Lots of predictable attacks on Mises Institute writings in this report from People For the American Way (HTML | PDF). Would that it were true that the voucher movement secretly favors full-blown privatization.
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/2195/the-american-way-is-public-school/
The American Way is Public School
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While Quasi-educational creationist schools being paid for by my tax dollars scares me, I believe in the right of people to choose how their tax dollars are spent.
But I guess public schools are the American way, in the sense that America school are famous for being bad, and inefficiently run public schools certainly fit that bill!
“A network of
Religious Right groups, free-market economists, ultraconservative columnists and others
are using vouchers as a vehicle to achieve their ultimate goal of privatizing education.”
*GASP* Not privatizing education! What a HORRID idea! We should round up all these free-market economists, ultraconservative columnists and “others”, tie them up and burn them at the stake!
Horrors! Parents teaching their own children! Parents teaching other children! Think of the lack of administrators, bells, PA systems, yellow prison (err, school) buses, and windowless schools! Young impressionable minds let loose on the Internet! Discussing issues without raising their hand first! Imagine all those critical thinkers let loose into society! They may actually start criticizing the State! They may actually start reading our constitution! They may actually become (gasp) libertarians!
Seriously, though, guys, where would we be without public schools? I mean, really. What would we do with all those extra resources not being pumped down the drain indoctrinating people about the very saintlike character of FDR and how the New Deal got us out of the Great Depression? What would kids that aren’t planning on going to college do if they didn’t have to be in compulsory high schools? I mean, we can’t have them out there producing goods and services to make our society more prosperous, now can we?
After all, aren’t we better off with an educated (read: indoctrinated) electorate (read: mob) that can vote in elections and choose the best leaders (read: most efficient crooks)?
When will people realize that education IS just another economic good?
Being an intransigent capitalist [known as laissez-faire] in the world today means being attacked and ridiculed. It ought not to be a surprise.
After all, in the history of man it has only been approximately 500 years since the printing press was invented and less since the awakening of man’s mind [the Renaissance], and even less since the Enlightenment. Since the 19th century man has regressed and quickly we are losing what remains of that brief Aristotlian peak.
Reason is despised by the world, much more comfortable deciding not to think and believe in the irrational.
If not for the Enlightenment, the direct decendent of Aristotle, there would have been no United States.
Alas, the right of the self-sustaining individual to his life, and the only political-social system that is the corollary, l-f capitalism, was not made explicit in the US Constitution.
Even Hamilton would have baulked at the intervention of today that arose especially over the past 120 years.
The innocent naivete of the Framers was that they could never imagine anyone NOT embracing individualism.
It is a good thing government did not get hold of the shoe industry, for then Americans would be hobbling around with corns, callouses and bunions being the very uncomfortable and painful order of the day.
If People For The American Way favour state education over free education, the “american way” can thenceforth be determined to be the institution of a robber state to fund the pursuit of cognitive degeneration. The american education system is an abomination; an inhumane atrocity; a subject of comedy in my country. The members of PFAW must possess extraordinary imaginations to conceive of such a machination as a worse service.
Just as certain of our founding fathers managed to establish the separation of church and state, so too should there be separation of education and state. There is no logical reason, based on either economic efficiency or moral argument, to separate church and state but not education and state. Surely the ethical/theological development of the nation is just as, if not more, important than its intellectual development. If state control is beneficial for education, it should also be beneficial for religion.
I’ve long regarded education as simply a concise form of conditioning. I certainly don’t want the State conditioning anyone. Ergo, the State should get out of the education/conditioning business altogether. I don’t like vouchers anymore than straight socialist education, as the tendrils of the leviathan will wind their way into the institutions just as private institutes of higher education are forced to adhere to Federal regulation if they take money from students that is sourced back to grants or loans. The difference will merely be three choices of useless, biased indoctrination instead of one.
Also, essentially built into this struggle is a theological fight between commonly accepted religion and its secular cousin, collectivist secular humanism. They both want to be the indoctrinators of youth, with an eye toward a controllable mass of sheep, and they fight over the resources the State provides to do this. Its not a ‘what’ but ‘how’. As an atheist and a individualist secular humanist, I want neither. Good, bad, or indifferent, it is up the value system of the parent to raise their child in the manner they see fit, and program/condition as they see fit as well. State Theologians should be removed from the equation.
Really, when considering public education consider the systems it replaces/competes with.
1. Church schools: schools run by churches to educate their congregations in the style desired by the church.
2. Private schools: schools run by private institutions to educate the enrolled children in the manner desired by their parents.
3. Apprenticeship: On the job training of young people by private enterprise for enhancing the workforce.
To see where the cost shifting is occuring, and hence who is benefitting the most from the public education system as it exists, which of the above systems are still in existence and competing in the western world?
Note that church and private schools seem to be alive and well, but apprenticeship programs are nigh nonexistent. Businesses hire with the expectation of not needing to invest significantly in the training of their workers. Therefore it is business, the markets themselves, that are relieved of the direct costs of education by the public schools.
The parents’ and children’s interests in public
education are wholly subservient to business interests, so the businesses that benefit from
an educated workforce should bear the brunt of
the costs of public education.
Mr. Taylor, Yet the so-called “education” that is given is usually inadequate to walk into any job more complex than dishwashing. This is demonstrated, I believe, by the illusion of “college”.
What is now a 2 year degree was what someone got by the time they were in 8th grade. The pre-WW2 highschool diploma counts the same as todays 4-year degree.
It’s a systematic dumbing-down. John Taylor Gatto has lots to say on the subject.
Indeed, public education, in many ways, was nothing more then a corporate subsidy. The State training kids for the “work-force.”
Basically, the state, training kids to jump up like little Pavlog’s Dogs whenever the Bell Rings.
Tracy
I’ve long regarded education as simply a concise form of conditioning. I certainly don’t want the State conditioning anyone. Ergo, the State should get out of the education/conditioning business altogether. I don’t like vouchers anymore than straight socialist education, as the tendrils of the leviathan will wind their way into the institutions just as private institutes of higher education are forced to adhere to Federal regulation if they take money from students that is sourced back to grants or loans. The difference will merely be three choices of useless, biased indoctrination instead of one.
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