Privatize the Schools
Sounds great, right? Sometimes government tells us things aren’t so great; it tells us it must intervene on behalf of the consumer, using euphemisms like “regulation” and “consumer protection” to make demands of providers. Without the government’s intrusion, providers will naturally seek to serve consumers in order to be patrons of their business, but when politicians tell them what to do the natural arrangement of the marketplace is no more. Providers can no longer use the fullness of their capacities in service of the consumer, they must now divert a part of those capacities in order to meet the arbitrary demands of statesmen. Providers now must serve two masters, the consumers, whom they would be serving anyway in order to receive payment, and the politicians, who pay them in nothing but demands. The end result is necessarily a loss for the consumer, who is now not as well off as he could have been.
Sometimes, government intrudes into the marketplace in an unprecedented way. Throughout history, government has completely taken over areas of service that would otherwise be private and turned them into a certain kind of public institution called a monopoly. A monopoly in this sense is an institution controlled by the government that is the sole provider, protected from competition, in a certain area of service.
The American K-12 public school system is a monopoly, since it is the primary forum by which children obtain an education.
Public schools are paid for by taxes and children attend them for free, not because school managers make them free but because government demands they be free. The price system is the mechanism by which providers keep each other in service to the consumer; providers lower prices in order to draw the attention of consumers to themselves and away from other providers. But when there are no prices, what empowers the consumer to choose what he thinks is best for himself, and thus employ providers that efficiently and easily supply it for him, is eradicated. When people no longer buy things on account of how much good it does them, but instead are simply handed something, they are made poorer, not richer. The public school monopoly is completely insulated from the needs of the consumers, them being the children and their parents. It has no reason to cater to anyone’s wants; it simply does what it does and whether or not people are satisfied is not even part of the equation. Whether they like it or not, they have to live with it. In this way, the monopoly will always, necessarily, be inferior to private enterprise.
It can be said that children should not be subjected to the “ups and downs” of the marketplace, and that schools should be protected from the turbulence that comes with free enterprise. However, this is an over-simplification and under-explanation of the issue. Children are served because of the turbulence associated with the free market. “Turbulence” simply means that some schools will do better than others at admitting students and taking in revenue, while other schools will struggle to stay financially afloat and sometimes even fail.
This phenomenon is an expression of the consumer exercising his power to determine which providers are giving him superior service and which are not. The idea that politicians and central planners will run schools “not so they themselves can profit but for the students” can only end in disaster when put into practice as public policy. (And it has.)
In a free market, the provider can only profit if he in turn is providing a legitimate service to a consumer. If the consumer does not believe the service is to his benefit, he chooses not to purchase it and moves on with his life. There is no force involved. On the other hand, when there is a government monopoly compelling people to use un-priced services, and the consumer believes the services are not to his benefit, he has no power over the monopoly; the monopoly has no competition. He has no choice and is forced to make use of bad service that he does not want, a phenomenon that cannot ever take place in a free market.
I was in education for 30 years. Privatization is the only answer. This article is dead-on right. Government IS the problem.
Thank you for the reply. Comments like these are very encouraging.
It’s always surprising to me to see someone covered up in the new technological universe blogging and such, but unable to see solutions from the same world. Privatize education? When are you going to start thinking about crowd-sourcing it. If an app were available to insure a parent was in the classroom every day, videoing the lesson, we’d have a complete education system on Kindles in one year. Law school, med school, and any other expensive education would be available for 99 cents to any interested individual. An MIT education could be brought to the home and every child bathed in it for a decade before they hit the streets. It is coming. It is about time that we had the chance to get a Jeffersonian education without the elites demanding their payment.
Interesting insights, Mark.
‘Schools’ are the first introduction to government, today, for our young. Schools are controlled by government and unions. Curriculum is dictated by those bodies, no longer by social need or local demand. Virtually making them indoctrination centers. Standards are for the lowest common denominator. “No child left behind” means no one fails at any level for any reason. Recent news from the EEOC suggests that a HS diploma requirement may ‘violate’ the Americans with disabilities Act. And SAT’s are being considered to be eliminated or thresholds lowered, again.
These considerations bring into question the “definition” of previously understood definitions of what “IS” an ‘American’? and what “IS” ‘education’? at a time when jobs in America are vanishing as fast as obama can “redistribute that wealth”. How can this be a good sign?
And at a time when our sovereignty “IS” actively being eliminated by government at every level.
Folks, IMHBLO, these are not good trends. They aren’t even acceptable to people who can think for themselves.
“Schools” aren’t going to be ‘privatized.’ Government and unions would rather see the nation destroyed first.
Education reform has heretofore been carried out by dissidents within the Democratic Party. I am glad that some Republicans are taking the issue of public education seriously. See my review of Terry M. Moe’s new book here: http://clarespark.com/2011/10/09/vox-populi-vox-big-brother/. The teachers unions are the great obstacle to reform. But he does not sufficiently focus upon the curriculum, which should have all our attention.
So the issue is (and correct me if I’m wrong)that the way the system is done people are unable to reward people with their wallets because their wallets are not worthwhile in the current system?
It seems like a total crush of the system is like using a sledgehammer to hang a painting. It’ll get it done but it’s an excess of effort.
How about instead making it so that schools get money based on the children they have on their rosters an employing a system that allows parents to shop around for schools?
They call this a voucher system I believe.
This will yield the same effect.
Since you asked: Not sure if it’s a question or a statement, but it is slightly loaded and sarcastic and obviously rhetorical.
Replace the word {reward} with {discriminate}.
It would be sufficiently phrased as such: (“People are unable to discriminate with their wallets.”) The wallet isn’t worthwhile to the consumer here, however the government finds this forced payment(tax) highly useful to themselves.
You make a perfect example of the problem by suggesting a solution. You suggest (“How about instead making it so that schools get money based on the children they have on their rosters an employing a system that allows parents to shop around for schools?”) You don’t get to do that with your money. You get no say at all as to when, how or where money is spent, let alone how much money you’d personally risk, you are told! So, what you are trying to do is discriminate, but you don’t get that option.
The voucher system is simply more bureaucracy with the illusion you have a say. Intended to make everybody happy by not really changing anything, other than likely increased property tax rates. No system will yield the effect of a free market system. That means you choosing with your brain and wallet as you see fit.
Not sarcastic at all. Merely proposing a solution that is somewhat more elegant than trying to convert an entire system from one thing to its polar opposite.
The problem: Schools have no reason to work for the money they recieve and the children suffer.
A lesser issue or what could be considered a result of the problem is that teachers unions are making it hard to fire the bad ones and keep the good.
Another issue is the politicization of the curriculums.
So with a voucher system and the Pay-Per-Head idea the goverment pays schools for how many kids are on their rosters.
So when parents decide one school is inferior and go to a different one the inferior school loses money.
The lack of money will force them to rethink how they work in order to make their system better.
Replacing the current system with this one will yield the same result while still keeping it free.
There are times when the government needs to yield to privatization.
But there are also times when privatization is not the answer.
This is one of those times when privatization is not the solution.
“The voucher system is simply more bureaucracy with the illusion you have a say.”
There is no reason to suspect it would not have a drastically smaller bureaucracy than now exists, in fact it would most likely be drastically smaller.
Why would a parent choose to support a school with more useless overhead rather than less? You seem to resume they would.
I am deadset opposed to a Friedman-style voucher system because it would simply extend the reach of the government educational bureaucracy so as to give it effective control over the private schools. Think about it: how would private school operators redeem the vouchers given them by the parents? Whose money pays for these vouchers? (Yes, taxpayers’ money.) Who would have oversight authority in how that money would be used? Your state’s Department of Education, right? Who would issue these vouchers and be responsible for deciding who could redeem those same vouchers? Yes. See the problem?
If such a system would be set up in your state, how could any private school wishing to escape the government’s control possibly compete when the other private schools are being subsidized by yours and my tax dollars? They couldn’t. This would be the effective end of truly autonomous private schooling in any state that adopts such a voucher scheme.
I think every one of your questions assumes a state of affairs which is unlikely ever to exist. If the Educational Establishment is in control enough to see your questions answered the way you presume, there is no reason to think they will allow vouchers in the first place–there is no reason to think vouchers for education would not exist only on conservative terms.
No, Carn, it won’t! You would leave the Government financing and therefore in control of the schools. We want schooling to be a matter of private enterprise, without governmental interference at any level. The Tenth Amendment, properly understood, precludes educational entanglements by the Federal Government.
One of the great ironies of our tragic government-run schools system is that a principal argument for the system was that it would be indispensable in promoting and assisting the assimilation of immigrant children to American norms and culture. Hasn’t exactly worked out that way, has it?
On the contrary, it worked excellently for many years.
My grandparents came to America from Eastern Europe, and their children were educated in public schools to be Americans.
The public schools only stopped emphasizing assimilation when America’s intellectuals stopped emphasizing it. Probably started in the 1960s.
