“When Will They Ever Learn”?

Why All Governments Produce Schooling

Lant Pritchett Kennedy School of Government

and Center for Global Development

February 4, 2002

Abstract. In (nearly) all countries the government directly produces schooling at all levels from primary to tertiary—and yet economists lack a compelling model of why any government produces any schooling. This paper presents a simple model, with just four elements, that can explain the universal direct production of schooling. First, formal schooling jointly produces skills and beliefs. Second, both citizens and regimes (the individuals or groups that exercise state power) care directly about the beliefs the schools promote. Third, regimes act autonomously subject to some citizen control. Fourth, since the inculcation of beliefs cannot be externally assessed and is not easily monitored direct production is the only feasible way to control instruction in beliefs (Pritchett 2002). In a model with these four features if regimes and citizens disagree about beliefs—about who should legitimately rule, about the desirable economic system, about the justice of the distribution of wealth, about loyalty to nation (versus region, ethnicity, clan, kin), about religion, about political ideology—then regimes will directly produce schooling in order to control instruction in beliefs. This model not only predicts direct production of schooling by (nearly) all governments but it also explains other features of educational policy that are otherwise puzzling (e.g. the lack of mandates, bans on private education), produces reasonable comparative static predictions, proposes new solutions to puzzles in the economics of schooling, and, hopefully, orients the search for solutions to practical problems like expanding access and improving quality of education.

Introduction1 An “official” educational enterprise presumably cultivates beliefs, skills, and feelings in order to transmit and explicate its sponsoring culture’s ways of interpreting the natural and social worlds.

Jerome Bruner, 1968 In administration of all schools, it must be kept in mind, what is to be done is not for the sake of the pupils, but for the sake of the country.

Mori Anori, Japanese Minister of Education 1886-1889 Let it be understood that the first duty of a democratic government is to exercise control over public education. Jules Ferry, French Minister of Education, 1876

Public schooling is perhaps the single most phenomenally and universally

successful institution of the twentieth century. The current campaigns for expanding

public schooling under the banner or “universal primary education” in the International

Development Goals or Education For All reveal the completeness of the triumph2. Like

all successful institutions, the origins of public schooling are wrapped in foundational

myths, which portray public schooling as obvious, inevitable, and the result of entirely

benign motivations: governments produce schooling because it is necessary to

economic development, governments produce schooling because it reduces inequality,

governments produce schooling because citizens need it, governments produce

schooling because it is economically optimal.

1 I’d like to thank Jeff Hammer, Emmanuel Jimenez, and Gunnar Eskeland and Daron Acemoglu, Sumaira Chowdury, Bill Easterly, Duriya Farooqui, Deon Filmer, Jonah Gelbach, Blandina Kilama, Michael Kremer, David Lindauer, Nolan Miller and Andres Velasco for comments. Presentations at the World Bank, Williams Center for Development Economics, and Brigham Young University helped me more than it could have helped the audience. 2 Public schooling has become so intellectually dominant that in current policy parlance “public schooling” is practically synonymous with education.

2

But hard questions remain. Why do nearly all governments—from democrats to

demagogues to despots, from capitalist to communist or corporatist, from rich to middle

to poor—support schooling? Why does that support always involve direct production?

Why does the direct production frequently extend to nearly all production at nearly all

levels (primary, secondary, tertiary)? While the human capital research program has

made tremendous progress in understanding demand for education (of all types from

formal schooling to on-the-job training) it has failed on supply3 (Pritchett 2001a).

While a few economists have emphasized the important element of socialization in

schooling and how that affects government supply behavior in particular countries or

circumstances (Bowles and Gintis 1976, Lott 1990, 1999, Gradstein and Justman 2000,

Kremer and Sarychev 2000) there is no general, positive, model of the supply of public

schooling.

By and large it is the politicians, educators (Bruner 1968, Friere 1970),

practitioners (Crouch and Healey 1997) that have understood the true nature of public

schooling. Schooling is not just about skills but also socialization--the transmission of

beliefs, attitudes, values, and patterns of behavior. Governments are not, and cannot be,

indifferent about the socialization of their citizens. While skills can be contracted out,

controlling socialization requires direct control of the schools.

3 Blaug (1976), as usual, expresses it well: “what needs to be explained about formal schooling is not so much why governments subsidize it as they do, but why they insist on owning so much of it in every country. On this crucial question we get no help, and cannot expect to get help, from the human capital research program, even when it is supplemented by the theory of externalities and public goods of welfare economics. The answer, surely, lies elsewhere.” (p. 831).

3

After opening with eight vignettes in the history of public schooling that illustrate

the questions a positive model of the provision of public schooling must address,

section 2 details the structure of the model. Section 3 shows how the model works to

explain why (nearly) all governments produce schooling and other features of

educational policy. Section 4 uses the model to explain facts two puzzles in the

economics of education and to address the hard practical problems facing those

interested in the expansion and improvement in quality in public schooling.

I) Eight vignettes in the history of public schooling, with lessons

Inclusive and powerful systems of public schools did not exist anywhere in the world even two centuries ago…and a vigorous use of the historical imagination is needed to understand the transformation caused by the rise of nationalism. … The institutional mountain range that divides the older past from the present is nationalism and its individual peaks and great plateaus are the nation-states that use the school as an instrument of nationalism.

Good and Teller, The History of Western Education.

“What explains the universality of public schools?” is three questions. “What

explains the rise of schooling as the dominant mode of education?” The rise of formal

schooling as the dominant mode of education (replacing home-based instruction,

tutoring, apprenticeships, etc.) preceded widespread public (and particularly nationally

controlled) schooling by at least 50 to 100 years4. “What explains extension of direct

4 For present purposes the specific explanation of schooling is not important, but the literature suggests at least three elements. First, general decoding and learning skills (reading, writing, and basic numeracy) became more important and these were more conducive to a period of general training preceding training in specific occupational skills. Second, the rise of urbanization and occupational mobility shifted the purposes of education. Third, the development of techniques of instruction amenable to a “classroom” that made schooling cost-effective.

4

public sector production of schooling—in a wide variety of historical and political

settings?” is the next question. Only then can one ask more contemporary questions,

“Why has public schooling persisted and basic schooling expanded towards universal

coverage?” I address the second question, “why public?”, on a general and historical

level. I am not asking the current and localized question of why voters in Boise Idaho

support the public schools I attended as a child—or anything else specifically about the

USA’s past or current experience for that matter.

To preview the panorama I begin with quick historical episodes from Japan,

Tanzania, Holland, Belgium, Pakistan, Cuba, China and Turkey. These eight vignettes

highlight four facts that are both obvious and hidden: (1) schooling is about more than

academic skills, it is about beliefs, ideas, and values; (2) the advent of public schooling

is often primarily about the expansion of government control over the ideological

content of existing schools (and only subsequently about the expansion of schooling);

(3) public schooling is often used to promote the beliefs of the existing regime or ruler,

beliefs which conflict with societies’ and citizen’s existing beliefs; and (4) the extension

of government control over the schools is often contested, conflicted, and deeply

unpopular.

