4.1 Question: How can the society start the transition from the current authoritarian system based on accountability to the new democratic system based on the State’s Education Neutrality and self-correcting practice?

4.1 Answer: This question should better addressed by public policy analysts and educational economists. We roughly envision this process in the following way. There should be preparation time allocated after the Congress and the President signs a new education bill authorizing the new democratic system based on the State’s Education Neutrality. This time will be used on building new (very small) governmental bureaucracy for educational vouchers and public schools should use this time for planning what they want to do. Then, all public schools and school bureaucracies will be closed and some will be reopened if they get enough educational vouchers from students and parents of younger kids. Also, new educational organizations and providers will emerge. However, there can be a transitional period of running two system in parallel, with one fading and the other growing. During this period old schools will be asked to write their educational charter in preparation for the transition. Additional funding resources may be needed to allocate for the transition.

4.2. Question: Will this radical transformation based on the State’s education neutrality kill public schools (in their current form as state-run bureaucracies)?

4.2. Answer: All voucher-based Glocal Education (schools, homeschooling, educational agencies, educational cooperatives, learning circles, self-studies, and so on) will be public in terms of being financed by public money of taxpayers[1]. However, public schools, — i.e., publically financed schools, — do not need state bureaucracies to run. In our view, some current public schools will probably have to transform, one way or another, from being a part of a larger state-run bureaucracy to becoming a self-standing and self-governing schools, based on negotiation with the students (mediated by parents for younger children) and on the self-correction processes of answering to the students. It is probable that not all of the current public schools will be able to survive in their present format or at all. On the other hand, those existing public schools, which are perceived and experienced by a sufficient number of students as good, would probably be able to survive financially. If not, they will not be able to keep up with student-choice education, as the students will pull out their public educational vouchers from them. Those public/state-run (and private-run!) schools will be forced either to change or to close.

      This may look, at the first sight, as Social Darwinism of survival of the fittest. However, in our view, it is not, because is about providing good education and not about being the fittest (or strongest). The center of education is the students, and not the survival of any particular institution. Does anyone want his or her children to attend a bad school? We do not think so. As Dewey (1915, p. 19) writes, “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” Of course, what is good or bad can be contested, and it is precisely this contest that is in the core of our proposal, since we insist on educational pluralism and the State’s educational neutrality. If the students find a school to be good, it will be fine. However, if nobody or very few people like it, it will die without funding. In our view, it is a self-correcting process rather than Social Darwinism.

      We actually claim that, in fact, all existing systems of public education are based on public vouchers, — i.e., a redistribution of funds for education through taxation. Currently, costs calculated per child are the public vouchers that are allocated to school district bureaucracies (i.e., educational providers) that channel them to particular schools (in the US). We suspect that in other countries it is somewhat similar.

      We think that the public is people and not the State or the State bureaucracies even when this bureaucracy is democratically controlled by the entire society or by democratically elected local school boards. Educational voucher money enables control and decision-making. The issue is: who gets this voucher and thus, who enables the control of educational decision-making. Currently, the enabler is district educational bureaucracies. We propose that these enablers be students, first and most of all, and then teachers (through being paid directly by the students through the vouchers). The teachers may hire school administration for facilitation of their pedagogical practice.

      So, why not trust people with their decisions of what is good for them in using their money?! What we want to abolish are mostly totalitarian schools, not public schools[2]. We propose that all educational institutions and endeavors be public in that they are supported with public money. We want to abolish the current state of imposition of technological standard-based education on all except the rich, who can pay for their own schools and, by choosing diverse educational philosophies of private schools, already live in the state of educational pluralism. We want to give the same chance that some rich people have to the rest. We want to abolish any educational monopoly driven by any educational partisan philosophy (including our own favorite DDEFFAA) and promote the right of access to good education for all — not imposed equality of mediocrity and misery. We see much more equity fairness and democracy in the GLE voucher proposal than in the existing totalitarian standard-based school system of accountability and alienated learning.

4.3. Question: What about teachers? Their professionalism? Their position and protection of their job and conditions of work (i.e. what about teacher unions)? Will the revolution of the State’s Education Neutrality worsen the teachers’ professionalism and conditions of teachers' jobs?

4.3. Answer: We suspect good teachers will flourish and the State's Education Neutrality will raise teachers’ professionalism — based on the real life feedback about their teaching that will come from the students. However, the same feedback also may and will worsen conditions of teachers' job stability rather strongly. Some teachers will lose their jobs if there is no demand or they won’t be appreciated by the students. To ease the transition, the State may need to assist willing teachers to educate themselves in a new educational environment with providing TEACHER EDUCATION vouchers to preserve their jobs or find new ones. The teacher tenure will be probably destroyed. As to teachers’ salaries, this issue has to be studied by educational economists. The salaries may even be raised (see 4.1), but we don’t know for sure.

      As to the teachers unions, they will be forced to reorganize, no question about that, but they probably will survive (like actors’ union without protection of job but fairness, pensions, legal matters, and so on). In our view, in addition to teachers unions guarding their job conditions and well-being, teachers need to develop professional organizations with different and at time conflicting agendas: 1) a teacher union focusing on the teachers’ rights, job security, benefits, salary negotiation, safe job conditions, legal protection of teachers, and so on and ; 2) a teacher professional organizations focusing on professional improvement and advances of the teaching practice. These two important functions can be at time in accord and at time in contradiction with each other and require separation of their legitimate agendas. Currently, the teachers unions include the second functions and they have secondary priorities in the hierarchy of concerns and are often overruled by the first functions. That is, in our view, why we may see cases of an excellent novice teacher being laid off to secure the seniority even of a mediocre teacher.

