Are there too many laws in education?
Justin Bathon on Monday, February 23, 2009 at 1:39PM Megan McArdle at The Atlantic reminded me of a topic I have been wanting to come back to ... the amount of law in education. At ELA this year, we had Philip K. Howard give a general session on his book Life Without Lawyers, the general premise of which is that there is too much law (and relatedly too many lawyers) in society and that we would all be better off if we generally reduced the amount of rules. 
It is a general principle of mine that we need more lawyers in education, not less. Lawyers tend to professionalize the situations they are in, which, I guess, is another way of saying they tend to bureaucratize situations. Think of medicine. Lawyers have flocked en masse to medicine in the past few decades. Yes, there are ambulance chasers and the medical system can be a nightmare to navigate and it is way too expensive, but there are also professional boards, competent licensing, real internships, above adequate compensation ... and, let's not forget, life expectancies have skyrocketed (1950 life expectancy of 68, 2008 life expectancy 78 -- ten years is a LOT in a 60 year span - now not all of that is attributable to professionalization, but a lot of it is). So, the beauty of professionalization is there can be direct impacts on people's outcomes and more, real, built in accountability, whether it be health or education.
Thus, on the one hand we have everybody proclaiming that we need more professionalization in education and on the other there is a general notion that there is too much bureaucracy. The lawyers help professionalize the situation, but in doing so they make a lot of new rules.
So, which is it?
Can it be both or are these competing ideas?
Do we agree with Howard and McArdle that less rules are typically preferable? Or, are we willing to live with the rules if it means real gains in student learning?
Reader Comments (3)
Have you read any Tom Geoghegan? He sort of argues the opposite here: http://www.amazon.com/See-You-Court-America-Lawsuit/dp/1595584102/ref=pd_bbs_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235450034&sr=8-3 in a way I find persuasive.
Really, I didn't know anyone would be brave enough to write a book arguing we need more lawyers. I'll have to check it out, thanks Tom.
Well, at the risk of mangling the argument, the basic idea is that in practice we've gutted administrative law, contract law, and, well, rules, which only leaves tort, which is both expensive and unpredictable.