Japan (Meiji). Before the Meiji Restoration in 1868 there were a mix of schools and

schooling offered that, with almost no direct influence or support of the national

government, had achieved high enrollment rates (79 percent for boys, 21 percent for

girls in 1854-67). In 1873 the new government launched a new centralized school

system (modeled on the French system) in which the national Ministry dictated

5

curriculum and texts. While compulsory, this schooling was not free--there were both

individual tuitions and nearly all of the costs of basic schooling were locally borne.

This new system was not popular and riots broke out sporadically around the country

between 1873 and 1877 that had to be put down with force. Whatever motivation of the

disturbances, the slogans often focused on three resented features of the new regime:

Down with conscription, down with the public schools, down with the solar calendar.

Over the decade as the public schools grew three-way ideological debates raged

between those emphasizing utilitarian skills (and “Western” ideas), traditionalists

emphasizing Confucian training, and nationalists emphasizing loyalty to the nation-state

(as embodied in the Emperor). By the 1890s the nationalists were transcendent with a

dual educational system that had a “compulsory sector heavily indoctrinated in the spirit

of morality and nationalism” (Passin, 1965).

Belgium (1879). In 1879 a Liberal government adopted a school reform that (a)

reduced local control stressing that “teachers were State functionaries” and that local

authorities had no rights over teachers, (b) “private (Catholic) schools lost all subsidies”

(c) the communes no longer had the choice to adopt a Catholic school to provide basic

education but rather must build and maintain a state school, (d) all ecclesiastical

inspection of schools and guidance in textbook selection was stopped, (e) dictated a

program of studies for schools, and (f) “stated quite explicitly that in the future all

teachers in government subsidized and controlled schools must be trained in State-

controlled teacher-training establishments” (Mallison, 1963). The strong backlash

against this law (dubbed the loi de malheur) led by Catholic supporters and clergy led

6

to a defeat in the elections of 1884. The Liberal party never took power in Belgium

again.

Cuba (Republican). The lack of government control over private schooling was a

recurring issue during the Republican period from 1902 to 1958. In 1917 legislation

was proposed that “asserted the state’s right to inspect private schools…only texts

approved by the government appointed Board of Supervisors should be used…that

directors of private institutions should be Cuban born…that the history of Cuba (not

then taught in most private schools…) and civics should be taught only by Cuban born

teachers…and that only those with qualifications recognized by the state should be

entitled to employment.” (Johnston 1997). This legislation did not pass. After the

turmoil of the 1930s a new constitution was adopted that contained many of the same

nationalist aims for controlling private education as the 1917 legislation. However the

legislation introduced in 1951 to make those constitutional aims effective created

another round of political struggle and again public regulation failed when the

legislation was defeated (for good) in 1955, which is where the issue stood in 1959.

Holland. In the Netherlands, while the government does producing schooling, parents

choose their school freely among available suppliers and the state provides payments

directly to schools on a funding formula that treats publicly operated and privately

operated schools—including religious denominational schools--on an equal basis. The

lack of public monopoly is not for lack of effort: the state did in fact try and secularize

schooling—beginning in 1806 when Holland was “liberated” by the French. However,

Holland had a long history of religious toleration and was deeply, and nearly evenly,

7

divided along religious lines between Catholics and various denominations of

Protestants. There was no chance that any religious denomination would trust a

dominant public school system to be either fair to religion (given the secular values of

those allied with the French) or neutral between denominations. The compromise

eventually reached was that schooling was compulsory but that religious schools

“counted” as official education, religious schools received financial support by 1889

and full equality between public and private in funding was established in 1920.

Turkey (Ataturk). In March 1924, barely six months into his Presidency, Mustafa

Kemal (Ataturk) launched the opening of the Grand National Assembly with a speech

that announced three bold strokes: “safeguarding” the new Republic, abolishing the

Caliphate, and introducing the reform of education. The Law of Unification of

Instruction placed all educational institutions—religious, private, and foreign--under the

control of the Ministry of Education. This was indeed a bold stroke in a country whose

population was overwhelmingly Islamic (and even considered themselves the center of

the Islamic world) and where the vast majority of education had been undertaken in

schools controlled by religious authorities. Once under the control of the Ministry of

Education religious lessons were first made voluntary, then abolished at the secondary

level, and then abolished altogether in primary schools by 1932. Just how unpopular

this move, undertaken by a small “modernizing” secular and nationalizing group, was is

difficult to gauge as from March 1925 to March 1929 the government operated under a

“Law for the Maintenance of Order” that provided for “extra ordinary and, in effect,

dictatorial powers.” (Lewis, 1961). As democracy returned to Turkey, Islam returned

8

to Turkish schools. Since 1950 students in grades four and five have religious

instruction (with an chance to opt out) and religious instruction was reintroduced into

secondary schools in 1956/57.

Tanzania. In Tanzania in 1967 Nyerere launched “Education for Self Reliance, an

ideological remaking of the schooling system. He feared that schooling was producing

values that were not consistent with socialism or with the reality that most school

leavers were going to remain and work in agricultural areas. Primary education became

the terminal degree for nearly everyone—access to secondary and higher education was

incredibly rationed. The primary schooling curriculum was changed to promote more

“cooperative” behavior. He also re-oriented school studies to be less “academic” and

more “relevant” and “integrated with the life of the community.” The education plan

was an integral part of the ujama in which the rural population was resettled

(voluntarily or otherwise) into organized settlements to better promote delivery of

social services and more “collective” action.

Pakistan. After 13 years of military rule and the bitter loss of East Pakistan

(Bangladesh), in December 1971, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was elected President under a

socialist manifesto. Within three months he announced nationalization of all private

education institutions, free basic (to grade 8) education, a shift towards technical

education and a greater ideological orientation of the nationalized schools. The Ministry

of Education and all of the provinces opposed Bhutto’s decision to nationalize and even

the Minister of Education, Mr. Pirzada was quoted saying “it was a political” not

educational decision. After Zia-ul-Haq established martial law in 1977 the ideological

9

winds shifted again and the nationalization policy was reversed. The private sector was

again encouraged to open schools but the medium of instruction was switched to the

national language (Urdu) in all public schools. Zia also pushed the idea of bringing

mosques into the education system and his decade of rule was an era of “Islamization”

for Pakistan.

China. In June 1966 schools in China were closed to allow the students to take part in

the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and one of history’s grandest experiments in

education reform was fully launched. It was not until October 1967 that schools were

encouraged to “prepare for the recruitment of new students” but the reopening of

schools went slowly and when schools were reopened it was not return to studies, rather

students were to return to schools to do a better job of “making revolution” and “resume

the lesson of class struggle” and “smash the outmoded content and form of teaching”

(Chen, 1981). In a country that had relied on examinations to choose civil servants for

over a thousand years all examinations were to be abolished. A return to academic

subjects was impossible, if not downright dangerous for teachers, so the reopened

schools focused on ideology “adhering closely to quotations from Mao and songs such

as ‘East is Red’ and ‘The Great Helmsman’” (Chen, 1981) and devoted time to the “half

study, half work” approach to schooling. Into this chaotic and ideologically charged

system more and more students poured so than “academic secondary” enrollments

increased from 9.3 million students in 1956 to 58 million by the end of the Cultural

Revolution in 1976 (Hannum, 1999).

10

II) The “Regime Ideology” Model of Public Schooling

All the misery which has come to Prussia during the past year [1848] is to be credited to you and only you. You deserve the blame for that godless pseudo-education…by which means you have destroyed faith and loyalty in the minds of my subjects…. But as long as I hold the sword hilt in my hands, I shall know how to deal with such a nuisance.

