Mandatory public education is intrusive and dictatorial. One of our most cherished freedoms is the freedom not to know anything.
How many kids actually like school? And adults certainly don't like paying for it. So instead of arguing over the details of No Child Left Behind, I propose a new act called Your Child -- Not My Problem.
If you and your kid want your kid to be educated, you figure out how to do it and how to pay for it. How much more local does control get? How much more individually tailored and privatized could it be? It's the ultimate in freedom. And freedom, after all, is just another word for nothing left to lose.
1 comment:
This argument has serious and organized proponents behind it. In 1997, when I worked for the yearbook of Experts, Authorities ans Spokespersons, I talked with a man who had written a book propounding that the decline in American educational acheivement began when education became mandatory and publicly funded--in about 1840. Before that time, he asserted, parents chose whether and where to educate their children, and the results (he claimed) were better than what we have now. It's a very cogent argument for social Darwinism, and if implemented, of course only the winners would be able to write books about it.
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