Education
There is a CRISIS in this country in the area of education. It is truly frightening to hear that students graduate from high school without learning to read, write, perform basic arithmetic, know anything about the United States Constitution or the Bill of Rights, or even locate the United States on a globe.
The best way to dramatically improve the situation is to end our Soviet-style, government-run, one-size-fits-all, monopolistic education system which delivers poor quality at high cost, and replace it with a free enterprise system that will directly address the existing problems:
School Choice:
Parents will be directly responsible for selecting their child’s school. If you aren’t satisfied, or don’t like what your child is being taught, you can send them elsewhere!
Waste and Inefficiency:
Many, many different types of schools will emerge. Competition will maximize efficiency, dramatically improve quality, and substantially reduce costs.
Low Teachers’ Salaries:
Good teachers will be sought and their salaries increased, based on performance. Sub-standard teachers will be…FIRED!
Lack of Discipline in Schools:
Problem students will be expelled. Parents will discipline the child – whose actions result in the family losing tuition paid for that semester. To the child, the threat of being sent to a military academy seems more likely.
The Poorest Students are Hurt the Most:
With reduced costs and many more choices, even lower income families will manage to send their children to a decent school. For the poorest of the poor (a very small number), even the worst charity school is better than many of our government-run schools. They will most likely turn eighteen being able to construct a sentence, and locate the United States on a globe. Everyone will be better off.
Our education system is spiraling out of control, and many just accept it as a “sign of the times”.
What has happened is the logical endgame of government-run (forced) education.
We should cut taxes by the amount currently being squandered. This is a HUGE some of money, per pupil, per year. You are already paying for it. Why pay twice? We need a complete separation of school and state.
Be very wary of voucher schemes as an intermediate step. To be sure: if government money is involved, sooner or later the same kinds of strings which are strangling the current system will be applied to the good free-market schools we currently have. Once people get hooked on the money, politicians will impose rules and requirements for these schools as a prerequisite for the funds, and then they will be ruined as well.
Some will moan and cry…. “It’s not fair!” “It’s not equal!” Well, it’s not equal NOW. And for the elusive pursuit of equality, we are supposed to subject the overwhelming majority to mediocrity and stagnation? I think not. That is criminal.
Ask them what they want to do — reform government? Come on. Raise taxes? HELPPPPPP!!!!!!!!
They will say, “We turned out all right, didn’t we?” – Yes we turned out all right. All right. ALL RIGHT IS UNACCEPTABLE! Instead ask “HOW GOOD COULD WE HAVE BEEN?” Were you challenged in high school? I bet the answer is NO, and that is a tragedy.
We have the libertarian solution which will catapult America from somewhere in the back of the pack of “industrialized nations” to the best in the world – by far.
Recommended reading:
Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families
by Sheldon Richman