King Frederick William IV in an 1849 speech to teachers

As a matter of taste, I prefer to let the modeling follow the reality rather than vice

versa. What model captures the critical elements highlighted in the vignettes? I present

a simple model with just four elements. First, schooling jointly produces skills and

beliefs. Second, both regimes—the group controlling state power—and citizens care

about the beliefs instruction in schools. Third, regimes choose actions based on a

political viability constraint. Fourth, to control instruction in beliefs requires direct

control of production—indirect instruments and contracts will not be adequate (Pritchett

2002).

II.A) Schooling jointly produces skills and beliefs

A schooling that conveys only value neutral skills is impossible. A child learns to

read by reading something and texts are not value free, even the very language learned

is value laden. History is not neutral. Moreover, the structure of the classroom

instruction itself communicates and socializes values—attitudes towards authority,

appropriate behaviors towards classmates, etc. This is not an original idea, as those

involved with schooling--educationists, parents, religious leaders, and politicians-- have

always recognized this “jointness in production.” A general “educational production

11

function” relates beliefs produced to inputs (L), methods (T) and the skills jointly

produced5:

1) ),,(:Pr STLEBFunctionoductionlEducationa =

This is of course not to say that individual’s beliefs are determined by schooling as

family, community, social context, peers, and experience are probably far more

important. Nevertheless, both explicit and implicit “moral education” and civics

instruction and specifically political training have always been an important element of

schooling.

II.B) Regime and citizen preferences

I assume something called a regime has sufficiently coherent preferences it can be

treated as a single actor that makes choices solving a constrained maximization

problem. Of course this is a gross simplification of the historical and political reality of

even the most autocratic of states6. A regime’s preferences are a function of the

5 This “educational production function” is more a metaphor for métis (a craft) that a mechanistic science. That is, a “production function” is thought to represent technological relationships that might be derived from an engineering handbook—but there is no such “handbook” for pedagogy, a craft that involves human relationships, nor is there is likely to be one. 6 I am not imagining the regime is a single person. Even personalistic regimes, in which a single individual exerts considerable power--Stroessner in Paraguay, the Duvaliers in Haiti, Hastings Banda in Malawi, Mobutu in Zaire, Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore, Ghadafi in Libya-- require coalitions. Conversely, small groups can act coherently as a regime, e.g. a smallish group of military officers (Burma/Myanmar). In one party regimes a single party, and usually a small elite within that party, can act as a regime, the Communist countries (Russia, China, Albania, Vietnam) are the most obvious examples but there are other long-running dominations by a single party (Baath Party in Syria). One party domination can exist even in a democracy, such as PRI (until recently) in Mexico or the LDP in Japan. Even countries where a small group of individuals or families control the state apparatus directly or indirectly (El Salvador until the 1990s) can be treated as a single regime.

12

consumption of goods (income less amount spent on schooling) and the beliefs

instruction in schools.

),()2 RRRR BBEXU −−

Regime income is assumed exogenous and there is no taxation, so there is no benefit

to the regime from increased skills (A). This is overly strict but will demonstrate that

public schooling can be explained without “market failure” or “redistributive”

arguments of any type.

The key assumption is that the regime utility depends on citizen instruction in

beliefs. This can be motivated in two ways. Lott (1990, 1999) models the provision of

education as governments choosing between staying in power through directly

repressive means or through spending on education to increase legitimacy and hence

lower the current and future expenditures necessary on direct repression. In this case

beliefs in the objective function is only a short-hand for a dynamic problem of

maximizing total extracted resources with a tradeoff between instruments (repression

and belief modifying schooling). In this case belief instruction is entirely instrumental.

However, while much of government sponsored belief instruction may well be

insincere, I do not want to rule out a priori that the regime may want citizens to be

instructed in their preferred beliefs because they believe they are “true.” Regimes with

ideologies of all stripes: Catholic, Muslims, Nationalists, Democrats, Marxist/Leninists,

Liberals, African Socialists appear, at least at some times, to be quite sincere in their

beliefs and in wanting others to share their beliefs independently of any direct

13

pecuniary personal gain. Not able to distinguish the two I allow B to directly enter the

utility function do not distinguish sincere from cynical motivations.7

The regimes desired beliefs instruction RB is a NB (number of relevant dimensions)

by C (number of citizens) vector. B could include direct content (e.g. “civics” or

“morals” or “history” training), the content in materials used to teach all subjects (e.g.

teaching reading using the Bible/Koran/Confucian texts), and teaching methods that

inculcate the regimes preferred attitudes. Regimes potentially have different desired

beliefs for different individuals or groups; for instance, elite and mass education may

have quite different objectives and even allow different degrees of freedom of thought.

Each citizen’s welfare depends on consumption and on schooling utility. Income

is also exogenous and hence the consumption of non-education goods is net of

expenditures on schooling. The jth school provides a mix of “academic” skills, A, and

beliefs, B, and schooling utility depends on the school attended. All dynamics are

suppressed and a choice of A,B implies the content and duration of schooling. I make

no distinction between children and adults—there is only utility per “citizen.”

3) U )),(,( , jjjcccc BASEX −

II.C) Political viability constraint

To remain in power the regime must meet a political viability constraint. This is

represented as a politically weighted function of each citizen’s utility.

7 Although it might be possible in principle to distinguish the two motivations rate as regimes with high discount rates (inclusive of probability of overthrow) would act differently in promoting education that regimes with low discount rates.

14

4) )),(),...,(),...,(( ,,,111 jCCCjcccj SXUSXUSXUPWPW ≥

This political welfare function is not necessarily a well-behaved social welfare function

(positive first and negative second derivatives). There is no assumption of any benign

interest: weights depend only on political viability. The regime may need to please

some factions (military elites, preferred ethnic groups, urban middle classes, large

landowners) and may be able to ignore, or even punish, other groups (e.g. rural

peasants, ethnic minorities). The political viability constraint can change either in

response to increased responsiveness of the regime to all citizens (keeping distribution

fixed) or to changes in power that citizens (or coalitions or citizens) command that

requires higher levels of welfare.

II.D) Controlling the inculcation of beliefs requires direct production

The final element of the model is the assumption that agency problems are

sufficiently severe that governments cannot directly monitor anything about the beliefs

taught in private schools—the costs of such monitoring are so high it is never optimal to

spend money to monitor instruction in beliefs. This is a key element of the model but

here is assumed directly as this is modeled and justified empirically separately (Pritchett

2002). The basic intuition is that the presence of skills is observable while beliefs,

because they are a mental state, are not observable. The fact a person can successfully

pretend to have beliefs they do not have implies that any purely outcome assessment

based mode of contracting for education could be manipulated by collusion between a

student and instructor. For example, suppose that to get desirable employment a

person had to demonstrate belief in the sayings of Chairman Mao—but that they did not

15

believe in the sayings of Chairman Mao nor did they wish to acquire such a belief.

They nevertheless could hire an instructor who could teach them to act as if they held

such a beliefs while at the same time emphasizing these beliefs are not “true.” This

possibility of insincere instruction in beliefs implies that reliable monitoring of “third

party” contracts for schooling (such as a “voucher”) potentially requires complete,

direct observation of every instructional episode.

