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Thursday
November 10, 2005

Machan's Musings - When Government "Teaches" by Tibor R. Machan

As someone with a 40-plus-year career in education, I am fully supportive of schooling the young, not only because this gives me a fantastic job but because the young, including my own three children, require a solid education. But a solid education does not come from government and its school administrators. It comes from a free education system, free not of reality—which means costs, controversies and confusions, among other things—but free of government. (Read more...)
Discuss this Article (6 messages)

Post 0

Thursday, November 10 - 7:00am

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I have a serious problem with public education in any case. A friend of mine lives in his parent's house, a nice and fairly large house in a very good school district. His mother passed away, and he is having trouble working, but the house he owns and it while it has a small second mortgage the payments are very small. It is easy for a few boarders to help with expenses and enough money to get him through a tough spot. However, what he can't do is pay the nearly $10,000 per year demanded by the school district and township. The township taxes are smaller, and could probably be dealt with, but here he is having no children to send to this school, having himself been sent to private school as his parents still paid taxes for years, and now the sherrif may pay a visit, wearing a gun, to take his property. Or, he will be forced to sell. This for nothing he ever agreed to or wanted, to pay for other people's schooling.

Post 1

Thursday, November 10 - 12:58pm

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Hi Kurt, your anecdote about the friend in a tough spot over paying attrocious prices for schooling he doesn't use begs the question of what education would really cost if it were in the private market. This study by the Cato Institute is very good and shows that affordable private schools exist all over the United States (as of 1996) and argues for the introduction of a voucher system to negate public costs for education and allow the option to apply the money towards private education. I think that were such a program initiated the competition would drive public schools out of business, such that your friend (and all of us who don't need to) would no longer have to bear the cost of public education.

Post 2

Thursday, November 10 - 2:38pm

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Hah- as if they would correspondingly reduce the ad valorum?

Post 3

Thursday, November 10 - 5:01pm

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Ricky, how do you handle vouchers with respect to maintaining separation of church and state given the large numbers of parochial schools? This has offered an ongoing ethical and legal challenge to the voucher concept. Vouchers also run the risk of government "colonization" of private schools. This risk explains why the Separation of School and State Alliance http://www.honestedu.org opposes vouchers. Voucher opposition also comes from many civil liberties organizations though for other reasons such as church-state separation.

Post 4

Thursday, November 10 - 5:52pm

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Luke Setzer wrote: "Ricky, how do you handle vouchers with respect to maintaining separation of church and state given the large numbers of parochial schools?

Would it matter? The choice is with the parents to spend the money any way they wish on the education of the child. That could mean many things, such as a year camping out in the forest or a year in Florence, Italy. At some point, some government might intervene with compelling interest on behalf of the minor, but basically, you have to allow them to spend the money on religion or art or science or Objectivism as they see fit.

You can safely spend your FASFA, PELL grant, and National Defense Student Loan at Notre Dame or Southern Methodist University now and we seem to have survived that.

I do agree, that vouchers are, at best, a halfway measure. That they have gained this much popularity is interesting. Complete de-schooling would be the final goal, would it not?

... Vouchers also run the risk of government "colonization" of private schools."

You do not mean the way that rich liberals send their kids to private schools. You mean something else, right?

Post 5

Thursday, November 10 - 6:31pm

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Michael, by "colonization," I mean that the government could so control the purse strings through widespread vouchers that they could effectively control private schools by threatening their voucher funding. The numerous grants you mentioned contain caveats mandating that the recipient schools must meet certain requirements like affirmative action, etc. I do not have all the details but recall this happening at Hillsdale College some years ago. It just becomes a regulatory mess and erodes liberty in ways often invisible to the general public.