The Japanese art of pottery, kintsugi, uses gold in the process of reconstituting something broken. Rather than attempting to conceal the repair, kintsugi makes something new and even more beautiful than the original. Author Jay Wolf notes a spiritual lesson:
The story of kintsugi — this style of pottery — may be the most perfect embodiment of all our trauma-shattered lives… Instead of throwing away the broken beloved pottery, we’ll fix it in a way that doesn’t pretend it hasn’t been broken but honors the breaking—and more so, the surviving — by highlighting those repaired seams with gold lacquer. Now the object is functional once again and dignified, not discarded. It’s stronger and even more valuable because of its reinforced, golden scars.
South Carolina choice supporters have suffered a trauma in a recent ruling striking down the state’s Education Scholarship Account program. In an absurd 3-2 ruling, the majority found that the ESA program violated language in the South Carolina Constitution prohibiting “direct” state funding to private schools. ESA funding goes to a parent-directed account, which has numerous educational uses other than private school tuition. The Arizona courts, for example, recognized this distinction between ESAs and vouchers when choice opponents made a similar challenge in the Grand Canyon State. From the unanimous Appeals Court decision (which the Arizona Supreme Court later refused to reconsider):
The ESA does not result in an appropriation of public money to encourage the preference of one religion over another, or religion per se over no religion. Any aid to religious schools would be a result of the genuine and independent private choices of the parents. The parents are given numerous ways in which they can educate their children suited to the needs of each child with no preference given to religious or nonreligious schools or programs. Parents are required only to educate their children in the areas of reading, grammar, mathematics, social studies, and science.
Where ESA funds are spent depends solely upon how parents choose to educate their children. Eligible school children may choose to remain in public school, attend a religious school, or a nonreligious private school. They may also use the funds for educational therapies, tutoring services, online learning programs and other curricula, or even at a postsecondary institution.
The specified object of the ESA is the beneficiary families, not private or sectarian schools. Parents can use the funds deposited in the empowerment account to customize an education that meets their children’s unique educational needs.
Thus, beneficiaries have discretion as to how to spend the ESA funds without having to spend any of the aid at private or sectarian schools.
South Carolina students deserved a Supreme Court majority which would have recognized the soundness of this thinking. As an alternative, South Carolina choice supporters should emulate the actions of their Grand Canyon State peers in performing school choice kintsugi. It was the loss of two small voucher programs, one for students with disabilities, the other for foster care students, that inspired the creation of the nation’s first account-based choice program. Lawmakers from across the country obviously appreciated the beauty of Arizona’s kintsugi choice program, as it has been widely emulated.
While the loss in the South Carolina Supreme Court leaves thousands of families in limbo, Palmetto State lawmakers should seize the kintsugi opportunity. Judges would have to engage in truly absurd mental gymnastics to find a version of Oklahoma’s Parental Choice Tax Credit to be “direct” aid. What Oklahoma lawmakers created lawmakers in South Carolina can optimize and perfect. A perfected Oklahoma style credit could be even more robust and indeed more beautiful than the ESA program. Beauty, as Dante observed, awakens the soul to act.