The simplest form is an assumption that if school j is a government school it

conveys the government beliefs and if j is not a government school it conveys whatever

beliefs it chooses.

5)

∉∈

=GjifBGjifB

BconstraAgency j

Gj

*:int

II.E) The model

Regimes maximize their utility by choosing among educational policy options

subject to the political viability and agency constraints.

∉∈

=

≥−−−

−−

GjifBGjifB

BconstraAgency

WPSEXUSEXUSEXUPWconstraviabilityPolitical

toSubject

BBEXU

utilityimizesthatPpolicythepoliciesofsetthefromchoosesregimeTheModelyIdeogime

j

Gj

jCCCCjccccj

RRRR

*

,,,1111

:int

)),(),...,(),...,((:int

:

),(

:max*}{log

PReThe

16

In making its choices the regime anticipates that, given the policy choices it makes

citizens will then maximize their welfare within those policies, choosing the school that

best matches the skills and beliefs they desire (given budget constraints).

III) Why nearly all governments directly produce schooling

I am conscious of the fact that our detractors will jump at his and declare that this form of assisting the literate members of our society is outright and open political indoctrination which should be discouraged. This could not be further from the truth, and such outbursts by our enemies should be treated with the contempt they deserve.

Kenneth D. Kuanda President of the Republic of Zambia

In the absence of any government action citizens will demand education and choose

the feasible school that best matches their desired composition of skills and beliefs

subject to their budget constraint and the education production function. But the beliefs

in the schooling citizens choose affects regime utility. The model ticks if the desired

beliefs of the regime and the desired beliefs of the citizens are opposed (at least in some

dimension). I first work through the simplest example, then show how the model

produces everything needed, and more.

III.A) How the model works

Having dressed it up, I now strip the model down. I assume only one citizen.

Beliefs are uni-dimensional so that B is a single cardinal number. I normalize B so that

citizen and regime optimal beliefs differ (e.g. B is “belief in religious control of the

state” and the citizen is religious and the regime is secular, B is “belief in individual

rights” and the citizen is liberal and the regime is totalitarian, B is “desire for wealth

distribution” and the citizen is poor and the regime is capitalist oligarchic).

17

Moreover, I ignore the true complexity of the production of beliefs and model the

schooling process as having only one input, labor, and no interaction between A and B

and just a linear production function and with equal and unit coefficients. Wages are

normalized to one.

Linear EPF) BsBsBBss LLLaaLaBLaA +===== ,1, ,

Given an assumption of utility separable in goods and schooling the citizen

maximizes utility by choosing the mix of consumption between goods and schooling

and then chooses the mix of skills and beliefs. In an interior “no intervention”

equilibrium citizen choice is A*, B* and schooling sub-utility is and total

cost is

),( ** BAS c

*CE --as in figure 1.

U(X-E*,S(A*,B*)

B’ * * B

18

B

A’

A*

B

- LB=EC

Figure 1: No intervention

The choice facing the regime is whether they prefer to offer public schooling,

which is a school, and a public subsidy . Suppose the political

viability constraint is that the citizen can be no worse off, so that:

PublicPublic BA , 0>RE

6) U )),(,()),(,( **** PublicPublicCRCCcCC BASEEXUBASEX +−=−

Equation 6 reveals the ways which citizens could be coaxed away from the “no

intervention” choice of beliefs instruction at the same utility: more skills for the same

price, lower price for the same skills (or some mix). Payments for schooling could be

held constant while skills are increased the shift from A*, B* to A’,B’ in figure 1,

which requires more instructional input. Second, skills could be held constant while

beliefs were altered but net payments for schooling reduced ( RC EE − ). This locus (in

figure 2) is the citizens “willingness to pay” for beliefs instruction as the “price” of

preferred beliefs instruction is a reduced subsidy.

Suppose (for the sake of a nice, two dimensional graph) that skills are fixed and the

regime makes the offer to the citizen: “instead of choosing school private school j with

A*,B* and resulting goods consumption X-Ec* the regime will provide public schooling

with A*,BPublic and reduce fees so that non-school consumption is X-(Ec*+ER).”

Government payments for (some portion of) public schooling is a conditional offer of a

lower price (or more skills for the same price) to induce citizens to accept schools with

beliefs other than their preferred beliefs. The regime controls the school because with

private schools the citizen would be tempted to accept the offer of reduced fees but

collude with the instructor to give their preferred beliefs instruction (B*) anyway.

19

Given that the regime chooses the regime will choose the highest utility attainable

while the citizen is still indifferent. In figure 2 (since skills are fixed) this is at

and**, RBA *RE .

ER

R

Extensions to t

easily accommoda

that case the analys

the political viabili

willing to pay to co

analysis was done

“no intervention” e

government induce

favorable beliefs.

B=B

*

Figure 2: Regime willingness to pay for beliefs instruction

*

)

his stripped down model are natural. Two (ty

ted if one type (perhaps a majority) agrees wi

is above is nearly exactly the same as the reg

ty constraint by controlling the schools for th

ntrol the schools to control the minority view

to show the advantage to the regime of contro

quilibrium BC* (ER=0) is no formal schooling

s people into formal schooling as a means of

20

BC*(ER=0

ER

BR

pes of) citizen can be

th the regime beliefs. In

ime loses nothing on

e majority and yet is

point. While the

l, the same holds if the

, A=0,BNo Schooling. The

achieving more

Another important extension is that the public sector, for whatever reason, may be

less productive than the private sector. However, except at the margin this will not

switch control of the schools to the private sector. With sufficient concern for ideology

the regime ideology model predicts public production even if, as many believe, the

public sector is substantially less efficient than the private sector as producing skills.

III.B) Why (nearly) all governments produce schooling

Public schooling will be produced when controlling the beliefs in school instruction

increases regime’s welfare. This is likely the case in:

Secularizing regimes. Some regimes seek to secularize schooling even where many

(or most) parents would prefer schooling to be either denominational or non-

denominationally religious. Ataturk is not alone, as other Arab nationalist regimes have

used public schooling to counteract Islam (e.g. Egypt under Nasser, Syria under the

Baath). Given the historical connection between Catholicism and monarchies the

Republican forces in Third Republic France (with Jules Ferry as Minister of Education)

are not the only state to use public schooling to reduce Catholic influence.

Religious regimes. Conversely some regimes use the promotion of religion to

bolster state legitimacy and control of schools is given to, or heavily influenced by

religious authorities (as in Saudi Arabia, Iran) or historically to the Catholic Church

(e.g. in Hapsburg domains) or the state denomination even when many (or most) might

prefer less denominational or less religious schooling.

Nationalism historically. As emphasized by many writers on the history of

education the rise of the nation-state and the rise of public schooling go hand in hand

21

(Bowen, 1981). Historically as nation-states asserted their claims to loyalty against

traditional religious, regionalist, ethnic, particularist, and hereditary claims the role of

public schooling was seen as critical in conveying a common sense of “nation.”

Nationalism in ex-colonies. As colonialists (especially in Africa, but also in Asia)

created nation-states with boundaries where no “nation” had existed before early post-

independence regimes took “nation-building”—the instilling of a common language and

some sense of national loyalty to supersede pre-existing loyalties to kin, clan, “tribe,” or

ethnicity—as a primary function of mass education (Coleman 1967).