4.4. Question: Can we accept your pluralist theory of Dialogic Pedagogy but develop a different proposal, keeping a safeguard of benevolent monopoly on educational philosophy or some kind of Limited Educational Pluralism or Gradual Educational Pluralism without committing to a radical, sweeping, untested, and scary proposal for “educational pluralism” full of potentially bad, painful consequences. Why don’t you use your intellectual muscle to develop a way of spreading your Democratic Dialogic Education For and From Authorial Agency (DDEFFAA) that we like as the best way (or, let’s say in a politically correct way, “a better way”) of education on more and more students? Why do we need to willingly give “them” resources for education to the pedagogical practices that we dislike and despise and, thus, promoting monologic and oppressive types of “education”?

4.4. Answer: Correct us if we are wrong, but does “Benevolent Monopoly on Educational Philosophy” mean convincing a majority of people in a country and influential politicians that DDEFFAA (for example) is the best educational approach that should be imposed and forced on every public school and every teacher in a public school? If so, how can a teacher, who does not believe in critical dialogue and resists it, become a good dialogic teacher? In our DDEFFAA view, becoming a dialogic teacher includes freedom for dissent, meaning a legitimate possibility not to become a dialogic teacher or even freedom to actively become a monologic teacher. Critical dialogue is manifestation of freedom. People cannot be ordered or forced to be free. Imposed/forced dialogue is dead dialogue. Monopoly on Educational Philosophy is not a condition of education but is a particular Educational Philosophy by itself and this is a monologic educational philosophy blocking praxis of praxis (i.e., genuine education according to our DDEFFAA approach). That is why, in our view, benevolent Monopoly on Educational Philosophy is impossible, it is a contradiction in terms, a misnomer.

      We envision “Limited Educational Pluralism” (LEP) as a situation when certain “legitimate” educational philosophies will be allowed and supported by the State but some others will be not. Students or their parents will be financed by taxpayers’ funds to attend educational institutions and settings (e.g., homeschools) that have committed to the legitimate educational philosophies. However, there may be other educational institutions and settings, which will not be approved for funding (e.g., “dogmatic” educational philosophies, the religious, the “intolerant”, and so on). In this “limited educational pluralism” special federal, state, and local governmental educational boards could make political decisions on behalf of their taxpayers’ constituencies regarding: a) which educational philosophy to finance and which not and b) whether an educational institution or setting complies with legitimate educational philosophy or not in its practice. This would differ from our “unfettered” educational pluralism limited only by the legal system, and not by an arbitrary political decision of public philosophical preferences.

      First of all, we definitely see a step forward in this limited educational pluralism from the current stage of the State educational monopoly. Like in our proposal, it will also promote more debates on educational values and engage students in decision-making about their education (if this version of LEP directly gives students the decision making power and not their parents – especially for older students, of course). In our view, LEP is an acceptable temporary compromise and a significant improvement in the educational practice, moving it in “the right direction.” LEP could be a transitional phase toward full Educational Pluralism.

      However, we also see at least three major objections against the LEP approach if permanently established. First, in LEP, political boards and taxpayers will limit students decision making about “good” and “bad” to legally allowed educational philosophies and practices and thus limit the quality of their education as understood through praxis of praxis – i.e., the student’s examination of values of his or her own educational values and deciding what is the best for the student him or herself (Matusov & Marjanovic-Shane, 2012). Second, all taxpayers should be allowed to use benefits of their educational tax within the limits of the law. Third, like the current State educational monopoly, LEP creates a disparity between rich students, who have more educational choices outside of public schools, and poor students, who do not have them. Thus, by default, rich students are engaged in higher quality of education defined as praxis of praxis. 

      Regarding this proposal for a “Gradual Transition to Educational Pluralism”, we think that as political conditions in a country mature for Educational Pluralism, it is fine to transition gradually when the State Educational Monopoly becomes weakened and the overall educational practice is moving toward Educational Pluralism through creative experimentation.

4.5. Question: Is "our" society (i.e., US, UK, Russia, Israel, South Africa, New Zealand, China, Vietnam, etc.) really ready for unfettered educational pluralism? If not, what are right conditions, traditions, and transitions for educational pluralism? Is educational pluralism right and doable for all societies?

4.5. Answer: We agree that the right historical, political, cultural, and social conditions are needed for the State’s educational neutrality. Educational pluralism is doable when it can be established through democratic and liberal political processes: voting, judicial decisions, legislation, rule of law, and free political dialogue. In our view, educational pluralism is the only educational principle that is compatible with a Constitution in a democratic society (but other people may disagree) and with a liberal society and a liberal state. We think that ideas of the educational pluralism will be more supported in societies with long democratic traditions and tolerance for dissent of the ultimate illiberal, undemocratic, other. We suspect that educational pluralism will be more supported in post-skill, post-knowledge and agency-based societies and economies with open access information, and we see trends toward this development around the globe.