Education in America: Give us free choice!
By David M. Woods
Published October 10, 2006, 4:50 pm in Ethics, Morality, & Justice, Economic Issues.
One of the most important factors in determining whether any society will be strong and prosperous is how well its citizens are educated. Yet in the U.S., we have turned that all-too-important task over to politicians and bureaucrats. The results are pretty predictable - costs spiraling out of control, kids graduating from high school unable to read and write, American grads falling behind academically compared to much of the world, and many inner-city schools becoming dangerous, run-down, and crime-infested.
Of course, no parent is forced to send their child to the government schools. Indeed, anyone can choose a private school instead. Many families have chosen to home-school their kids; the National Center for Education Statistics reports that, in 2003, over 1.1 million children were educated at home.
So what's the problem? The problem is that, regardless of where your kids go to school, you still are required, by law, to support the government schools via taxes. This includes families who home-school, families that send their kids to private schools (and thus basically pay tuition TWICE), families or singles with no children, empty-nesters who have paid school taxes for their entire lives, anyone trying to pay for college, and the list goes on.
In this great nation of ours founded on the idea of maximum individual freedom and minimal government, this situation must change. We Americans deserve the individual freedom to choose whatever we think is the best way to educate our offspring, and to not be forced to financially support some governmental-run institution that we prefer to have nothing to do with.
Let us examine some of the myths and fallacies used to justify the continued existence of an education system run by the government.
Call it what it is ...
To begin, let's recognize government education for what it really is: Socialism. Throughout history, socialists keep trying to convince us to sacrifice our lives, our property, and money to them so they can produce a utopian society where no one is ever in want of anything. News flash: it didn't work for the Soviet Union, and it won't work for the U.S. either. When government becomes based on the doctrine of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", all you end up doing is punishing success and rewarding failure.
In contrast, the free market rewards those who are productive, efficient, and frugal. Businesses who make a better product at a lower cost are rewarded with more profit. Businesses who cannot make a good product or cannot hold costs down get weeded out. There is no reason to consider education an exception. In fact, because the education of our children is so important is all the more reason why putting government bureaucrats in charge of it is a terrible idea.
If socializing something simply because it's "important" really was truly advantageous, then why stop at education? Food is important. So is water and clothing and shoes and housing and furniture and medicine and eyeglasses and internet service and just about everything imaginable. For that matter, why not just shut down all those greedy, profit-hungry businesses and just let our good, caring friends in government provide everything? This whole notion of letting politicians decide what is "important" to us is repulsive. As individuals, we all have unique wants and needs. The idea that politicians know how to spend our own money better than us is ridiculous.
"What about the poor?" This is the most popular justification for socialized education, that even the poorest of the poor deserves equal opportunity to become educated so to improve their lives. In fact, this argument is used to justify ALL manner of socialized services.
To begin with, those who use that old the-poor-are-victims argument are not looking at the big picture. The huge waste involved when government squanders our hard-earned pay harms everyone, including the poor. If people were allowed the right to keep all those tax dollars stolen from us and allowed to spend it on businesses who's very survival depended on keeping costs down, we'd all be way ahead.
The Center for Education Reform reports that federal, state, and local governments spent a whopping $411 billion on education in 2003. That divides out to nearly $9,000 a year per student. In contrast, private school tuition nationwide averages about $4,700. Thus, on average, it costs more than twice as much per-pupil for the government to educate your kids than a private school could. How is forcing the poor to support the more expensive alternative supposed to be "helping" them?"
Here's another way to look at it: $411 billion divides out to about $1400 a year in taxes for every man, woman, and child, or about $5,600 for a family of four. Would it not be better to let poor families keep that money and choose for themselves how best to invest in the education of their children? If one really cares about the poor, one should advocate less government, not more government.
Furthermore, abolishing our socialist education system would end many arguments that illegal immigrants are coming to the U.S. so to take advantage of our free social services.
Sex and Religion
Economic factors aside, there is a far more important reason to support free choice in education, especially if you happen to be a Christian. The official religion of the governmental educational industry has become Atheism. Prayers are banned, homosexuality is taught as an acceptable lifestyle, the Bible is censored, and it's a crime to mention God or Jesus. Some schools have banned discussion of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, because it makes a reference to "the creator." Recently, a school district in California ordered the removal of a portrait of George Washington praying at Valley Forge.
Parents deserve the right to teach their children what the parents believe are good values! But when we turn the schools over to the government, then the government will choose whatever values offend the fewest number of people, which means that the lowest, basest, vilest, most non-Christian principles always win. In a free nation such as the U.S., no taxpayer should ever be forced to support any institution that runs counter to their religious values.
But the issues of whether or not to pray in school, whether to teach creationism or Darwinism or Intelligent Design, whether to include "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance; these are all controversies which should not even exist in the first place. Another such issue is sex education; should it or should it not be taught in the schools? These are personal issues that should be between parents and teachers. Politicians have no business making these kinds of decisions. And if government did not run the schools, we could all stop arguing over them.
The Solution
At the very minimum, the U.S. Department of Education must be shut down.
Then, at the state and local level, participation in the government schools should be made 100% voluntary. If parents choose to send their children to the government schools, fine, but then they must pay school taxes. Everyone else must be exempt, if they so choose.
Of course, those who advocate continuation of government-run schools will insist that the U.S. education system is the best in the world, and we should not be messing with it. Ok then, if that is true, then put it to the test: Make it voluntary. If the system is as good as they say it is, nothing will happen; government-school enrollment will remain constant. On the other hand, if huge numbers of families choose to abandon the schools, what does that tell you? What do the government-education advocates have to lose?
Once lower-income families are finally given the chance to keep the money they were formally forced to flush down the government-education drain, and use it instead to shop around for free-market alternatives, an explosion in the private-school industry would result. The current private school average tuition of $4,700 presently comes only from families wealthy enough to pay both tuition AND school taxes. Once the lower-income segment is added to the market, then lower-cost alternatives will become abundant.
What about school tuition vouchers? Vouchers, and their cousin, the tuition tax credit, are halfway solutions that have both good and bad points. One the plus side, they do give families some freedom of choice. But on the bad side, vouchers and tax credits still keep government bureaucrats right in the thick of things, and governmental involvement always comes with strings, complications, waste, bureaucratic control, and abuse. The only possible value of education vouchers or tax credits would be as transitional devices, to give the private sector an opportunity to "tool up" gradually. But a strict and limited time frame, probably a year, must be stipulated.
Socialism does not work. Free enterprise is the most efficient way to provide the people with the goods and services they need and want. Free enterprise is what made the U.S. a great and wealthy nation. The U.S. founding fathers understood that big government is the problem, not the solution. It's time we applied that concept to our schools.
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