Nationalism with minorities. Many regimes face groups with cultural, linguistic,

historic or ethnic identity but without a nation-state (Basques, Gypsies, Jews, Kurds,

Serbs, Kikuyu, Ibo, Palestinians, Timorese) struggling to survive against nation-state

pressures for absorption or elimination. In these cases allowing private or even regional

control of schools would undermine the nation-building project.

Capitalist regimes. A capitalist economic system depends on citizens more or

less willing acquiescence in the existing distribution of economic power and their more

or less willing participation. Regimes controlled by a few large land (or resource)

owning families will seek to legitimize the wealth inequalities of the system. Critics of

capitalism point to the use of schools to indoctrinate children into the values of

capitalism (Friere 1970) and to the role of public schooling in creating workers (Bowles

and Gintis 1976).

Socialist Regimes. Regimes that seek to redistribute economic (and political)

power and legitimize their right to rule based on the correctness of a new, alternative

22

economic system often must struggle against the substantial opposition.

Marxist/Leninist (e.g. Russia, China, Cuba) and, perhaps to a lesser extent, African

socialist regimes have been unabashed about using public schools as instruments to

socialize a new generation.

Ideological Regimes. Regimes that have a particular political ideology that they

would like citizens to imbibe—such as Facism in Italy and Germany, Japanese

Nationalism after Meiji, Ba’ath in Syria. Even if one agrees with the democracy as a

value, it is a value and using the public schools to create more “democratic” values is an

ideological objective.

Personalistic Regimes. When the regime is closely associated with a single

individual, the use of the public schools for self-glorification is a commonly indulged

temptation. But citizens by and large would just as soon avoid this claptrap and for the

most part have no particular interest in their child being taught the glories of Hastings

Banda (Malawi).

Traditionalist regimes. Regimes that are based on a traditional claim of a right to

rule (e.g. monarchies) that seek to perpetuate the legitimacy of those ideas against ideas

that might be spread through private schooling.

There. As promised, all governments produce schooling as all regimes are in that

list, many for more than one reason (e.g. promoting both national integration and an

economic system, or both a political ideology and a personality cult etc.). Schooling is

public because schooling exists and because all governments want direct control of

23

schooling to control teaching of beliefs, values, attitudes, and are willing to pay the

price to do so.

Chile is the exception that potentially disproves the rule—but it disproves only the

rule that that ideology is best controlled via direct production. I argue that Pinochet’s

decision to simultaneously “muncipalize” and move to a voucher-like scheme was not

explained by a lack of concern for beliefs instruction or even primarily by a concern

with improved school efficiency (which, some argue did not happen Hseih and Urquiola

2002) or by “democratic” pressures. I would argue the Pinochet regime felt it was

better able to control ideology in the schools (especially in the future) by moving to

municipal control of schools and funding of private schools for three reasons. First, with

a national school system the Ministry of Education was a client of the teachers and the

teachers unions were well left of center and so the likelihood introducing “favorable”

beliefs into the public schools was slim and the probability of quick reversal in

instruction to the left after the military regime very high. By municipalizing and

“voucherizing” the regime may have hoped to break the power of the teacher’s union.

Second, the new private schools were unlikely to promote an unwelcome left wing

message (anecdotally many of the new schools are “right wing Catholic”). Third, by

reforming schools early the Pinochet regime built a commitment to allowing choice that

the democratically elected governments have not been able to reverse and hence

constrains the governments ability to move the public school beliefs instruction because

people can opt out, with government monies.

24

III.C) Explaining the structure of government support for education

The model, which builds on joint production, regime concern for beliefs, and the

agency and contracting constraints imposed by the unobservability of beliefs has five

advantages over more standard “market failure” or “normative as positive” models of

the supply of publicly produced schooling8.

First, it explains both government involvement in schooling and the choice of direct

production over alternatives like “vouchers” or mandates. While market failures can

easily justify some government intervention there are powerful arguments that any

objective that could be achieved by direct production could be achieved more

efficiently by an appropriately structured voucher scheme (Hoxby 2001). In market

failure models the choice of production over vouchers or mandates is usually ad hoc.

But in the regime ideology model the objective of making schooling public is to limit

consumer choice: there cannot be a case for generalized vouchers.

If the objective were to promote skills governments could mandate the acquisition

of sets of skills or minimal years of attendance with either direct enforcement (e.g.

truant officers), penalties (e.g. fines) or conditional rewards (e.g. licenses, certificates).

This policy raises skills levels with little or no public expenditure by shifting costs to

citizens (perhaps with a targeted subsidy). But mandates are rarely observed. In this

8 Gradstein and Justman (2000) have a “normative as positive” model that is “non-standard” in that it shares with the present paper the same key mechanisms to drive public production of schooling: difficulties in contracting and a desire to control ideology. Their desire to control ideology is an assumption of a production externality to homogeneity in beliefs. While this may be a valid special case and prove the logically possibility of a “normative as positive” model that can predict public production, this mechanism is not very general.

25

model regimes mandates: if demand for schooling expands faster than its willingness to

supply public school places a mandate might push children into schools with

undesirable beliefs instruction.

Second, the present theory explains the two curious features of the subsidy provided

via the in-kind provision of publicly produced schooling, that it is “all or nothing” and

“untargeted.” With less than universal enrollment the implicit schooling subsidy is: “an

in-kind transfer of budget E if the student enrolls in a public school and zero

otherwise.” Similarly situated individuals receive very different amounts, depending

on whether there is or is not a public school nearby, which strains horizontal equity.

Subsidies to basic education are also almost never targeted, which, if the objective of

governments were to maximize schooling, is curious because this implies a substantial

fraction (perhaps most) of the budget for education is infra-marginal—as it goes to

students who would have completed basic education with no subsidy.

But in the regime ideology model the all or nothing and untargeted structure of in-

kind schooling subsidies makes perfect sense as the regime is not indifferent between

enrollment in a public school or a non-public school of equivalent quality but with

different beliefs. Subsidized public schooling is intended both to draw students out of

other schools into public schools and to draw students into schooling. The intent of the

regime is not necessarily that every child be in school, but perhaps even more

importantly that every child in school be in a public school. The lack of “horizontal

equity” in the “all or nothing” structure is inevitable because the regime only wants to

supply in-kind and a demand expanding transfer in areas where public schools were not

26

available might draw students into non-public schools. The nearly universal finding

that the bulk of the subsidy in education accrues to the middle and upper-middle classes

(and increasingly so as the level of education increases) is no mistake9 as the in-kind

provision of schooling is an incentive to parents to attend public schools even though if

costs were equal they would prefer a private school with different beliefs instruction.

Regimes want to draw into public schools those who without a subsidy would have

attended a non-public school.

Third, the regime ideology model explains the empirically most frequent form of

indirect government support for schooling: subsidies to religious schools10. This

selective financing of schools defined by their ideology (not performance in skills)

comes naturally to the regime ideology model, in one of two ways. In some instances in

the ideology received in the religious schools is reliably close to the regime ideology so

the regime will support these particular schools but not a generalized voucher. The

other mode is that groups of citizens acquire enough power for force the regimes to

9 This perhaps explains why the “marginal” benefit incidence is better than the “average” benefit incidence of schooling expenditures as documented for India (Lanjouw and Ravallion, 1998) and Indonesia (Lanjouw, Pradhan, ). 10 A purely skills based model of the supply of schooling could not even answer the basic question: why are most private schools not only just “religious” but also denominational? James (1993) shows that private sector enrollments are higher in countries with greater religious diversity. The explanation of private sector supply is exactly the same as the regime model (but without the possibility of compulsion): ideologically motivated suppliers will be willing to subsidize skill acquisition in order to control beliefs instruction.

