Enterprising Education: Doing Away with the Public School System
Government schools waste money and educate poorly. Like any other service, write Walter Block and Andrew Young, education cannot be provided more efficiently than via the market. School vouchers and "privatization" are not market solutions. Indeed, the only free-market solution is the abolition of all governmental ties to primary education. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (12)
Come on, folks. Let's put this one on the Front Page!
http://digg.com/political_opinion/Enterprising_Education_Doing_Away_with_the_Public_School_System
Published: August 18, 2006 4:41 PM
Bravo, sirs. Simply splendid. Almost speechless in admiration. Please do keep it coming. Magnificent. Etc.
Published: August 18, 2006 5:07 PM
Jeff,
Is this a new article by Professor Block (and Mr. Young), or has it previously appeared? Thanks.
Published: August 18, 2006 5:36 PM
Is there one depository for the weekend read? I think I may have missed a few and one list would be of great benefit.
Published: August 18, 2006 7:14 PM
Three things may be attainable that would make life better for all, especially our children....
1. Drop the age of majority to 13....
2. Roll child labor laws back to age 13....
3. Take the compulsary out of government education....
These aren't the only steps, but they should make a good start....
Published: August 18, 2006 7:20 PM
Dennis Sperduto asked: "Is this a new article by Professor Block (and Mr. Young), or has it previously appeared?"
This article originally appeared in International Journal of Value-Based Management 12: 195-207, 1999. It is also available in PDF.
Published: August 18, 2006 9:00 PM
"Despite virtually omnipresent dogma, there is no simple explanation as to why government provision of primary education must be substituted for private alternatives. [3]"
and
"[3] Furthermore, there is no simple explanation as to why the certain and specific tasks which government has chosen to provide under the catch-all of "education" have come definitively to describe an education. Education also involves the innumerable experiences individuals live and learn from, e.g., reading books and news-papers, watching television, and speaking and debating other individuals. The classroom is a very limited exposure of learning. It is worth noting that the market is charged with provision of all other educational experiences."
Mises - Human Action (von Mises Institute pdf) page 876
"In countries which are not harassed by struggles between various linguistic groups public education can work if it is limited to reading, writing, and arithmetic. With bright children it is even possible to add elementary notions of geometry, the natural sciences, and the valid laws of the country. But as soon as one wants to go farther, serious difficulties appear. Teaching at the elementary level necessarily turns into indoctrination. It is not feasible to represent to adolescents all the aspects of a problem and to let them choose between dissenting views. It is no less impossible to find teachers who could hand down
opinions of which they themselves disapprove in such a way as to satisfy those who hold these opinions. The party that operates the schools is in a position to propagandize its tenets and to disparage those of other parties."
Mises last sentence is a clear answer to "...why government provision of primary education must be substituted for private alternatives.".
John Taylor Gatto in "The Underground History of American Education" shows the primary motivation for compulsory public schooling was large business rather than government. Government was a tool. Gatto's entire book (314 pages) can be read on line at:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm
Published: August 19, 2006 2:37 AM
Mr. Marcus,
Thank you for the reply.
Dennis
Published: August 19, 2006 6:52 AM
Agree with J D's conclusion. The purpose of the govt school system is to provide compliant warm bodoes for the local job market. It also provides a govt sponsored baby sitting program. It pleases organized labor by raises wages by keeping millions off the job market and provides good union jobs.
Teachers, rich people, and others who want their children to be in the leadership class (the new ruling class) send them to private schools.
Published: August 19, 2006 11:16 AM
I know many public school teachers who send their kids to private school. The nost hypocritical example I know of is, in a neighboring "progressive" state, a friend of mine is an official at the teacher's union headquarters and yet she sent her kids to private school.
I'd love to see statistics on this.
Published: August 19, 2006 3:42 PM
Dave Weilacher: back when I was 13, I'd have voted for those suggestions big time! Now I'm twice as old and I still agree :)
Brent: in my hometown things are very similar. The social democrats strongly oppose private schools and deny them the funds that public schools receive per student. Yet the same officials (including my hometown's minister of education, a social democrat) send their own kids to private schools, because they can.
I find it utterly despicable that an official should have the power to take families' money and push it to public schools, thus denying that family the choice (in terms of affordability) for a private school (and some good private schools are even cheaper than public schools here, based on costs and what salaries they pay their teachers!).
Published: August 20, 2006 2:51 PM
Where do teachers send their kids?
I checked for articles about public school teachers sending their kids to private school. A representative article is http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15818, but there are many more that demonstrate the same hypocracy. Roughly 1/8 of the general population send their kids to private schools, but 1/4 of teachers send their kids to private schools. Care to guess what percentage of congress sends their kids to private schools?
Free education is a miserable failure. Compulsory education is sinister and immoral. Whoever controls a compulsory system cannot be trusted--whether it is public schools, public prisons, public healthcare, public housing, or any other public enterprise. Like the saying goes, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Compulsion is the great evil of our society.
Published: August 21, 2006 2:05 PM