The Public-School Chickens Come Home Again

In Mahmoud v. Taylor, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether parents of children in government schools have a constitutional right to opt out of programs that "expose" their kids to LGBTQ materials. Once again, the chickens have come home to roost.

By that, I mean that if politicians, bureaucrats, and elected boards did not run schools and force (tax) parents and nonparents to finance them, this problem could not arise. This should not be an issue for the political system, and you need not be an anarchist to see it. Free people are capable of educating or buying education for their children, just as they are competent to obtain other goods and services we take for granted every day. Freedom and social cooperation work when they're allowed to, and parents ought to be free to raise their children according to their values. (Beatings and other forms of aggression are not relevant here.) This has nothing to do with the particular issue in the case (LGBTQ programs).

The question is not: "Do parents have a constitutional right to opt their kids out of this and other school programs they dislike?" Rather, it is: "Do parents have a natural individual right to educate their kids through purely voluntary means?"

The answer is yes! So-called public schooling relies on the initiation of force from financing to curriculum. How dare anyone propose that we be compelled to pay for or to send our or other people's kids to schools we disapprove of? Even if you opt out of the schools or have no kids, you still must pay or lose your home, go to jail, etc. Such a system is unfit to exist.

(See my 1994 book, Separating School and State.)

Government Education Chickens Return Again to the Roost

If you favor a government-controlled virtual monopoly in schooling, don't be surprised when a school board removes Maus, the award-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from an eighth-grade class that covers the Holocaust from a language-arts perspective. If you are appalled by this news from McMinn County, Tennessee, maybe you should favor placing schools in a truly free and competitive marketplace, where entrepreneurs would have no institutional barriers to offering innovative forms of education. (For details see my Separating School and State.)

TGIF: Critical Race Theory and the Schools

The government's K-12 schools--aka "public schools--are once again a battleground on which a bitter dispute is playing out. Wait!--once again? The government's schools have been a battleground since their inception in the 19th century. Since that's where the children are, how could it have been otherwise? For an institution that was supposed to produce social unity, it's done the exact opposite.

Today's battle is over Critical Race Theory (CRT), which in one form or another is being pushed by a lobby that has a stake in having us believe that all of American history, up to the present, can be summed up in one phrase: racist oppression. Or as Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times 1619 Project puts it, white supremacy "runs in the very DNA of this country." For my purpose today, though, I have no need to weigh in on the merits or lack thereof of CRT. All we need to know is that it is a polarizing issue: some people very much want it to shape the K-12 curriculum, while others just as vigorously oppose it. Each side thinks that the future of America depends on its success. A couple of dozen red states have banned it from their schools, which in turn has set off a debate over whether the government should ban any ideas. The (classical) liberal tradition prizes free inquiry and free speech, so the thought of banning the teaching of a doctrine is abhorrent. But that's far from the end of this story.

What I want to emphasize is that CRT joins a long list of causes that were fought over in the public-school arena. They include prayer, evolution, sex education, math and reading teaching methods, creation science, and Western civilization. The history of the government's schools is a history of conflict, for the obvious reason I will discuss in a moment. The way to reduce such conflict is not to ban or promote particular ideas, but rather to stop the government from imposing ideas on unwilling people--or their children. The problem is not CRT or any other idea; it's government control of schooling.

Let's start by noting that the original purpose of government schooling, as I explained in Separating School and State: How to Liberate America's Families, was to promote unity by tamping down diversity. Few people today would believe this because diversity is supposedly what all enlightened people favor. (In fact, only superficial diversity is favored. Intellectual diversity is at least discouraged.) But back in the 19th century the founders of the "common school" movement feared that diversity, especially but not only religious diversity, would tear the young country apart. So the first government schools were designed to be a force for homogenization; they were to instill a nondenominational Protestantism in children in order to create a unified nation of model citizens. They would also dilute the influence of their gluttonous and slothful parents. When Jews and Catholics voiced their objections to the religious nature of the instruction, they were told shut up. So the dissenters set up their own schools.

As I say, conflict with respect to the schools is nothing new. It would have been amazing had this not been the case. It is in the very nature of government planners to expect that one size will fit all. If their plan doesn't fit all naturally, they'll make it fit, much like Procrustes. If it still does fit, they'll blame the unenlightened subjects.

But in no way can one plan be right for everyone. This is particularly true in the education of children. Yet government-run schools are ill-suited to tailoring services to the varying requirements of children. They may try, but the results will be upsetting. One result will be conflict between groups of parents, some of whom will support and some of whom will oppose what is to be imposed on all. Conflicts between parents on the one hand and teachers and administrators on the other will also be provoked. People don't like things shoved down their throats, particularly where their children are concerned.

It's always appropriate to ask what the alternative to a government "solution" is. The answer should be obvious: free choice in an open marketplace. It is only in the marketplace that people are fully free to invent new ways of doing things and offering them to potential buyers, who are free to choose or reject what's on offer. Some of those ideas will be defective--though it's not as if the planners of government education have never come up with a bad idea. But it's also the case that some of these ideas will be great and will benefit millions of children. The thing to remember is that no one can predict who will come up with the next great idea. But we can be sure that no school board or state education official will welcome an innovator who rejects the establishment's views on education. Bureaucracies won't act against their own self-preservation. Since government schools are compulsorily funded and most parents can't pay taxes and private tuition, the schools are usually safe. (It's been a rough road to even the limited choice that exists today.)