27

support schools with an identifiable ideology—but the demand will not be for

generalized vouchers, but a specific ideology11.

Fourth, the model also explains government attempts to discourage private and/or

community schooling. In the absence of a ban there will be at least some private

schools. The subsidy to public schooling may not be enough to draw all citizens out of

private schools and some will be willing to pay for their optimal school. If government

interventions in education are motivated by a desire to expand schooling then outright

bans on all (or some types of) private schools are a puzzle12. However, if the regime

has sufficiently large welfare loss from those dimensions of beliefs on which people are

selecting into private school then a ban (that does not violate the political viability

constraint) raises regime welfare. Ideological motivation is consistent with many

observed instances of bans: many Marxist/Socialist regimes banned private schooling

entirely, secularist regimes with Muslim populations banned Islamic schools, secularist

regimes banned (or limited) Catholic schools, new nationalist regimes banned (or

nationalized) foreign schools (e.g. “mission” schools), Catholic regimes banned non-

Catholic schools.

11 For instance, in Venezuela prior to democracy Catholic schooling was curtailed while after 1958 the Church-state conflicts lessened and by 1960 the state was providing direct support to Catholic schools.

12 While some might try to rationalize a ban on private schools because of concerns about “quality” it is not clear why a government would not prefer regulation and mandates of quality standards to a ban—unless of course what is meant is ideological quality, which cannot be regulated because it is unobservable.

28

This antipathy extends beyond private schools to community and non-formal

education. Hilary Clinton’s recent book popularized the phrase “It takes a village to

raise a child”—which is of course precisely the reason regimes do not like community

schools. Modern formal schooling nearly always tries to take control of education from

parents and “the village” and provide an education that is more nationalist and less

local, more secular and less folk religious, more attuned to modern economic ideologies

and less attuned to “traditional” occupations, and more under the control of national

political forces13. Nearly everywhere and always governments are less than enthusiastic

about “local” control of schools. Even with “community participation” nearly all of the

important decisions that might influence instruction in beliefs: including curriculum,

teacher training, hiring and firing of teachers, textbook design and selection are kept

firmly outside of local control.

A famous exception proves the rule. The experience in El Salvador of the EDUCO

schools, in which communities took responsibility for schooling, including the power to

hire and fire teachers is now widely discussed (Jimenez 2000). But the origins of this

community power over schooling was not regime encouragement but regime

powerlessness—the EDUCO model was a recognition of schools that arose in rural

areas where the previous government lost control during a civil war.

13 It is the crudest possible romanticism to suppose “the village” provides a universally accepted morally desirable upbringing as social forces in villages often reinforce perpetuate practices acceptable to the local culture such as slavery, caste, female circumcision, religious intolerance, etc. that others regard as abhorrent.

29

A fifth advantage is that with regime ideology the same model explains the

government production of schooling at all levels (tertiary, secondary, and primary).

“Normative as positive” models that might explain government production of basic

education have a very difficult time explaining the near equally common phenomena

that governments devote a significant fraction of their budget to producing tertiary

education and therefore must invoke different market failures to explain the same fact.

However, in the regime ideology model the regime will wish to control all potentially

ideological education for exactly the same reasons.

III.D) Comparative statics

This section uses the mechanics of the model to examine two questions. What

happens if regimes become more ideological? What if the political viability constraint

(regime versus citizen power) shifts?

More ideological regimes. What happens to the equilibrium amount and

composition of schooling if the government becomes “more ideological”? The simple

“supply and demand” in figure 2 can illustrate a regime becoming “more ideological” in

two senses. A regime may have a desired belief that is closer to the “no intervention”

belief. Alternatively, the willingness to pay for any given deviation might be higher. In

the first case the magnitude of public schooling is increasing in the extent to which the

regime preferred beliefs instruction differs from the citizen preferred belief instruction.

In the absence of a good way to measure regime and citizen preferred belief

instruction this cannot really generate an empirical test. But this prediction about

differences between regime and citizen beliefs is consistent with four pieces of

30

evidence. First, Lott (1990, 1999) uses cross-national regressions to show that “less

free” governments spend more on schooling14. Second, Marxist states often produce

much higher levels of education than comparably situated non-Marxist states (e.g. pre-

transition Eastern Europe versus Southern Europe, or pre-unification North versus

South Vietnam). Third, among countries with predominantly Muslim populations

enrollment rates in nationalist regimes like Egypt, Tunisia, Indonesia, and Algeria

exceed those of politically more “traditional” or Islamic states like Morocco, Jordan,

Saudi Arabia and Kuwait—even at lower levels of income.

Table 1: Education in countries with predominantly Islamic populations, by political type “Traditional” states Modernist, nationalist states

Country Enrollment, 1997 (Primary,

Secondary)

GDP per capita, PPP$

Country Enrollment, 1997 (Primary,

Secondary)

GDP per capita, PPP$

77 99 Morocco 38

3190

Indonesia 56

2439

68 95 Jordan

41

3542 Egypt

75

3303

65 96 Kuwait 63

NA Algeria 69

4753

60 100 Saudi Arabia 59

NA Tunisia 74

5478

Fourth, variation in intensity of regime ideology potentially explains why electoral

democracies are not particularly outstanding when it comes to either the level or growth

of education. India has been an electoral democracy since its independence and yet

14 Lott’s (1999) evidence is particularly telling in that he shows that public spending on schooling is more associated with control of radio and television (indicative of ideological motivations) than with greater public effort in health. But one would also expect a much higher variance in schooling levels in authoritarian regimes as the more despotic and less ideological of

31

attainment in education is not particularly impressive, varies widely across the states,

and the stratification of educational attainment by wealth group is the highest in the

world (Filmer and Pritchett 1999a). Venezuela is rightly proud of having uninterrupted

democracy since 1958 and yet lags far behind Cuba in educational performance15. In

Pakistan the advent of electoral democracy in 1989 has seemed to make the state, if

anything, less interested in education as quality is abysmal (Warwick and Reimers,

1995) and private participation in schooling has expanded enormously: nearly 40

percent of enrolled children in urban areas attend private schools (Farooqui and

Pritchett, 2002). Perhaps the low ideological stakes for the “democratic” regimes leads

to a lower commitment to education and a lower commitment to public schooling, as

they are indifferent to the development of a large private sector.

Shifts in regime power. So far we have always assumed that the regime was forced

to stay on a political viability constraint so that public control of schools meant either

lower payments for the same schooling or more skills instruction for the same cost.

However, this cannot explain why Cuba (and Hungary pre-transition) appears to have

schools that produced high academic skills while other regimes with similar ideology

experienced dramatic expansions of total instruction and, if anything, a decline in skills,

as in the Cultural Revolution (or even more grisly episodes like “re-education” under

the Khmer Rouge). The model can produce alternative paths of expansion in schooling,

regimes (e.g. Amin’s Uganda, Mobutu’s Zaire) will wish to control schooling but are willing to pay little (or nothing) to expand schooling.

