The Conscience of a Conservative by Barry Goldwater

I agree with lobbyists for federal school aid that education is one of the great problems of our day. I am afraid, however, that their views and mine regarding the nature of the problem are many miles apart. They tend to see the problem in quantitative terms -- not enough schools, not enough teachers, not enough equipment. I think it has to do with quality: How good are the schools we have? Their solution is to spend more money. Mine is to raise standards. Their recourse is to the federal government. Mine is to the local public school board, the private school, the individual citizen -- as far away from the federal government as one can possibly go. And I suspect that if we knew which of these two views on education will eventually prevail, we would know also whether Western civilization is due to survive, or will pass away.

To put this somewhat differently, I believe that our ability to cope with the great crises that lie ahead will be enhanced in direct ratio as we recapture the lost art of learning, and will diminish in direct ratio as we give responsibility for training our children's minds to the federal bureaucracy.

But let us put these differences aside for the moment and note four reasons why federal aid to education is objectionable even if we grant that the problem is primarily quantitative.

The first is that federal intervention in education is unconstitutional. It is the fashion these days to say that responsibility for education "traditionally" rests with the local community -- as a prelude to proposing an exception to the tradition in the form of federal aid. This "tradition," let us remember, is also the law. It is sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States, for education is one of the powers reserved to the States by the Tenth Amendment. Therefore, any federal aid program, however desirable it might appear, must be regarded as illegal until such time as the Constitution is amended.

The second objection is that the alleged need for federal funds has never been convincingly demonstrated. It all depends, of course, on how the question is put. If you ask, Does State X need additional educational facilities? the answer may be yes. But if you ask, Does State X require additional facilities that are beyond the reach of its own financial means? the answer is invariably no. The White House Conference on Education in 1955 was, most of us will remember, an elaborate effort to demonstrate popular support for federal aid. As expected, the "consensus" of the conference was that more federal aid was needed. However, the conferees reached another conclusion that was hardly noticed by the press. "No state represented," the Conference report stated, "has a demonstrated financial incapacity to build the schools they will need during the next five years. " What is lacking, the report went on, is not money, but a "political determination powerful enough to overcome all the obstacles".

Through the succeeding five years, congressional committees have listened to hundreds of hours of testimony in favor of federal aid, but they have never heard that 1955 finding successfully contradicted. What the White House conferees were saying in 1955, and what proponents of federal aid to education have been saying ever since, is that because a few States have not seen fit to take care of their school needs, it is incumbent upon the federal government to take up the slack. My view is that if State X possesses the wealth to educate its children adequately, but has failed to utilize its wealth for that purpose, it is up to the people of State X to take remedial action through their local and state governments. The federal government has neither the right nor the duty to intervene.

Let us, moreover, keep the problem in proper perspective. The national school system is not in distress. Shortly before the Senate debate this year on increased federal aid, I asked Mr. Arthur Flemming the Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, how many of the Nation's school districts were in actual trouble -- how many, that is, had reached their bonded limit. His answer was approximately 230. Now there are roughly 42,000 school districts in America. Thus, proponents of federal aid are talking about a problem that affects only one-half of one percent of our school districts! I cannot believe that the state governments responsible for those areas are incapable of making up whatever deficiencies exist. It so happens that the same deficiency figure -- one-half of one percent -- applies to my own state of Arizona. And Arizona proudly turned down federal funds under the 1958 National Defense Education Act on the grounds that Arizonans, themselves, were quite capable of closing the gap.

This may be the place, while we are speaking of need, to lay to rest the notion that the American people have been niggardly in support of their schools. Since the end of World War II, Americans have built 550,000 classrooms at a cost of approximately $19 billion -- almost all of which was raised at the local level. This new construction provided space for over 15 million pupils during a period when the school population increased by only 10 million pupils. It is evident, therefore, that increased school expenditures have more than kept pace with increased school needs.

Here are some of the figures. In the school year 1949-–-50 there were 25 million students enrolled in various education institutions in the United States. In the year 1959-–-60 there were 34.7 million -- an increase of 38%. During the same period revenues for school use, raised largely at the local level, increased from 5.4 billion to 12.1 billion -- an increase of 124%. When school expenditures increase three and a half times as fast as the school population, I do not think that the adequacy of America's "traditional" approach to education is open to serious question.