So it’s not public education in principle that failed there. It was American culture generally, which switched from “melting pot” to multiculturalism.
As a conservative, I say “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Public education isn’t *inherently* broken. We know that because it was a dramatic success in America until the culture changed in the 1960s.
Yes to everything except the last sentence.
It’s broke now. The marxists broke it deliberately.
So it has to be replaced.
No, if the current public school system is broken, it needs to be repaired.
The principle of public education isn’t broken. It used to work well. It still can.
You only replace a system if it’s broken beyond repair. First you attempt to repair the system then if that fails you replace the system.
The public school system was successful once so we know that it can work. So we just need to repair it till it gets back to that point.
Carn, you and sinz54 need to read “Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms” by Diane Ravitch.
Reforms of government controlled schooling fails because they are implemented by the same bureaucrats whose administrative efforts have failed the schools to begin with.
Whenever a legislative body creates an agency to implement a new act or authority they invariably turn to the reputed “experts” to fill the new bureaucracy. Where do they find these experts? Academia –the academic disciplines of the university. In the case of education this means the schools of education in our universities and the National Education Association (which is NOT a union, but an association of professionals who dominate the academic discipline of pedagogy in this country).
It’s like you said, sinz54, it’s the “intellectuals” that are the problem. How do we free ourselves from these intellectuals? You can’t just elect politicians who will then fire the failing bureaucrats. (The civil service system is designed to prevent a “spoils system” from developing; so it is almost impossible for our elected officials to fire a bureaucrat.)
We must dismantle the bureaucracy. This effectively means abolishing public education as we know it.
@joelm
“We must dismantle the bureaucracy. This effectively means abolishing public education as we know it.”
Which is what vouchers do. They permit parents to make an end run entirely around the educrats.
@ Tom Perkins.
You forget that this “voucher” money (under the traditional Milton Friedman-type voucher proposal) is government money; not just taxpayers’ money, but money that is being handled and dispensed by the government. Somebody must have oversight in how that money is spent or used; which is to say, somebody must set standards by which it is determined who is eligible to redeem those vouchers. It won’t be your elected conservative officials who will do this, it will be entrenched civil servants who will carry this out. By what standards are these prospective civil servants chosen? By the standards the “experts” in academia set. (This is what legislators always do whenever their laws result in the creation of agencies to implement their policies and plans –they turn to the putative “experts”. The civil service system, developed in the late 19th century, was intended to eliminate political corruption inherent in the old “spoils system” of government hiring. The civil service is a kind of self-selected elite)
So, you see, the school operators (and the parents) will not be free from the “progressive” and multi-culti ideas of the edu-crats after all. (Maybe early on; but not in the long run –not once the bureaucrats figure out what kind of power they have actually been given.)
Indeed, this kind of voucher scheme will, in the long run, be actually worse than the current situation. At least, right now, most private elementary and secondary schools do not take any significant government money; and as a consequence, still enjoy a considerable degree of autonomy (they can set their own curricula, use their own teaching methods, hire non-union teachers, easily expel students who are disciplinary problems, etc.). Once government money pours into the private education market, it will be very difficult for those who wish to retain their autonomy (and maintain their quality) to compete with schools that are able to tap the resource of taxpayers’ money.
“The marxists broke it deliberately.”
I won’t go quite that far. I think basic American do-goodism badly damaged it and the Gramsci disciples saw the opportunity presented by the race and class divisions being drawn so starkly in the public schools in the ’60s and ’70s.
The marxists certainly followed Gramsci’s dicta in taking over the univesities, so that by the ’60s most younger teachers were left-leaning if not outright leftists whether they knew it or not. Most didn’t because everybody they knew thought the same way about things – except for those troglydite parents, especially the fathers, they had to deal with.
Another contributor was the continuing education and column and step pay systems that pay teachers more for more education. Even the sane teachers who hadn’t had the marxist Ed School indoctrination had to go back to school and get a good dose of marxism and German sociological thinking.
You are well read, most people are not aware of Gramsci. I am still learning, long ago, I use to enjoy reading fiction, now it is rare that I read something for fun. Most of my reading is to continue to self educate on history, economics and many other topics. Since you brought up race, if you have not read White Guilt by Shelby Steele, I think you will find it insightful. It does not address the specific points you made but it well worth the time to read.
It was one the three tenets of the strategy: capture the media, capture the schools, and balkanize the population (by every means possible…the unions, the family, religion, sexuality, feminism, by race, by home country, and much more).
But I agree that the primary thrust in the takeover of education was the universities. That happened by the 70′s. Propagandizing the lower grade levels was essentially a byproduct of capturing higher education. Once the intelligensia was all red, it was natural and inevitable that school teachers would turn red, even though many of them have no idea they are delivery systems for marxist propaganda. So today, the products of the school system are not educated adults, the products are serfs ready for deployment to the class war.
@proreason – I think that the universities outside the hard sciences were completely captured by the ’60s and the elite schools much earlier. When I started college in ’67 in Georgia pratically all of my humanities professors were leftists and some in social sciences were outright open marxists. The Donald Southerland character in “Animal House” didn’t just come from nowhere; I had lots of tweed jacketed, shaggy-haired professors who loved to hang with the students and smoke dope and screw coeds. It was still common to grade on the curve back then and I learned to really hate girls who messed up the curve on their back, we guys got a lot of Bs in English, Literature, and Social Sciences classes where most grades were on essays and grading was, shall we say, subjective.
In response, I agree with sinz54 about the problem arising from a shift from “melting pot” to “multiculturalism”. Aside from how this affects education, I am convinced that multiculturalism has fractured our society. I do not believe any reasonable person would deny someone their ethnic, traditional, or spiritual belief systems…but to try and accomodate all of them (and there is a plethora of them), in the education system is nearly impossible. Instead of fracturing the fabric of society, we need to find common ground as before and answer the universal question of “what makes us Americans?” and come together in unity. A great Biblical adage states that “a house divided against itself will not stand.” Our nation stands on the precipice of falling apart in many aspects, but none so great as a people divided.
As far as our education system being effective in assimilating newly arrived
immigrants to our country – it maybe, yes and it maybe, no – the more important question is “what do we expect our education system to do?” Is the education of our children based on political agendas or is it to educate? What should children be learning? In light of our many attempts to reform education and our latest debacle, No Child Left Behind, can we really say our reforms are working?
Perhaps, as Mr. Espersen suggests, privatization is the answer. This gives the power back to the parents to choose what they feel is important for their child to learn, and it provides healthy competition among schools to attract students and their families.
This could be misconstued as being too simplistic, I think the answer is simpler than most want to admit. Give parents back the power to choose and scrap the whole “assembly-line” system. Instead, we must understand the nature of children and their individual needs and conform our methods of teaching to how children actually learn and discard the approach of a system that attempts to conform the child to “adult-driven” standards and idealogies.
One of public education’s primary goals and greatest victories was assimilating The South, which in all strata of society was a dramatically different culture than The North. Before the Civil War there was almost no free public education in The South. By the 1880s free public education was available, if not always utilized, to most white Southerners and even to many Blacks in separate, and inferior, schools. As the US became a World Power in the 20th Century, it needed the manpower from the South but many men couldn’t meet the minimum standards of literacy required by a modern military, so there was a great push for compulsory education, a push strongly resisted by farming families who needed the labor of their children, but by WWII, almost all white Southernes were at least literate, as were significant numbers of Blacks.
Then came the Civil Rights Movement and school integration and to be blunt, that great assimilator, public education, failed dramatically. Blacks had been kept in peonage and inferior schools since Emancipation and most were dramatically behind their white peers educationally. The “dream” was sold that all that would be required to change that was access to the same schools and resources. On its face, that is outright crazy; it is simply irrational to believe that two hundred years of slavery and a hundred years of peonage was going to be overcome by a few years in a formerly all white school. Yet, when the newly integrated Blacks were seen to perform far below grade level, rather than take the necessary steps to remediate their performance, the schools, pushed by the ACLU and the poverty and race pimps, lower the standards to hide the fact of poor Black performance, and lowered them, and lowered them, and lowered them. And when Blacks were disciplined the schools were sued for discrimination in dicipline and the result was the abolition of in loco parentis and abdication of all discipline in schools. By the time the next wave to crash into the public schools came along, Hispanic immigrants, the schools had given up any pretense of setting or maintaining societal standards. Throw in some heady marxism and German sociological thinking from the Ed Schools and the melting pot of public schooling became a witches’ brew of societal disfunction and roiling grievances.
But NOBODY can talk about this in political discourse and until we recognize the problem we can’t solve it. The US has refused or failed to deal with the necessary assimilation of the freed slaves since the days that Sherman abandoned the contrabands at the Ogeechee River during his Walk to the Sea. Rather than attempt to employ the hundreds of thousands of contrabands that were essentially the property of the US Army, the US imported Chinese and European labor for the Transcontinental Railway and other major development and industrialization in the second half of the 19th Century while allowing the contrabands who were now citizens as the result of the Reonstruction amendments to fall back into the clutches of Southern agricultural serfdom in conditions worse than most slaves had endured during legal slavery. The Southern Blacks’ only comfort was that the poor and unlanded Whites had it almost as bad.