32

depending on the underlying cause of the expansion. If the expansion is driven by a

regime forced by the political viability constraint to hold schooling or citizen utility

constant then total instruction increases and the composition of beliefs instruction shifts

but at least some of the increment in total instruction is devoted to skills instruction. In

contrast, if the occasion for the introduction of public schooling is a regime shift that is

accompanied by a large shift in the political viability constraint then nearly all of the

increment total instruction could go into beliefs instruction, even perhaps reducing the

total magnitude of skills instruction. Conversely, after governments have taken control

of schooling increased citizen power leads to increased skills—and a shift in beliefs

back towards the citizens’ preferences.

III.E) Complementary alternatives

Recent models of the political economy of education have modeled the expansion

of mass education as a decision of elites. Acemoglu and Robinson (1998) emphasize

that the universalization of suffrage and education was not a benevolent impulse but

was a calculated response by elites to the threat of revolt by “the masses.”16 Their basic

storyline is consistent with the present model, in that increasing voice of the “masses”

would alter the political viability constraint in a way that would expand the provision of

schooling. However, nothing in their model addresses the question of mode of support:

why not vouchers for the masses? The models are complementary in that “elites”

15 As do many other Latin countries, a recent study of eleven Latin American countries found that on a comparable measure of the reading performance of third graders the 25th percentile of scores in Cuba was higher than the 75th percentile in any other country.

33

would respond to threats of the revolt with an expansion of public schooling which

placated the “masses” with some skills and new economic opportunities but, at the same

time conveyed as best as possible values that legitimized the regime.

In Kremer and Sarychev (2000) voters have a model with citizens with a

distribution of beliefs, and these citizens vote on both the magnitude of budget to

schooling and the choice of mode between vouchers and public production. As in the

present model they assume contracting constraints imply controlling beliefs requires

control of production. In their model citizens care about other citizens’ beliefs because

of a production externality to homogeneity in beliefs17. Some distributions of beliefs

will produce public production while others (e.g. bimodal distributions as in Holland)

will produce vouchers. This model might explain the gradual and historically quite late

extension of public control in electoral democracies like the USA and the UK (who

lagged far behind more authoritarian regimes in adopting universal public education).

This model can also explain Holland, where substantial populations with different

denominations produce simultaneous state production and “vouchers.” But this model

is a special case as, while it might explain public education in some countries at some

time, it has problems as a general model. It cannot explain public schooling in non-

democracies, which is an important limitation as even in most countries that are now

16 Bourguignon and Verdier (1999) model the trade-offs in the choice of the elites to extend education, trading off increased education versus threat of revolt. 17 They could also just build direct concern for other citizens/groups into citizens utility, which strikes me as more descriptively realistic. For instance, in the USA the desire of the majority to “Americanize” the waves of non-Protestant immigrant (first Irish then Southern European) is argued to be an important motivation behind increasing consolidation of schools and

34

democracies the structures of the schooling system and first expansion of public

schooling happened before the country was fully democratic. Even more importantly,

their model cannot explain the many cases in which the ideology adopted for promotion

in the schools was clearly driven by regime ideology and not that of the “median voter”

(e.g. Turkey, China, Russia, Tanzania, Japan, etc.).

IV) Puzzles and Practical Problems

That the regime ideology model of public schooling can explain why nearly all

governments produce schooling (as opposed to direct financial support to suppliers or

demand side financing) is not surprising: after all, I built it to do so18. The fruitfulness

of this approach will ultimately be tested in explaining other puzzles and practical

policy problems.

IV.A) Two puzzles for economists

First puzzle. This paper had its origin many years ago as an attempt to understand a

narrow, technical, question: why aren’t the empirical estimates of the cross-national

returns to education biased upward as both theory and evidence suggests they should

be? If schooling involves a purposive acquisition of skills, then one would expect

aggregate schooling to be higher where returns to schooling are higher. Behrman and

Birdsall (1983) showed ignoring this effect caused an upward bias of the estimates of

the returns to schooling from quantity alone by almost 50 percent in Brazil and

government (though never national) control of education but is this really linked to a production externality? 18 The rabbits were stuffed rather obviously in the hat by the “agency” constraint, which is justified elsewhere (Pritchett 2002).

35

Rosenzweig (1999) used regionally varying returns to schooling to demonstrated a

similar large upward bias in cross-regional estimates of schooling returns in India. So,

intuition and cross-regional evidence suggest that cross-national estimates would

overstate the ‘true’ returns to education if the variation in educational expansion is

driven by variations in returns, which affects demand. But the literature has the

opposite problem, in spades, as cross-national estimates of the impact of growth of

years of schooling on the growth of per worker output using standard “growth

accounting” regressions cannot reject zero impact of schooling (Benhabib and Spiegel

1994, Pritchett 2001b, Krueger and Lindahl, 2001)19. Temple (1999) shows that the

cross-national results are sensitive to the sample, which suggests substantial parameter

heterogeneity in the impact of schooling.

The lack of upward bias and heterogeneity must mean rapid schooling expansion in

countries where returns to education are very, very low. To explain this one needs a

model of supply. The regime ideology model can produce two cases with rapid

schooling expansion but weak economic performance. One case is a relaxation of the

political viability constraint with ideological regimes could lead to a rapid expansion of

total instruction, but which is mainly devoted to altered beliefs instruction with little

impact on skills (and perhaps a poor economic environment for using skills). Another

case is if there is a supply driven expansion in instruction, which leads to improved

19 Krueger and Lindahl (2001) shows that high frequency estimates (e.g. five year intervals, as in Islam 1995 or Casselli et al, Hoefffler 1999) are subject to substantial measurement error bias. But neither their long-period (1960-85) OLS nor IV estimates, which correct for

36

skills, but the regime ideology is inconsistent with productive utilization of skills.

Tanzania might be an example. The other case is an expansion in schooling and the

schooling apparently produces reasonable quality basic skills, but the economic

environment is not conducive to productive use of those skills, so economic

performance is weak. Cuba or Hungary (pre-transition) might be examples20.

Depending on how countries are distributed in terms of demand versus supply, the

causes of supply of supply shifts, and the correlation of supply shifts with economically

desirable policies the cross-national estimates could be anything (and mean nothing).

Second Puzzle. The implication of choosing inputs on a fixed budget to maximize

production subject to a production function is that the increment to production per

expenditure on an input should be equalized across all inputs. While there have been

literally hundreds of studies using an “education production function” approach, not one

has ever tested and ‘accepted’ this hypothesis. In fact, the review of the evidence from

developing countries presented in Filmer and Pritchett (1999b) suggests that skills

produced per dollar were not equalized and frequently differ across inputs by two

orders of magnitude.

This creates a puzzle: if the suppliers of public schooling are not maximizing output

measured as skills, what are they maximizing? The regime ideology model suggests

several possibilities. First, governments will want to control the loyalty of the teaching

measurement error, show a statistically significant coefficient on the growth of schooling (table 5, column 5 IV t-stat is 0.41), consistent with the long-period IV estimates in Pritchett 2001a).