As I pointed out recently, advocates of full freedom in education have always emphasized that innovation and flexibility are features the government will never fully embrace. Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) noted that to discover the best methods of doing anything, we need “unbounded liberty, and even caprice.” He added, “Now, of all arts, those stand the fairest chance of being brought to perfection, in which there is opportunity of making the most experiments and trials.”

Yes, trial and error has its risks; so does bureaucratic administration. But when government makes mistakes it exposes large numbers of people to danger and the impetus to correct errors is weak to nonexistent. In the marketplace, new ideas will be tried on a small scale, and consumers will be free to make their own decisions. Meanwhile others will be free to offer opposing approaches. When it comes to children's education, it's clear which system is superior.

Bringing this back to CRT, if people want to set up schools in which this outlook shapes the curriculum, they should be free to do so--and parents and children should be free to judge that approach for themselves. Let the verdict of the marketplace prevail. Will people always make wise choices? Of course not. But we know that bureaucrats will fail.

Appearance on the Noah Blaylock Show

I was a guest on the Noah Blaylock Show for a discussion of education and the consequences of government control of schooling. Listen to the podcast here.

The Libertarian Angle

The latest edition of FFF's The Libertarian Angle is now online. Issues discussed: gun control and Melissa Harris-Perry's view that children belong to the "community."

Freedom and School Choice in American Education

The about-to-be-released book Freedom and School Choice in American Education includes my chapter,“‘Unbounded Liberty, and Even Caprice’: Why ‘School Choice’ Is Dangerous to Education,” which argues that any government involvement in the financing of education must sabotage the free market’s entrepreneurial discovery process and stifle the development of education. The chapter, along with most of the book’s chapters, was presented at a 2008 conference sponsored by the Foundation for Educational Choice (formerly the Milton and Rose Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice) and the Clemson Center for the Study of Capitalism. The book was edited by Greg Forster and C. Bradley Thompson.

In the book’s foreword Harvard University professor Paul E. Peterson writes:

In the strongest statement of all, Sheldon Richman draws upon classic economic theory to make the case that any government involvement–even school vouchers and tax credit subsidies–will ‘forbid the full blossoming of the entrepreneurial environment that is indispensable for optimal education.’ Better than any partial solutions is a commitment to letting the current system implode so that the country, in final desperation, will finally return to free market principles. One wonders whether the charitable tax deduction, an important prop for education’s private sector, survives Richman’s strict prohibition on any government involvement at all….

…We all benefit from Richman’s clear iteration of market theory, as he makes so utterly clear the distance school choice has yet to travel before it even begins to approximate that ideal.

Talking Education on Reason TV

TGIF: Free the Children, Cut the Budget

Will School be separated from State any time soon? Unlikely. The public-school industry, including the unions and all the vendors selling things to school districts, is big, rich, and powerful. The education-industrial complex surely rivals the military-industrial complex in its capacity to consume tax revenues.

But if for no other reason, the dismal fiscal condition of the states makes this a good time to talk about separation. It certainly won’t happen if nobody ever mentions it.

Read the rest here.

Ersatz School Choice

"Vouchers go down in crushing defeat"

That headline thundered from Wednesday's Salt Lake City Tribune, as it announced that more than 60 percent of Utahans who voted on whether to uphold the statewide school-voucher program said no. It was a big setback for the voucher movement. The Utah legislature had approved the program by one vote. But the teachers' union, which opposes vouchers, gathered enough signatures to put the question to the voters. It poured a ton of money into its successful effort to have the people veto the law. This was the tenth time in over 30 years that voters have defeated school vouchers or education tax credits, says the National School Boards Association.

It may not look like a win for the cause of educational freedom, but in the long run it might be. That depends on what we do about it.

The rest of my latest TGIF, "Ersatz School Choice," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Recent Writings

If you were reading with only one eye open or only two hours' sleep you might have thought Paul Krugman had finally stumbled onto the truth. In his Monday New York Times op-ed, "A Socialist Plot," he wrote: "[L]et's end this un-American system and make education what it should be -- a matter of individual responsibility and private enterprise. Oh, and we shouldn't have any government mandates that force children to get educated, either.... The truth is that there's no difference in principle between saying that every American child is entitled to an education and saying that every American child is entitled to adequate health care."

The rest of last week's TGIF, "Counterfeit Rights, Cold Bureaucracies," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website. By the way, some people missed the point of this column, thinking it is primarily an attack on Krugman. Let me know what you think.

President Bush, one of the two most famous pro-Vietnam War members of his generation to avoid fighting in that war, has finally accepted what he previously rejected: that there are parallels between the war he ducked out of and his violent occupation of Iraq. (The other best-known famous pro-war war avoider is Vice President Dick “I had other priorities in the ’60s than military service” Cheney.) Unfortunately, Bush has learned a far different lesson from Vietnam than many others have.