In one sense the promoters of school integration have proven right; Black and White school performance in the general run of public schools has become about equal, equally bad, but equal. Unfortunately, one political party in this Country relies on an ignorant, dependent, and agrieved populace and it has been able to extend its grasp to poor Whites as well as Blacks, so it is adamantly opposed to doing anything that might actually solve the problem. After all, people who are doing well in productive endeavors don’t vote Democrat so much.
We have a black president but have refused to assimilate blacks in the USA?
So, rain is dry, cold is hot, and…?
I’m sorry I didn’t come back to this sooner. First, genetically Comrade Obama is at least half-white. Culturally, he’s hardly Black at all; ask Harry Reid. But you do seem to be a full-blooded idiot.
There is a disturbing pervasive premise in the article that “students shouldn’t have to study what they don’t want to,” whereas, as I see it, a lot of the goofiness in education happens to come from misplaced ideas about HOW to please the students or that they can have “fun” doing everything. I don’t believe that good public or private schools teach only what 6-18 year-olds WANT to learn.
It isn’t your responsibility what other people are supposed to be learning in their own lives, on their own time, and with their own wallet.
The entire premise of universal education is to achieve graduates that are functionally literate, able to do relevant math, and understand our cultural, civic, and political structures.
Any system that does not achieve that end is a failure. The current government schools are a failure. But your lack of focus on core curriculum would likewise fail.
Yes, the parents would “vote” with their money, but if the “flower child” parent opted for the history of rock music as their desired curriculum, the society would suffer along with that child.
Reading, wRiting, and aRithmetic, alongside a healthy dose of civics and cultural history are requirements, not options.
I would have to say that if that is your defnition of success, the public schools are not meeting it. There is little to no real cultural (Western thought) education, and virtually no civics are taught. Another huge gap, and it’s been a gap for twenty years, is consumer economics.
Not success, Cheryl, the foundation!
Without a foundation in basic skills, all learning becomes a house built upon sand. I shudder that kids can’t do basic math without a calculator or write coherent sentences.
I agree that once that foundation is in place, higher studies are appropriate. I also think these higher studies should be more student selected to reflect enthusiatic interests.
Well, these days, that 3Rs curriculum is Racism, Recycling, and Reproduction. For the last ten years of my career most of my entry-level applicants with HS diplomas couldn’t speak or write standard English, couldn’t do basic math without a calculator, and couldn’t comprehend or accept the notion that a supervisor could tell them what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and would criticize and correct them if they didn’t follow those instruction. In other word the high school in a very afluent and well-educated town was at the level of those not going to college but rather seeking employment right out of high school turning graduates that were all but feral.
Applicants with general college degrees such as Communications or the various Studies were only a little better; somewhat better work habits though almost as unaccepting of criticism as the HS grads, somewhat better math skills but still totally dependent on a calculator, capable of writing a sentence and maybe a paragraph but their language was very simple and very informal. Most did know a LOT about sports and popular culture. A degree and a year of relevant experience would qualify one for my entry professional position and I rarely hired anyone into it off the street but rather used it to promote from within. I changed the Minimum Qualification for my full-performance professional position to graduation from law school and in the later years almost exclusively hired young lawyers, mostly women. Though interpersonal relationships with an office dominated by women could be “prolematic,” the women didn’t act nearly so entitled and would actually work and strive to achieve. Young men in the main had lots and lots of self-esteem and very little reason to have it. They’d walk in, tell you how wonderful they were and want to know when they were getting a raise and when I was retiring.
The bulk of the work at the full-performance level was representing the government in labor arbitrations. As a training and evaluation tool as well as to make sure the case was properly prepared and presented, each staff member had to present a precis of the case to to the rest of the staff, sort of a mock hearing, at least two weeks before it was set for hearing and then it was open season on the presenter. Those could be very humbling experiences especially for new law school graduates who have little or no experience and little training in advocacy and I had several quit after a few episodes of having a hard time with the mocks. Generally, even graduates of pretty good law schools required a lot of training and practice to make them able to successfully present a case of any complexity on their own, so God help the poor schmuck who gets some fresh-faced kid right out of law school as his public defender.
The biggest problem with your thinking is that there are some subjects that are hard, and boring, but very important to learn. For instance, you could not have written this essay without a good understanding of English grammar, but you were probably bored half to death studying it. Likewise, very few people enjoy math and yet basic math skills are very important to learn.
A good argument for our system is that employers need educated workers, and workers need to know a certain set of basic skills. It would be great for employers if, by a high school or college degree, they would be assured people they hired had these skills.
Unfortunately, today’s schools have largely demolished these arguments, because students appear to be barely learning anything at all in them.
I do think teaching people the basics should be done in a more student-friendly way, and our monopoly schools don’t encourage this. For instance, in high school I had to read books I found very boring and write essays on them I knew nobody but the teacher would want to read. And quite honestly even the teacher would rather be doing something else! Why not encourage students to pick their own books and subjects, and write about things that interest them?
Perhaps with a large number of private alternatives, more engaging curricula could be created. We certainly won’t know unless we try!
D
This is one of the most insightful replies so I’d like to reply directly to this comment.
“The biggest problem with your thinking is that there are some subjects that are hard, and boring, but very important to learn. For instance, you could not have written this essay without a good understanding of English grammar, but you were probably bored half to death studying it.”
You are correct. Although, in trying to point out a flaw in my logic, one of your own appeared. School did not make me a good writer. I am a B student in English. Writing is simply something that comes naturally to me. I think the best possible way I could put this is something Rush Limbaugh said once: “School does not equal education. Learning equals education.” Over time I naturally developed good writing skills (I *learned*) because I read a lot, I thought a lot, and I wrote a lot. No one needed to force me to read any books, I bought them all on my own. Plus, I never read any books that I felt wasted my time. Here’s the truth: I would not be as good a writer today as I am if some of those books I chose to buy were instead something someone else forced me to read. It’s a concept few people think about but is actually very important: Forcing a collectivized curriculum stunts growth in areas where people could actually grow in significant importance.
“Why not encourage students to pick their own books and subjects, and write about things that interest them?”
Well of course. This would be one effect of free enterprise in the education system.
I don’t think the concept of how school actually stunts education has been adequately explained yet, and it is something very important to keep in mind, so I’ll put it this way. I think the greatest possible demonstration of the failure of “school” to equal “education” has come in the second-language curriculum. Literally no one now speaks a second language because they sat through Spanish class in high school. I’ve never even heard of someone who has. If you told people my age that someone they know now speaks Spanish because they sat through Spanish III, they’d probably give you a look and laugh at you. That’s how unserious it is. Are Spanish teachers just bad? Well, no. They’re just doing their job. This situation is simply the natural consequence of forcing children to learn something they have no interest in and they don’t feel serves their needs. The ones at fault are the politicians who have forced children to waste their lives devoting their time to unnecessary things like this.
Amen! The CFR brainwashed really believe the fallacy of Universal Education. Such an idea is silly, because 25% of our population is not smart enough to profit from an education. There goes the Universal notion. Deduct, please, the insane, criminal, emotionally disturbed and amoral, and probably another 40 or 50% should not be educated. In any event, ultimately, it is the family’s responsibility to educate their children, NOT that of the State. It is not wise for parents to expose their children to 5 or 6 hours per day schooling by amoral ignorami preachuing revisionist history and satanic values.
It’s a new year, and for the first time ever, I partially agree with this Stalin-lover about something.
Yes students in prior to college (and to some extent high-school) should not have much of a say-so about what they study. They should be taught to read, write, basic math, history, geography, etc.
The way to do it when the archaic and increasingly dangerous public schools are abolished is, get ready for this one dwight, through government regulations. Yes, much as I hate to say it, there is a place for certain government regulations. Probably about 1/1000th of what we have today though.
No, the parents would decide. They are the ones who would be paying the tuition, right?
Dwight, who would you prefer deciding what is best for your own children –yourself or the National Education Association?
If I know and care enough, I can take an active role to initiate or respond.
I suppose that we could save a lot of money by letting millions of kids not go to school because they don’t feel like it and their parents don’t care. Instead we spend billions on these kids and they tend to pull our average scores down. But if (even) Art Chance and can articulate why we need to have a society which responds to the needs of every family, even if many don’t know some of the things they need, I would be an idiot to argue otherwise.
Shockingly, Art, Proreason, and I can apparently agree that some sort of actual society is necessary and appropriate.
Public education is way too expensive and wasteful. Privatizing it will lower costs and increase quality. The money saved will go back into the economy and create greater prosperity. People need education, but they also need a vibrant economy.
