The Voucher Fallacy: Thomas Paine, Democratic Schooling, and Educational Inequality

• In Event: Roundtable Session 24
  In Roundtable Session: The Interplay of Equality and Human Difference

Abstract

Despite its limited treatment in his own work, Thomas Paine’s authority on democratic education has been widely invoked by parties interested in privatizing public schooling in America’s poor, inner-city districts through educational voucher programs. Claiming Paine as the founder of their ideas, scholarly and popular authors have cited Paine’s brief proposal for funding rural schools in Rights of Man (1791). We argue that Paine’s plan for offering vouchers to the rural poor of 18th century England bears no clear relation or support to contemporary voucher proposals: Paine’s plan does not replace an existing public system with private schools, but uses the negative capacity of government to limit excesses in the social sphere (1776).

Authors

• James Stillwaggon, Iona College

• Conor Callagy, Iona College

• Kristen Brescia, Iona College