard of them.
I was shocked. My colleague was a little over a decade younger than I was, but still, that seemed a pretty well-known reference. Curious, I began an informal survey to dig a little deeper, and the results were surprising. The data showed that for people over age 40, about half had heard of the Marquess of Queensbury Rules and knew what they pertained to. The other half hadn’t heard of them. That wasn’t the most shocking aspect of the results though. Under age 40, only one person had even heard of the rules though he couldn’t remember exactly what they governed. My sample was fairly evenly spread between 40+ and under 40, and as it happened, all of the people in my sample were U.S. citizens. Most were from work where citizenship was required based on the work we were doing, and those I asked outside of work were all native-born U.S. citizens by happenstance.
As an aside, the Marquess of Queensbury Rules were coined by John Graham Chambers in 1867 at the behest of the 9th Marquess of Queensbury to govern the gentlemanly sport of fisticuffs, i.e., boxing. I wasn’t sure exactly where I’d learned of the Marquess of Queensbury Rules myself, but I discovered that of those who had heard of them, one or more of the following five things were true:
- They were boxing aficionados (with one notable exception).
- They were fans of the TV show M*A*S*H.
- They were fans of the TV show Rocky and Bullwinkle or more specifically a particular episode of Mr. Peabody where Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman used the Way Back machine to visit John Graham Chambers in 1867.
- They were Sherlock Holmes aficionados.
- They read romance novels.
Although I had never read a romance novel, the fifth item surprised me at first until I thought about it and realized that they tended to take place during the era when the rules were coined.
The concept of common knowledge stems from the idea that within a society, there are basic ideas and references that are widely understood, such as how our government functions, something that had been common knowledge for those educated in the U.S. until the concerted attacks on public education began. In fact, where history and civics are concerned, today naturalized citizens tend to have a much better understanding of the subjects than do natural born Americans because of the process through which they naturalized. In most cases, part of the process of naturalization includes passing a citizenship test on basic U.S. history and civics. Sadly, today most adults in the U.S. couldn’t pass this test even if they were high school graduates.
Education and a common core of understanding of reality is important for a society to function well. This isn’t to say that everyone must go to college, but they should have that opportunity without being priced out if they have the desire to learn. K-12 on the other hand needs to be available to everyone without cost barriers. Public education has been a crucial service of our society since before the colonies became their own country although curiously it isn’t part of the Constitution. The states have always determined the breadth and depth of the public education available within their jurisdictions which has meant that the quality of that education varied from state to state. Funding; however, was provided at the federal level since the late 1700s after the nation was formed. The original Department of Education was formed in 1867 as the country recognized that some federal oversight and input was needed to ensure everyone had educational opportunities. Part of the responsibility of the Department of Education grew beyond mere funding. It also tracks educational effectiveness across the country which resulted in some standardization of requirements over time.
Now, we have the federal government actively working to disband the Department of Education pushing public education entirely back to the states, not just for the curriculum that has always been the states’ domain, but for all educational functions. That’s going to further widen the educational gap between the states and potentially end true public education in large swaths of the country making it the province of the wealthy.
And common knowledge, while already far less widespread than it used to be, could disappear. Without a base of common knowledge, we’ll have far more difficulty finding common ground with one another. Public education serves not just to teach people basic skills, it also brings people together through knowledge, and it helps people learn how to learn which should be a lifelong pursuit.
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