College should also be completely privatized. Colleges should act like businesses and expand to meet demand, and compete with each other. This will keep costs down and increase quality. Medical schools especially. We have a critical medical school and doctor shortage. Why? because medical schools/colleges are run by academics, not businessmen. They don’t expand enrollment, they just raise tuition and turn away more and more applicants every year.
I think testing is the weak point we can target. Make testing/evaluation (for papers/projects) private and independent of the public school. I also think students should be able to take tests when it is convenient for them, outside of school hours at testing centers. And also I think they should be allowed to take tests as many times as they want (with different questions each time) costing money each time.
Students already utilize private resources to study for the SAT and ACT. If testing is further privatized, then they will seek out/create more preparatory services for these tests, and eventually the people will no longer see the value in maintaining public education.
We have very few doctors b/c state medical associations do not allow the opening of new medical schools. Our city has been fighting for at least a quarter of a century- maybe more- to locate a medical school next to our state undergraduate school.
Hillary Clinton arranged for New York to receive $400 million ( the multiple might be off- $40?million) to NOT educate doctors. This government money (read, your tax dollars at work against you) was to offset the amount that the new doctors would have paid in taxes. So- no new doctors. Less competition for older doctors. Smaller pipeline of doctors in the future. For that matter, fewer bright kids dreaming of attending med school.
Med school ought not be simply government- controlled. Our government is currently pro- abortion, and lousy with utilitarian bioethicisists, like Dr Berwick, who thinks we ought to ration care for elderly people. A pro-life, deeply religious person (hello- the founders of hospitals throughout history are nearly uniformly deeply pro-life, religious Christians and Jews) would have to perform procedures deeply at odds with their moral beliefs. Also, these practices are usually against human life. Run this way- utilitarian, and a-moral- hospitals lose their way. The people they were founded to serve try to avoid them as best possible, as the killing grounds that they are.
The head of Romanian healthcare quit, and b/c it was a gov’t-run system- his medically gifted son and daughter were denied spots at the medical school. How is this good? If it were a more open market- they could have gone to a different med school, and then gone on with their lives.
I live in Texas. We have doctors who serve mostly third-world patients. They studied in Guadalajara, and in the Caribbean. We can joke about third-world med schools, but some of these guys study there so they can speak the native language, so they aren’t in debt when they graduate, and then they can go on missions, b/c their house payment and school loans aren’t eating up 20 months of the year’s income.
We have the same number of medical doctors practicing in this country right now, as during the Great Depression, when there were, what, half as many people around. Right now, for that scar tissue of protectionism, people are working around it by seeing nurse practitioners, physician’s assistants, EMTs, or even pharmacists at drugstores. Homeopaths haven’t been jeered out of the building, nor have Doctors of Osteopathy.
One aspect not mentioned is the seemingly inverse correlation between money amd educational success. Year in and year out the worst preforming public schools are those which spend the most money per pupil, while at the same time states that spend the least rank at the top.
How many times has the union mantra for improving educational performance been parroted by politicians and the media that it has just become accepted as truth. The answers we are told is spend more money, smaller class size, and higher teacher salaries to attract better teachers. however simply spending more money usually translates into ever higher administrative costs with a veritable plethora of politically correct courses with minimal benefit to the student. Smaller class size translates into more dues paying union members with higher salaries equaling higher union dues. As to attracting better teachers why don’t we start by getting rid of the under preforming teachers to make room for these better ones, of course the union wont let schools get rid of bad teachers and seniority rules mean competency can no b considered when it comes to teacher retention.
You are absolutely right. When I wrote the article, though, I did not believe mentioning that (very true) statistic was important to the central premise, that privatization is the only way to ensure service of the consumer.
It is simply a myth that you cannot dismiss an underperforming or misbehaving teacher or any other public employee. Any public employee has express terms and conditions of employment in law, regulation, contract, or a combination thereof. Consequently, the employer has to adhere to those conditions in order to dismiss a public employee, but they certainly can be and in some jurisdictions often are. Unionized teachers are a little harder because the are often subject to teacher tenure statutes as well as the labor agreement, so the dismissed or disciplined employee gets two bites at the apple; grievance arbitration and administrative appeal with court review. It’s harder but far from impossible. What teachers don’t have that allows so much poor performance to go uncorrected is supervision. Teachers serve a two or three year probationary period before they are offered tenure, or permanent status. Tenure might have had some purpose to protect teachers from bands of peasants with pitchforks but in today’s world of explicit labor law, tenure is merely a throwback. In any event, the probationary period is mostly a trial of whether the prospective teacher “fits in” to the faculty lounge culture. Even in these first two or three years there is very little observation and evaluation by lead teachers or principals/administrators. Once a teacher is tenured, there is at most a few visits a year by a supervisor to that teacher’s classroom. The typical production level employee in a state or local government is under constant direct supervision. If there is not observation and critical evaluation, there really is no data upon which to base a disciplinary action and no likelihood of sustaining discipline without such data. This structural problem is compounded by the fact that the National Extortion Association OWNS practically every school board in the Country and when the NEA owns the Board, the NEA gets to vett principals and other supervisory employees. If a principal tries to discipline a teacher, they get a “friendly” visit from the union rep who askes the principal if there is a problem with him/her or is there a problem with the school board. It is the rarest principal or administrator who’ll brave those threats.
Yeah, cause everyone can see that corporations want what is good for humanity. Not profits, pollution, divide & conquer hate based media. Yeah gotta luv them corpos looking out for the average / poor guy and not their billionaire owners and their bought and paid for U$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$A government.
If evil corporations own the Government……who is supposed to run the schools?
HALLIBURTON!!!
When the public shools were unionized, they stopped benefiting their clients (the students)and they started to benefit their unions and politicans. So the quest is for anendless supply of money to fund high salaries and extravagant benefits. Then the unions use their dues money to elect politicans to keep the scheme going. We see this being played out in Wisconsin. Scott Walker dared to take on this system, and he is reaping the wrath of the Marxists, communists, union, and elites.
The only way to reform our schools is for parents to demand they be reformed or demand vouchers. As long as parents keep electing the same politicans, they will keep getting the same lousy schools.
How about more parents sacrifice the extra car, the extra vacation, the extra night out to the movies, the extra night out for dinner and actually home school?
Why put your children in the hands of strangers if you are perfectly capable of transferring your own knowledge to your child? It’s not as daunting a task as some people believe but it does take making some sacrifices.
Just a thought.
My wife and I homeschool our six children…best decision we ever made.
If anyone even thinks of doing it, don’t hesitate. You and your children will never, ever regret it.
Using “government is the problem” for everything to advocate privatization is just as wrong as saying “government is the solution” for everything to advocate nationalization.
Both are wrong.
For some things government is the problem and privatization is the solution.
For some things government is the solution and privatization is the problem.
For pretty much everything monopoly is the problem.
The reason we should have public education is what Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations; simply that educated people are better suited for the jobs a technologically advancing society creates, enabling greater creation of wealth, and all the consequences that go with that.
For the most part this equals literacy, speaking, mathematics, and civics. (And not theoretical civics, but functional, what the laws of the community actually are, civics.)
Where individuals can afford this they must be free to secure it for themselves.
Where individuals cannot afford this there is a vested social interest in providing it as a public service.
The primary problems have arisen from the dual corruption of abandoning the basics for the various bizarre theories of people who hated having to learn in the first place, along with the control theories of social and political “reformers”, along with establishing monopoly control throughout the entire structure.
Return to the basics and eliminate the monopolies and both the private and public education systems will function perfectly well to achieve a useful end.
“Government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem. ”
This is a great article, and the money quote is the most important thing that conservatives need to make clear. It’s more important than economics and foreign affairs (but I wouldn’t suggest that it should be the only thing discussed, because people relate more easily to the economy and international conflicts).
NOTHING the government does is better than free enterprise. Therefore the only things government should do are things for which the justification is plainly obvious and hardly subject to debate. National security and public safety are the only obvious ones, although it is possible to make a case for certain regulations.
Any government’s basic interests are growth of government, defense of the status quo, and propaganda to convice the people that the government is good. None of those interests are aligned with the interests of the people who are governed.
The evidence is abundant, but you don’t even need to have evidence to prove it. Everybody knows that self-interest is the most powerful motivator in the world. That’s why competition is the force that, once unleashed after the Renaissance and specifically after the American Revolution, revolutionized lifestyles. 220 years after the first governmnt was established based on freedom of action, lifestyles have improved by orders of magnitude. Prior to that, lifestyles hadn’t significantly changed in millenia. So why on earth would we want ANY function to be performed by government, the one human entity that never has any competition? When you think about it as a logic problem, allowing government to control anything is a prescription for certain failure.
I wish people would stop misquoting Reagan.
What he really said (check it out) was:
“In the present crisis, government is not the solution….”
Reagan never said that government is never the solution. He was specifically referring to the crisis that he walked into when he was elected.