37

force, with greater priority than maintaining their ability to teach effectively. If this

means relative under-spending on recurrent inputs, so be it. Second, the model suggests

one possible explanation of the common division of expenditure responsibilities

between national and local/community/parents. National governments always pay for

the teachers while often part or all of other expenditures (buildings, books, recurrent

inputs, instructional materials) are borne locally. Third, the regime’s objective function

of schooling is not well measured by skills alone and hence the prediction that marginal

product per ‘dollar’ of inputs in producing learning achievement is likely not to be a

true test of whether suppliers are optimizing. In particular, if the production of skills

and beliefs require different input mixes then this will not hold.

V.B) Practical problems

Let me suggest how the model is relevant to three practical problems in education

in developing countries: support for universal basic schooling, schooling quality, and

teaching practices.

Universal schooling. I would argue that reaching every child with a high quality

education is the single most important action to improve human well being. So then,

the reader might ask, why are you attacking the foundational myths of public

schooling? What harm can come from “benign motivation” models of public schooling

(like the economists’ “normative as positive”) even if they are false? Successfully

motivating governments to do more cannot be independent of a coherent and correct

20 By the radical simplification of the education production function I cannot talk about the complementarities between ideology and different skills, as repressive regimes often have

38

model of why they actually do what they already do. False models lead to false

diagnoses and false diagnoses lead to false prescriptions. A false model can lead to

recommendations that are useless or, worse, counter-productive. Let me give an

example of each.

Many argue that private schools are frequently more efficient at producing skills

instruction than public schools (e.g. Jimenez and Lockheed, 1995). If one were to

believe that and one were to believe that the promotion of skill acquisition was the

cause of government involvement in education then a move to greater reliance on the

private sector—not banning private schools, encouraging community schools, perhaps

even all the way to “vouchers”—is a natural policy proposal. However, if the purpose

of regime support for public schooling (and other educational policies) is to control

instruction in beliefs then proposing to the regime reforms that relinquish control to

improve quality is useless21.

What if enrollments are less than universal, if children are not learning, teachers

are not attending, textbooks are terrible, and teaching methods are antiquated? If

governments really produced schooling because it maximized social welfare then these

flaws must be either “mistakes” or “information constraints.” The “resource and

information constrained social welfare maximizer making mistakes” diagnosis leads to

students that excel in mathematics and sciences, which are perhaps less ideological. 21 This is not saying that empirical work demonstrating the possibility of more effective schooling does not have a policy influence—but the influence is more likely to come through recommendations for citizen action that has influence via the “political viability constraint” than through an exogenous shift in regime policy. Reports of comparable educational quality indicators are often influential (and for this reason such reports are often suppressed).

39

prescriptions for more research (e.g. demonstrating the benefits of schooling) and more

resources22. But if the fundamental problem with commitment to schooling, school

quality and teaching is that the regime is pursuing, correctly, its self-interest then “more

resources” is potentially counter-productive. More resources into the existing system

reinforces regime-controlled schooling and potentially is counter-productive as it delays

the fundamentally social and political reforms necessary for educational success23.

Schooling quality. The problem with basic education is not just getting children

into schools but also making sure there learn something. The results of the the 1994

Tanzania Primary School Leavers Examination suggested that the vast majority of

students had learned nothing in seven years of schooling24. Jean Dreze reports that

random visits to schools in Uttar Pradesh India revealed teacher attendance rates

between one-third and one-half. Similar shocking findings about the low level of

quality abound in developing countries. Again, while one view is that governments are

motivated to provided high quality schools but are constrained by resources and

information. The alternative view is that governments will control education even

when they have absolutely no interest in promoting skills. As long as students are not

taught antagonistic beliefs and the political viability constraint is satisfied then for the

regime all is well with the schools. If this regime motivation is strongly ideological

22 Some are moving away from that model: “the major binding constraint to successful educational development in poor countries is neither the need to transfer more funds nor a lack of educational technology and know how” (Crouch and Healey 1997). 23 Many would argue donor resources have reinforced existing states and delayed reforms in other areas of economic and political reform (van de Walle, 2001).

40

and not citizen constrained then government driven reform programs to improve quality

are unlikely to be adopted and unlikely to be implemented if adopted. In this case only

increased citizen pressure and pressure on the regime will lead to quality

improvements25.

Teaching practices. Pedagogical practices in developing country schools are

notorious and have been very slow to change. What explains the slow diffusion of

improved teaching practices? This does not seem to be a problem of lack of

“information” as there are pockets of excellence in every education system: the problem

is one of expanding and sustaining these good practices (Crouch and Healey, 1997).

While there are many explanations why teaching is hard to reform (e.g. under motivated

teachers, bureaucratic inertia) one explanation from the model is the contradiction

between the teaching practices that convey greater skills and those that promote the

regime’s desired beliefs. Analyzing teaching practice as if the only point was to

improve “skills” takes education out of its political context. Teaching in public schools

conveys both “information” and “socialization” messages. There can be a contradiction

between the technique that might best teach the material and the technique that best

conveys the socialization message. Teaching practices that are now out of favor in

educational circles—“sage on the stage”, teacher centered, rote learning, structured

classrooms, joint recitation, emphasis on classroom order and discipline—are often

24 83 percent scored less than 13 percent correct in Language, 80 percent less than 13 percent in Mathematics and 50 percent received less than 13 percent in General Knowledge (ref). 25 This needn’t be a shift in overall citizen power on the state—if high stakes exams are binding citizen pressure can be increasingly important.

41

precisely the practices that socialize (non-elite) youths into the roles that regimes wish

them to play. Acceptance of “sit down, shut-up and do what you are told” is the attitude

many regimes want mass education to convey. The last thing many regimes want

public schooling to do is promote is critical thinking.

Conclusion

The story is very simple. Schooling arose as the dominant form of education

because of shifts in economy and society. Schooling necessarily conveys beliefs.

Those who rule nations cannot be indifferent about these beliefs. Instruction in beliefs

cannot be controlled without direct control of production. Because powerful national

regimes sought control of beliefs instruction public schooling became the dominant

form of schooling. Public schooling became universal (or not) either from supply side

pressure of strongly ideological regimes or demand side pressure of increasingly

powerful citizens.

This simple story has all the virtues and vices of simplicity. By being the story of

every country this is the precise story of no country, as every country has its own.

Moreover, there are two layers of complexity about politics and education that are

glossed over. Nearly all educational systems have “elite” and “mass” education and

these distinctions are crucial to the preservation of social cleavages. In the history of

education demands for access to the traditionally elite education by an upcoming elite

play a large role—this has been ignored entirely. Teachers as source of patronage and

teachers themselves as a direct political force are also ignored. But, this is, by and

large, the right explanation of public schooling.

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One final note. It is a quirk of intellectual history that most “attacks” on public

schooling are associated with “right-wing” thought—most obviously Milton Friedman

(1956). But the most important influence on this paper is James Scott’s Seeing Like a

State a brilliant, and decidedly “left-wing” description of how states have used

supposedly neutral, technical, modernizing, benign, “developmentalist” language of

extending “control” and “order” and “planning” to extend state control over society and

citizen. I am not arguing that social control of formal schooling is somehow

illegitimate or undesirable, but that state and regime control of schooling unfettered by

social control of the state—not just electoral democracy but the deep, complicated,

poorly understood, mechanisms that produce real social control and citizen

accountability--can lead to educational disasters.

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