The Common Good, Page 2

The American founders, influenced in part by Cicero, were also keenly aware of the virtuous obligations and purposes needed to realize the common good:

The public good, the real welfare of the great body of the people, is the supreme object to be pursued. (Madison, Federalist Paper #45)

A government ought to contain in itself every power requisite to the full accomplishment of ...the public good and to the sense of the people. (Hamilton, Federalist Paper #31)

The aim of every political constitution is ... to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society (Madison, Federalist Paper #57)

But they were also aware of the threats, as these passages show:

The people commonly intend the public good. This often applies to their very errors. But... they [do not] always reason right about the means of promoting it. (Hamilton, Federalist Paper #71)

It may well happen that the public voice, pronounced by the representatives of the people, will be more consonant to the public good than if pronounced by the people themselves, convened for the purpose. On the other hand, the effect may be inverted. Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people. (Madison, Federalist Paper #10)

These statements show the connection in the minds of the founders to thinking well and therefore to public schooling. In the first of these two passages, concern is that citizens reason better about the common good, and in the second, that via the capacity to think well they might protect the common good from bias, intrigue, and corruption. These threats are always present, as they are today, and only reason and good thinking can foil their purposes.

In this light, public schooling absolutely requires the ongoing conversation about the common good. And that requirement includes conversation about the purposes of public schooling. Without it, public schooling, too, would crumble away.

Obviously, in Ohio’s local schools and districts of the present day, this conversation about schooling must include families and community members: lots of them. It should not be left to experts or even elected officials. It certainly cannot be a private conversation among professional educators only. Public schooling is principally of, for, and by the public. It may help people obtain good jobs, but this purpose is a by-product of thinking well on behalf of the common good.

And the conversation should, and will inevitably, include anything and everything that participants bring to the discussion: ideas about living well; ideas about truth; ideas about what is good or right; ideas about social justice; proposals for action and proposals for inaction. See the Table for some excerpts from this long and enduring conversation.