Tell me: Do you really think that private enterprise would do a better job doing scientific research in physics, astronomy, public health? Would you privatize the Centers for Disease Control? How about the National Science Foundation?
We conservatives used to distinguish ourselves from libertarians. It now appears that too many conservatives have bought into Ayn Rand’s claptrap–decades after William F. Buckley expelled her from the conservative movement.
Calm down. It’s the subtitle on the article.
And besides, who cares whether RR said it or not. It’s true. I’m not locked into what RR said and neither should you be.
And yes, private industry would do better scientific research. There isn’t anything private industry can’t do better than government.
Plot the curve of lifestyle improvements from 1776 until about 1930 and then thereafter. Government makes things worse, just about every time.
And don’t come back with telecommunications either. When Ma Bell was a government created monopoly, telecom improved at a snail’s pace. There were effectively no improvement from 1920 to 1980. Then the industry was DEREGULATED, and presto, a miracle happened and a few decades later, Dick Tracy’s wildest fantasy was exceeded.
You have to distinguish between basic and applied research. Endowments can certainly fund some basic research, but companies mostly fund research that they can profit from in the foreseeable future.
How bad is your service if around one million customers would rather not use your product even though it’s free and the alernative is hundreds or thousands of dollars a year?
Which country consistently scores in the top one or two in educational attainment? Finland
And which country has NO private schools? Yup. Finland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm
(Just another few words from the reality based community.
And now — back to your regular programming…)
Well, let’s norm US academic achievement for whites of northern European ancestry only and compare US scores to other nations. We can do that when we compare the various US states as well. No other Country has taken on the task of educating such a polyglot population – nor failed so spectacularly since the ’60s when we began to pretend that people of all backgrounds would achieve at the same level if given the same resources.
Oh, yes – I meant to include this link.
http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/
(Okay – back to your regular programming now..)
Finnish children evidently are doing very well in their schools organized by their government. That’s certainly more than what can be said about the American model. But you’re forgetting one very basic thing.
The Finnish model, whatever its merits, rests on a government-organized system. It is simply not obedient to the consumer. If it were, the schools would all operate based on certain things the consumer—the student and their parents—wants out of the system. It would be free enterprise. It doesn’t matter how well children do in a government system that is the issue. The fact that it is a government system is the issue. Finnish children could be making 100s (or whatever their highest grade measure is) on every single test and assignment and they would still be living in a bad system. Why? Because it does not respond to the actual needs and desires of the consumer. The lowest common denominator is the ultimate beneficiary of capitalist progress. You would rather the consumer be forced to pay for studies that he is not interested in learning and has decided is not a direction in which he wants his life to go. You do NOT have the right to tell him otherwise.
“You would rather the consumer be forced to pay for studies that he is not interested in learning and has decided is not a direction in which he wants his life to go. You do NOT have the right to tell him otherwise.”
Yes, I damn well do have a right to tell him that he will know certain things and behave in certain ways as a member of the society in which I, too, must live. If all you libertarians lived in a cabin in the woods, grew or killed all your own food, and never came out to have any contact with other human beings, I could understand how divorced from reality you are.
I grew up in the rural South in the ’50s and ’60s. For most of us the 1950s were distinguished from the 1850s by gasoline and electricity and not much of either of those. A significant percentage of the kids I went to school with had illiterate grandparents, quite a few even had illiterate parents, only a minority had parents who’d graduated from high school, and college was restricted to the very few with hereditary wealth. Your farm animals weren’t safe with a lot of those kids and their parents weren’t likely to do anything to change that. But, they were compelled to send them to the public school where there were desks in rows, kids in them, and you would behave as directed and speak standard English instead of illiterate redneck patois. They started the school day with the Pledge and then had to face the teacher and the chart on the wall where they had to reveal whether they’d brushed their teeth, washed their hands, or had a bath. The teacher sat at the lunchroom table and you were pressured to actually eat that food you’d never heard of, because Southern country food is a lot of things but healthy isn’t one of them. You learned to read, write, and speak standard English. Educated Southerners of that day had to be tri-lingual: church, school, and courthouse formal English, Southern informal patois, and what we now call ebonics since we lived closely with Blacks. Along the way, we learned what an American was and how to behave like an American. If you don’t believe that we as a society have a right to insist upon that, what the Hell are you doing here?
In a capitalistic society you may do what you like with your life as long as you do not hurt or steal from anyone else; you are free to make your own decisions but not to infringe upon other people’s lives, liberty, or property. Your retort was meant to convey that public schooling had a civilizing effect on those atrocious “rednecks” your family lived around. I wonder how civilizing a little capitalism would’ve been? I would imagine being a rural farmer doesn’t pay much. As the children grew to understand the meaning of money, to feed themselves and their family and to afford desirables, they would become naturally inclined to want more. How do you get more money? You have to earn it; you have to work for it. I doubt their employers would’ve tolerated uncleanliness, indolence, or general bad behavior you remind us comes along with “rednecks”. They would either shape up and become functioning members of society, or fail to learn from their mistakes and be fired and replaced with someone more civilized and more suited to serve The Consumer. I want people to lift themselves up and change themselves for the better, and thus better their community and their society. You want to force people to conform to your arbitrary vision of civilization at the point of a gun—the power of Government.
“You want to force people to conform to your arbitrary vision of civilization at the point of a gun—the power of Government.”
This strikes me as just a tad hyperbolic. It’s no mystery to most anyone that not all parents know how to properly raise a child. Many don’t understand the importance of learning the pertinent lessons of history as a means to avoid repeating the mistakes of history. The notion that children need proper guidance & exposure to a broad, well-rounded education is a reasonable one to say the very least. It’s just a matter of deciding just who should sit in judgement as to the how, what & why. Perhaps they should start with the communities in which the children live.
It doesn’t work that way, fool. Money follows resources and opportunity. A land populated by degenerates or barbarians offers only the opportunity to exploit resources. See, e.g., mercantile colonialism in the 15th – 17th Centuries. Only when a populace can offer added value can that populace be free when it is in competition with other similarly advanced societies.
Anyway, this is a bother; you can always tell a libertarian, but you can’t tell them much. Go live in a cabin in the woods and leave the rest of us alone.
….You’re not really positing a defense of colonialism, a practice that bankrupted European governments, at times enshrined slavery, and resulted in hundreds of unnecessary violent conflicts that ended in independence movements all over Africa getting rid of the Europeans, the result being their replacement by murderous socialist dictators? And forget Africa, do I even have to remind you that *we* rebelled from a colonialist power?
This entire argument revolves around your desire to use force, the power of the government, to make other people conform to your arbitrary opinions of what makes society good.
“I damn well do have a right to tell him that he will know certain things and behave in certain ways.”
Really? You do? Where does this “right” come from? Did God give it to you? Did he give it to you along with your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness? Funny, I don’t remember Jefferson adding a fourth right, “telling other people what to do because smart people like you think it’s better for them”, but I guess I just got a bad version of the text or something.
“You want to force people to conform to your arbitrary vision of civilization at the point of a gun—the power of Government.”
This needs further discussion as it is not the emotionally evocative proposition that you posit. See, there’s this thing called the consent of the governed. My version of a “libertarian” view is that if the majority of the governed consent to something I don’t like, I pack up my stuff and get the Hell out.
Here we have a constitutional republic which prohibits the governed from consenting to some things. OK, the governed consented to that limitation on their personal sovereignty. If you live totally by yourself and totally from your own means – hope you’re a good warrior, farmer, hunter, and fisher – you’re pretty much a personal sovereign. But if you need anybody for anything, you are no longer sovereign. That seems to be the concept that libertarians can’t get.
Let’s stop with the word games. It’s not about being a “libertarian” or a “conservative”. It’s not about some idiotic, completely conjured argument about being “sovereign”. It’s about whether you have a right to your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness or whether some of that needs to be taken away to satisfy the majority’s arbitrary opinions of how they think the minority should live.
Alcohol is bad, it destroys families, it destroys lives, let’s ban it! How did that work out? Using the powers of government to enforce a ban on behavior, or compel a behavior, can only end in horrible wrongs. Obama wants to force you to pay for your neighbor’s healthcare. He wants to force you to BUY health insurance, and not from those evil private insurance companies, either. Politicians want to force you to pay for your neighbor’s children’s education. They want to force you to USE their public schools and your children to comply with what the government decides is important to force them to learn. How is this any different?
It’s not a word game, it is a question of what and how society has to say about the members of that society. That said, I’m going to settle into my couch and watch the Cowboys and Giants, pop open that bottle of KJ Private Reserve Chardonnay, and not think about this stuff for awhile. To borrow a line from Scarlett, I’ll think about that tomorrow.
Happy New Year!
Oh, gosh, my dad talks about that. He was there, too. Wow. I just thought he was weird, going on about all that. I thought he was in some peculiar school system. I had no idea.
I do hope you keep posting.