The rest of my op-ed, "Iraq and Vietnam," is at The Future of Freedom Foundation website.

No Substitute for History

The great economist Ludwig von Mises showed that economics can be deduced from the axiom that human beings act: individuals consciously select ends and apply scarce means to achieve them. By examining the logical implications of that undeniable fact, one can come to understand the concepts value, cost, time preference, supply, demand, money, price, profit, interest, and so on. In light of this, it is noteworthy that Mises was also an accomplished historian. And more than that, he was an important historiographer; that is, he was interested in the why and how of history. This theorist who is so identified with the a priori method in economics also believed that a knowledge of history and its methods was indispensable to understanding the world.

The rest of this week's TGIF column, "No Substitute for History," is at the Foundation for Economic Education website.

Cross-posted at Liberty & Power.

The Higher-Education Scam

Barbara Ehrenreich has an article about higher education here on Alternet that is worth reading. She begins by noting that the successful dean of admissions at MIT, Marilee Jones, was recently fired because contrary to her resume, she has no academic degrees. How could someone without a higher education succeed as an administrator in higher education? This opens up lots of other questions.

Here's an excerpt from "Higher Education Conformity":

[T]here are ways in which the higher education industry is becoming a racket: Buy our product or be condemned to life of penury, and our product can easily cost well over $100,000.

The pundits keep chanting that we need a more highly skilled workforce, by which they mean more college graduates, although the connection between college and skills is not always crystal clear. Jones, for example, was performing a complex job requiring considerable judgment, experience and sensitivity without the benefit of any college degree. And how about all those business majors -- business being the most popular undergraduate major in America? It seems to me that a two-year course in math and writing skills should be more than sufficient to prepare someone for a career in banking, marketing, or management. Most of what you need to know you're going to learn on the job anyway.

But in the last three decades the percentage of jobs requiring at least some college has doubled, which means that employers are going along with the college racket. A resume without a college degree is never going to get past the computer programs that screen applications. Why? Certainly it's not because most corporate employers possess a deep affinity for the life of the mind. In fact in his book Executive Blues G. J. Meyers warned of the "academic stench" that can sink a career: That master's degree in English? Better not mention it.

My theory is that employers prefer college grads because they see a college degree chiefly as mark of one's ability to obey and conform. Whatever else you learn in college, you learn to sit still for long periods while appearing to be awake. And whatever else you do in a white collar job, most of the time you'll be sitting and feigning attention. Sitting still for hours on end -- whether in library carrels or office cubicles -- does not come naturally to humans. It must be learned -- although no college has yet been honest enough to offer a degree in seat-warming.

Or maybe what attracts employers to college grads is the scent of desperation. Unless your parents are rich and doting, you will walk away from commencement with a debt averaging $20,000 and no health insurance. Employers can safely bet that you will not be a trouble-maker, a whistle-blower or any other form of non-"team-player." You will do anything. You will grovel.

I don't think much of her proposal in the final paragraph:

"[W]e need a distinguished blue ribbon commission to investigate its role as a toll booth on the road to employment...."

That's like trying to use a pea shooter to kill an elephant.

Georgia on My Mind

We arrived back in Georgia at 4:30 p.m. Friday after a memorable trip to Tsakhkadzor, Armenia, not far from the capital, Yerevan. I gave two lectures -- one on the nature of taxation, the other on privatizing schools -- but just barely. A bad head cold nearly deprived me of my voice. But I managed to get through. The entire traveling party was hit with one malady or another, the price of a wearying journey that surely suppresses one's immunity. Anyway, we are all on the mend. This journey included a trek by foot across the border and through the bureaucracies between Georgia and Armenia.

During my tax lecture, one student denounced the inheritance tax, which is alway music to the ears. Another student asked whether taxes were necessary at all, and I referred the class to Gustave de Molinari's "The Production of Security" in order to pursue this interesting inquiry.

I should point out that at each of the seminars we hosted students who normally are unable to get together. In Georgia we had students from Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. None of these countries has good relations with the others. Armenians may not travel to Azerbaijan and vice versa. The countries are in a state of war over disputed territory. Wikipedia's account of the dispute is here. I am no expert, so I can't vouch for the Wikipedia article. But it probably explains the basics.

At the Armenian seminar we had Georgians and Azeris, but also students from Abkhazia. This is an area claimed by Georgia but Abkhazians are seeking independence, and Georgians have had to leave their homes in the conflict. An account is here. The point is that these students rarely deal with each other, and FEE helped bring them together. They were appreciative and everyone got along. During the final banquet, several toasts were made to liberalism and its principle of all people getting along through trade and peace.

The Bag Made It!

My luggage arrived at Tbilisi International Airport this morning. To make sure I got it right away, I went to the airport to pick up myself. Thanks to Gia Jandieri for keeping on top of KLM for me and for driving me to the airport. Now for a shower and fresh clothes. Then back to the seminar.

This morning I lectured on the case for a free market in education. Two members of the Georgian Education Ministry attended, and we engaged in a lively discussion of the alleged need for state-controlled schooling. I regret to say that I didn't persuade them. But the seeds were certainly planted.