The first grade teacher here does stuff like that, right now. Pledge, keeping track of baths, and brushing teeth, and so on. But we’re in a school full of kids that head back to Mexico every three-day weekend.
Done properly, a free public education is a rising tide that raises all boats. That said, despite their best efforts, my Southern white trash teeth are a mess and I have a Ferrari in my mouth. Some things take a few generations.
This probably comes across as a really dumb question but nonetheless I am compelled to ask it (as IMWTK, you know). If our country’s public-ed system was completely replaced by the private sector, is it safe to assume that vouchers are going to cover the cost of those who cannot afford to pay the tuition costs of having their children educated. Pardon me if I failed to see from the article just how this dilemma would be addressed.
sinz54 states above: “We conservatives used to distinguish ourselves from libertarians. It now appears that too many conservatives have bought into Ayn Rand’s claptrap–decades after William F. Buckley expelled her from the conservative movement.”
Amen brother. There are a number of things over which gov’t should oversee, education of our children among these. But abolish the NEA, as the education of children is not (& never has been) its focus.
Having access to a well-rounded education (including subjects that might not be of universal interest) serves to the betterment of all of us. Knowledge is power, as they say. Generally speaking, people who have had a well-rounded education are better prepared to deal with life’s hardships. These also tend to be more reasonably-thinking, prudent people who can lead more prosperous, independent lives. JMO. Of course this is not something the small c’s want. This is huge.
I welcome all questions. The answer to this one is not too complicated but it is not simple either. The fact is there is no real single answer to the question of what to do about those who cannot afford even the massively reduced prices that would exist in a free market in education. When people use the word “education”, what usually comes to mind is the classic classroom model of one teacher instructing many students. Since the public school monopoly has been in existence, this has not changed very much at all. If there were ever a free market in schools, the method of education would also change to benefit the needs of the consumer. Think about what happens when a child in a family is not doing well in a certain class. Sometimes, the parents find their child a tutor, who is employed to be the child’s personal helper in learning the topic. I think we’d be seeing a lot more of that. It’s easy, it’s helpful, and there’s not very many complications. I also am personally of the opinion that the internet has made the classroom model obsolete. Think about it; people for thousands of years have sat in classrooms with people telling them pieces of information for hours on end. We now have within seconds the ability to know a certain piece of information with the click of a few buttons. There is no real painful shortage of internet access in America, so there is no real reason why this couldn’t also be a method of study. We as a society have completely ruled out what used to be a great way to keep up in studies for poor people—self-education. President Lincoln was self taught. Now if anybody gets up on the stage at the Republican debates and they never went to college or never went to high school, they would be laughed off of the stage. It’s a shame, I think. Let’s let people make their own decisions and run their own lives again. That’s certainly not what’s happening now.
There can be no doubt at all that the internet has made a huge difference, particularly with regard to college courses. Just a couple years ago, I took college algebra, barely squeaking by with my dismal math skills, as all but one test were taken in class with no open book. Just last semester, son took same said college algebra course (his math skills suck as badly as mine do) in which he was able to pull out a B. Why? Because all tests were given online, open book, of course. Wonder what most educators would think of that?
As for sitting in a classroom with other students versus sitting at home to learn a course? Open book versus closed for tests? Hmmmmmmmm.
Another thing that comes to mind with regard to in-classroom learning; it’s just not the course content the students are learning, they are also learning self discipline & how to get along with other people. Sports activities also serve as valuable learning tools for developing self discipline, merits of competition, getting along with others, sharing, etc. I don’t think it’s possible to underrate the value of these things as necessary building blocks for assembling a successful life as an adult.
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underrateoverrate…Self-education is a lovely concept.
However, I’ve known a number of poorly-educated people who are ‘self-educated’, and the problem isn’t their intelligence, it’s that they have never been taught to analyze the information they are given.
Education isn’t a matter of mere information. It’s a way of assessing information and integrating it.
Curiously enough, the three things that teach how to learn can be reduced to the bugaboo of educrats: rote learning. Reading, writing, math. Music teaches analysis, and it can be achieved through choir, a fairly simple and cheap group activity. All can be achieved in a not-very-large classroom space that is sponsored and supervised by a very local school board, and – at least for the first eight grades – works out favorably for the community and children.
Surely, all this soaring argument and wild-eyed optimism are just a little ahead of reality?
Well, Brother Bobbcat, the NEA is a private association and can’t be abolished. You could free the school children of America from its tentacles, but only if you abolish the educational bureaucracies which run the public schools.
But, you “conservatives” are way, way too timid to do something so radical (and effective) as getting rid of our all-American socialized, state-controlled education system. You prefer just to tinker with it; somehow, hoping that the leftist bureaucrats left in place to implement your reforms will produce the results you intend. How’s that been working out for you in the last half-century?
Although, I’m an Objectivist (a Randian) and not a conservative, I’m surprised to see that all of the home-schooling conservatives seem not to be welcome among you Buckley-approved conservatives. I don’t thing they are too enamored with the idea of the government “overseeing” the education of their children.
I think we’ve had enough of the Buckleyite, George W. Bush “compassionate conservatism” (….such as we had the last time Republicans controlled Congress and the White House); and that we now, in our state of near-collapse, need much more radical solutions to our problems.
Regarding our current, unsatisfactory school systems.there is plenty of blame to be shared. There are advocacy groups for just about every minority and disease (real or imagined). Not to be forgotten are the congressmen/women who legislated that children must be taught in the ‘least restrictive environment’ There are the ‘teachers’ colleges or ‘schools of education’ manned by many who never taught or did so briefly some time in the past. There are the state boards of education which often require ridiculous or redundant courses before they will allow an individual to teach. There are many parents who make demands and/or threaten expensive lawsuits…….then, of course, there are the infamous teacher unions.
I worked as a teacher for 26 years and have seen all of the above in action. Anyone or group attempting to privatize the schools should be prepared for major and expensive battles.
I would – cautiously – advocate returning control of the elementary and middle school to the local community, after unions have been kicked out.
Does anyone really believe that it’s not a community’s interest to insist that all the kids are able to read, write and do basic math? Because if I have to refigure the bill every time I go out to dinner, or get my nails done or whatever, it’s pretty tedious for me, and I’d rather that the clerks and waiters didn’t tremble at the sight of me, either.
As to a “free market” solution – well, presently, what we’re seeing is parents doing pretty much everything but selling their kidneys to get their kids out of the public schools, especially in urban areas, so we could argue that the market is already in operation, and public schools are something resembling zoos or penitentiaries.
Vouchers…allowing private schools…its still government control, infecting American lives. What needs to have is not just the elimination of public unions, but private as well. You allow private schools indoctrinating your kids, its pretty much the same as with the public school, only the RINO’s are claiming its better for you.
Close all schools. Everything your child needs to live is found within the bible. No person has the right to teach your kids.
It horrifies me to read Americans gleefully handing over their Christ given responsibilities.
Thanks, troll.
Is that effective? When facing a truth you don’t agree with, just labeling someone and does that silence them? You should work for the White House. You already have the socialism down. Let’s get all the kids together and have the “experts” tell us how to raise our kids. Why that sounds just grand. You should contact Berry for a job.
Next you’ll be calling me a fascist for not voting for Oven Mitts…
…now that I know you were serious I don’t know whether to be shocked or start cracking up.
Also, I hate Romney. Nice try.
I’m aware of all the problems with public education and my family typically participates in other options but I don’t think you’re addressing the real problem, bad parents. Bad might actually be too weak to describe them.
“How is this any different?”
If one were to take your brand of logic to it’s ultimate conclusion, we’d be asking questions like “Why must we be asked to fund infrastructural projects like roads & highways?” “Must we fund the military, our local & state law enforcement agencies, the FBI, CIA?”
There are services out there from which we benefit that serve to the betterment of society in general: The things I mention above along with education. Of course there should be a balance of power with regard to public education, IMO. It would be nice to see people in charge who have the students’ best interests at heart.
Bottom line though, there are legitimate functions for gov’t.
You are correct. I agree with Professor Ludwig von Mises that we need a government as a society, and I believe that the purpose of that government is to protect us from the Hitlers and the Lenins and the Maos of society. We have a military to protect us from foreign threats, an FBI to take charge of domestic law enforcement, CIA for intelligence and foreign operations, etc. All of these are consistent with the idea of a government that exists to protect us from each other. But we don’t need a government to protect us from ourselves, because that means then that society will embark on arbitrary and disastrous missions to make society better through the use of force. Prohibition of alcohol, forced segregation, forcing people to buy health insurance, etc., all efforts to use the government and its power to magically improve the world, all it takes is guns, handcuffs, and the erosion of freedom. Of course, all of these missions were failures and will fail in the future as governments continue using power irresponsibly. People just ought to be able to make their own decisions again. That’s the bottom line.
Do you see a pathway to privatization?
No Child Left Behind was a huge march to nationalization of K-12 education, Race to the Top took it another step forward to federal control when states had to “volunteer” to accept national standards in order to win RTTT grant money? Congress is trying to “fix” NCLB with even more Federal control. Secretary Duncan has too much power already. I’m not worried about my children’s education since I am heavily involved and monitor assignments, textbooks, etc. but there is so much taking place in schools that we don’t know about. As a citizen I worry about all children, they need to learn critical thinking, not one ideology over another. Just today, I read a piece by Christian Adams at big government (yes, we have seen his articles here too), 3rd graders in VA are being taught a song of the Occupy Movement…3rd graders, really? I hope parents are speaking out and taking action.
Woodbrook Elementary School in Charlottesville, Virginia, provides the latest example of a government school imposing left wing ideology, this time with the Marxist rhetoric of the Occupy movement.
Woodbrook Elementary, (principal Lisa Molinaro), allowed leftist activists into the school to train third graders in writing songs which were performed at an assembly organized by an outside group – Kid Pan Alley – in October of this year. The tune the 3rd graders “wrote” and performed could have come from the soundtrack at Zuccotti park, minus the drug overdoses and rapes.
Some people have it all,
but they don’t think that they have enough
They want more money
A faster ride
They’re not content
Never satisfied
Yes- they are the 1 percent
I used to be one of the 1 percent
I worked all the time
Never saw my family
Couldn’t make life rhyme
Then the bubble burst
It really, really hurt
I lost my money
Lost my pride
Lost my home
Now I’m part of the 99
I used to be sad now I’m satisfied
Cause I really have enough
Though I lost my yacht and plane
Didn’t need that extra stuff
Could have been much worse
You don’t need to be first
Cause I’ve got my friends
Here by my side
Don’t need it all
I’m happy to be part of the 99.
Remember, these are third graders. The simplistic left wing economic nonsense of this ditty boggles the mind. But to an impressionistic third grader, it plants poisonous seeds at odds with long egalitarian American traditions that disdain class hatred. It mocks American traditions of industry, hard work and accomplishment. It teaches the young to distrust and dislike, which of course is a tactic employed by thug cultures and governments throughout history.
Kid Pan Alley’s infiltration into government schools goes well beyond Woodbrook Elementary in Charlottesville. They have a presence in Payne Elementary in Lynchburg (VA), Union Elementary in Montpelier (VT), Campbell Court Elementary in Martinsville (VA), Burnley Elementary in Charlottesville (VA), Thompson Elementary in Marshall (VA), Pierce Elementary in Remington (VA), Red Hill Elementary in Virginia, Brownsville Elementary in Crozet (VA), and many many more.
Consider the results of Kid Pan Alley’s residency inside Parker Elementary Waimea, Hawaii. They spent a week inside the school writing the song “Walk to Japan” with an apocalyptic environmental message. “Reduce, reuse and recycle, maybe it’s time to face what we messed up, cause if we don’t save the ocean, we’ll have to walk to Japan.”
When you consider the leftist activists who introduced this garbage into Woodbrook Elementary, the agenda is even more clear. Kid Pan Alley receives money from the William and Mary Greve Foundation.
The Greve Foundation funds many other causes at odds with American traditions, including the American Society for Muslim Advancement, which is run by a 9-11 conspiracy theorist. The Greve Foundation is headed by John Kiser, III, author of Communist Entrepreneurs : Unknown Innovators in the Global Economy. (From a review: “the book is of value in confronting tired stereotypes about the inherent inferiority of technology under Communism.”) Kiser is from Sperryville, Virginia, which might explain why so many Virginia elementary schools.
You can watch Kid Pan Alley’s video “If I Change One Thing” here for another whiff of Occupy. The kids sing the answer: “If I could change one thing, I’d change all the rules. Freedom would be free. I’d be my own boss no matter what the cost.” Sort of like a mob.
The nonsense continues in the song: “What if kids could vote, its love that sets us free, when everyone has what they needed. There would be no more war. Yeah, that’s what kids are for.”
Kid Pan Alley is also skilled at messaging in subtle ways. It’s not often you find such veiled disdain for this group of heroes. From Kid Pan Alley’s Changing the History of the World: “Each generation adds to the history of the world, each generation does it’s part, it doesn’t have to be winning World War II.” Why choose the Greatest Generation as a contrast? Was it because the contrast between liberty and tyranny was so stark then, so clear to most Americans in that age? Was it because moral relativism had few adherents among those who won World War II?
I’ve just scratched the surface of Kid Pan Alley in this article. There is no telling what other subtle and obvious leftist messages are bring brought into government schools by Kid Pan Alley’s musical projects. Does Kid Pan Alley receive any taxpayer money? If so from whom, and how much? What bureaucrats are making the decisions to fund this presence in schools throughout the country? What are the backgrounds of the board members? Perhaps the readers of BigGovernment can explore further themselves and report.”
http://biggovernment.com/jcadams/2012/01/01/occupy-movement-comes-to-elementary-schools/
Not to worry: According to one of my former students, “when we were in Elementary school we all wanted to save the whales, but by the time we were in high school, all we cared about was ourselves.” There is hope for the Republic yet, eh?
i say we all vote for obama again.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/index.htm
An intresting book on education history by someone who has done his research.
There is a lot more social engineering involved than you may imagine.
As a homeschool parent, and one who successfully navigated the world of academia, I am in full agreement about privatizing schools. However, articles such as this one are so ridiculous, w/ their nonsenical claims and their idealization of a free-market utopia, that they do far more harm than good. The average person on the street, the one who needs to be persuaded that schools need revolutionary change, can sense the absurdity of articles like this and they stiffen their resolve not to go with a new plan b/c of the deceit being propagated.
To wit, “Thus, there is no reason that children must particularly be familiar with a higher understanding of the English language, algebraic expressions, scientific principles, and historical events, among other subjects that agents of government have arbitrarily deemed “core subjects.” (One might wonder whatever happened to “budgeting.”)
Hundreds of millions of Americans get by every day without profound proficiency in every one of these areas”
That’s utter nonsense. As there are only 300M residents in the US, it’s already an obvious exaggeration that hundereds of millions go by without profound proficiency in these areas. Most people can do basic algebra, and most people use it frequently, to the point where they don’t even recognize it’s algebra anymore.
And yes we need to agree on the English language, lest I go to the store and ask for a loaf of bread and be handed a can of paint. Or I purchase a pound of hamburger and be given an ounce worth.
And the corruption of history has been used repeatedly by tyrants, both in the US and abroad.
“What a working adult knows or ought to know is no business of his countrymen.”
Nonsense, a poorly trained physician or pharmacist can kill you. And even a anarcho-capitalist would agree that your employer has the right to certain expectations of what your knowledge base is.
The idealized notion that a true free market needs no regulations is absurd. The reason that there are so many food regulations is that somewhere at sometime a con-man decided to sell rotten mutton and call it steak. And while he may lose customers eventually, it’s far more straightforward, and cheaper, to insist on definitions up front (yes, this can be taken too far). And while calling an old TV antenna a satellite dish, like the SNL sketch “Sabra Price is Right,” may be easy to rectify, a prescription filled incorrectly may not have such a simple remedy. And one bout of headlice will probably convince you that maybe sanitary regulations for barbers isn’t so intrusive.
This entire comment is nothing but a personification of the anti-capitalistic mentality. “People are too evil and too stupid for us to simply trust them to trade with each other and make society better, we need more politicians to tell people what to do!”
You don’t understand that the entire aim of business is to ensure long term profit. The incentive isn’t even there. People who want to make a good living out of it, the vast majority of providers, know that they have to actually serve people’s interests, and do it in a way that keeps their business from other providers doing the same thing. People can’t simply go on a scamming spree without consequences, they will be outed, whether it is by their competitors or by the consumer who decides that his service is inferior to more quality and more honest providers. The Enrons and WorldComms of society will go under and be replaced by enterprises that actually serve the consumer. That is what happens under capitalism. You entire reply is just the age-old cry of “There would be no problems if the world was just run MY way!” that we hear so often from men of the Left.
And in the mean time, you get to deal with a lot of tainted, corner-cut stuff. Toxic waste disposed of…where-ever. Johnny does not have to go to school today, or ever, if he does not feel like it, and on and on and on. C’mon.
Taint? Taint! Oh, “tainted”.
Wow D-White, for a minute there you seemed to be coming from the “center”, yet again.
It might be best not have a “tainted” Pick It Fence as well. You know, falling off is easier that way.
I will grant you that my diction on that one cut some corners, but otherwise, I have no idea what your point might be. But in the mean time, I have some nice lettuce for you, which might be salmonella-laced, might not be, but we will just let the free market sort that out. Feeling Lucky today?
Gonna flip a coin
I’m a winner either way…
Typical Modern Liberal Bailout mentality. Mr. President will soothe the “Tainted” Pick It Fence But. Either way. No dis to Ms. Mary either.
No, no D-White. That’s Mr. President monopoly lettuce is a sign of being “tainted”. That’s why there are those plastic credit card like things that are now a common as some pigs being more equal than others.
Then again, Mr. President Lettuce might be the stuff you roll up and toke on. You know, he did before, and much like the tweed obtained by sniping stray threads from Faculty Lounge Lizard duds. Of course, one might see that as a metaphor for crushing young, inquiring minds incarcerated in the Young Adult Prison system.
Hmmm… Taint. How can this be done, found? Hey, next time you mount the Pick It Fence But, just miss by a little, going backwards. No, that’s not (another) metaphor for Mr. President’s failures. This is real. This does require you get off the Pick It Fence But, and that should be quite easy, with the number of times you just fall off spontaneously on the Left side.
Careful though, that plate of Dog Hair is waiting for you over there. You know how mean Modern Liberals can be. And to think that they think that you are supposed smile as well, during the re-education expereince. Think!
There is another path to enlightenment for your “tainted” deficit. Ask a fellow travelling Faculty Lounge Lizard. Aren’t they the smartest people in the world? Don’t pick a PC non-male unit. You may wind up being exposed to more than a plate of Dog Hair. Relax, too. The Red Pencil neck will tend to shield you from exposing your possible embarrassment.
Happy (Re)Education.
When the Truth is found
To be lies
We could not do a better thing for the USA than privatize the school system.
For the most part, this article is correct. Education must be free, not in the monetary sense, but in the cultural sense. It certainly must be free of the dictates of government. However, we should not be thinking of it like a business either, so we must get rid of this provider-consumer language. Education is NOT like buying and selling furniture or fish. It should not be thought of like a business. It should be a cooperative cultural venture where parents will be able to choose and support the school and the teachers most in line with what they think is best for their child. Teachers in turn must be free from government coercion as to what to teach or how to teach it. They must also be free of the unions and free from the idea that they are there to teach children how to become cogs in an economic machine. Economics are only one aspect of a fully human life, and all the various aspects must play a part in any education that claims to be healthy and vibrant and in the service of the children that it serves.
How long would a cafe survive with the mindset that half of it’s customers will be charged full price for a meal, but only be served bread and water? That’s the current system we have. Everyone is being charged full price, but by playing the statistics game…. they are allowed to give less than full service to every customer.
One of the key downfalls of our current bureaucratic system is that there is no penalty to the provider of services if they fail to do what they’ve been hired to do. In the current structure, if a Kindergarten teacher only teaches 20 of the 24 students their letters, colors and numbers. They are still paid for failing to teach 4 of those students and are not required to ‘make good’ on that failure. AND…. in the current system, it is the child’s fault for failing to learn. For secondary teachers, there is a great amount of elitist thinking that a certain number of students deserve to fail with no effort made to teach those students. There is no concept that they are hired to teach every student in their classroom, not just the ones that are ideal students.
The kernel of the solution is already there, but not being fully exploited. The primary drainhole of education dollars is the maintenance of huge facilities and non-teaching support personnel – everyone from the janitor to the Superintendents. The key is in removing the bureaucratic frameworks.
Parents are already making choices about how to spend their money on their children’s education and evaluate the results everyday. Millions of parents hire private tutors, music teachers and sign their kids up for private sports teams every year. These choices are made on whether the person providing service is delivering what they promised.
With 4 dyslexic children with extremely high IQ’s, we knew that our public schools were incapable of doing the most basic function of teaching them to read, write and function – therefore, we hired private tutors who specialized in teaching dyslexic kids not only the basic skills needed to survive in school, but how to make the written word work for them and to love learning. If the tutor wasn’t successful, we didn’t continue to use them. Over 18 years, that was over $100,000 from our own pockets to pay for those tutors. Every bit of it was paid for by working extra hours, cutting coupons, living without the extras and stretching every dollar.
We applied the same principal to the teachers who provided private music lessons for our children and the non-school sports teams they participated in. More importantly, was our ability to chose the skill level of the teachers/coaches commiserate with our child’s interest and ability. Two of our children were so passionate about music, that we hired teachers with very high skill levels. Our other 2 children were better served by younger teachers who taught them more about playing for their own enjoyment. Likewise, when it came to sports, one child had Olympic aspirations and we chose a teacher who could prepare her to meet those type of intense demands, while the other kids were better served learning to compete on teams that focused on life time participation.
Schools are not about students and anyone who tells you they are is lying to you. It’s all about the adults who run them and how much they can make while performing the least amount of work.
Schools and teachers in any given class (and tracking is fine by me) generally should aim for the middle, with moderate efforts to stimulate the top and pull along the bottom. What you actually had to pay to get your special needs kids top service in and of itself shows how a school dealing with a thousand students could not (and should not try) to do such things with every student. There is another species of parent who demands every service etc available, all on the general ed. nickel. That has made cost escalate hugely.
Here’s the thing… that $100,000 we spent on private tutors was just to teach our dyslexic children to read, write and think and was on top of the $180,000 in taxes paid to our local school district over the same period of time. AND we spent that money because our school district refused to provide any intervention. (I don’t include private music or sports teams as those were ultimately discretionary choices.)
AND this is so insane, because of every category of learning difference, the research and methods to successfully teach dyslexics is readily available… it’s not a secret and it’s not rocket science. BUT it does require time, patience, persistence and hard work on the part of the teacher as well as the student.
What if, as parents, we had lacked the knowledge or the ability to earn the additional cash to pay for those tutors. By law, we are still required to pay for those schools and teachers and by law our children are required to attend those schools and sit in classes with teachers who have failed to teach them.
(As for the few parents who do garner some services, they account for a tiny pittance of the total budget of a school district. The costs drivers in a school district budget are salaries and benefits for staff, the highest compensated of which do not have contact with students.)
In Massachusetts’ school systems, anyway, and I am sure we are not the only ones, the Special Needs budget is a big chunk, completely disproportionate to the number of children served. In some ways, that is understandable because of the often individual nature of the services required, but it remains a budget-buster.
With four dyslexic childfren albeit with extrenmely high IQs, you could start your own school….or get some genetic counseling.
Galloping Marxism in Our Schools
Karl Heinrich Marx was a brilliant man. The sage co-founder of one of the two principal social scouges of the twentieth century knew the surest path to godless tyranny was centralized control of schools, colleges, and universities.
Marx recognized Communism-Marxism’s critical need to propagandize the young in order to rid them of anti-proletariat ideas inculcated by parents and churches and for public schools to adopt curricula that denies God, morality, traditional family values, the concept of private ownership of property, and to stoke class warfare.
If any of that sounds familiar, it should. America is experiencing Marxism-in-action today as seen not only in tax policies but in the widespread, leftist radicalism on college campuses and public schools becoming hotbeds of social brainwashing to complement the deteriorization of standards and learning.
We are seeing the patently unconstitutional intrusion of the federal government into local education with dictates, mandates, and oversights by the U.S. Department of Education as it rapidly centralizes control of American education.
We are witnessing the leftist National Education Association busily engaged in discouraging parental choice and home-schooling and fully endorsing those federal intrusions while pushing for inclusion and diversity instead of more effective education.
We are burdened with local districts too feckless to denounce governmental encroachments and administrators too imbued with liberal doctrine to resist the leftward lurch toward the Marxist ideals embraced by our president.
To be sure, there were unmistakable signs of controlled centralization- indoctrination long before the election of Barack Hussein Obama.
Since 2009, however, those signs have developed into a full-blown tsunami of Marxist doctrinaires and godless subversives acting under the guise of educators, all of whom were committed adherents to Obama’s twisted Marxist philosophy, many of whom signed on to his carefully-designed cult of personality.
At first, it was comical when schools like one in Hempstead, New York re-named themselves after Obama even before he was elected. Another in Asbury Park, New Jersey did likewise, before it was closed last July.
Throughout the nation, countless schools, localities, school districts, and streets changed names in honor of someone whose primary claim to fame was his (partial) blackness, whose father was a Marxist, and who has governed as if he dreams the collectivist dreams of his father.
Indoctrination of children comes in many colors. One favorite ploy is the use of songs.
A classic was the ditty composed by a black New Jersey teacher in 2009 who forced her class to sing a paean to their new god. Its unmemorable lyrics included, Mmm, mmm, mm!/Barack Hussein Obama/He said that all must lend a hand/To make this country strong again. . .” It gets worse with, ”Mmm, mmm, mm!/ Barack Hussein Obama/Yes!”
The parody is a vast improvement: “Mmm, mmm, mm!/Barack Hussein Obama/He said we must pay the man/To make this country strong again/Taking your money doesn’t matter/’cause we know He can spend it better. . .”
That song is old hat now. Obamamarxists have expanded their musical vistas to incorporate anarchic elements in their efforts to undermine values and seduce children into believing chaos and revolution were superior to order and civilized behavior. . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=12029.)