It looks like government-funded school vouchers are going to be a
campaign issue for both Republicans and Democrats. Al Gore, who has
gotten the endorsement of both the National Education Association and
the American Federation of Teachers, has come out against government
vouchers for poor children, for the usual reasons: they would drain
money from the public schools; private schools lack sufficient capacity
to replace public schools; private academies wouldn't take poor
children; vouchers would pay for only a fraction of tuition and would
exclude those with special needs or disabilities.
Then there is the added problem of the separation of church and
state. Most of the private schools that would be on the receiving end
of the publicly funded vouchers would be parochial schools, and that
poses a problem that the U.S. Supreme Court would have to solve.
Bill Bradley, on the other hand, has supported public vouchers in the
past as a means of giving poor children a way out of dangerous,
drug-ridden public schools. Bradley wants to see if a voucher program
would give the public schools the incentive to improve themselves.
According to the Oct. 10 Boston Globe, he has said, "When I am
president, I am going to try this, I am going to try that, but we are
going to improve urban public schools."
But John Taylor Gatto, in his book, "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden
Curriculum of Compulsory Education," proves beyond a shadow of a doubt
that the public schools cannot be improved, that they have gone too far
down the road to social control and have become destructive of
individual freedom. But what politician is going to read a book by John
Taylor Gatto? Or what politician is going to read Charlotte Iserbyt's
new blockbuster, "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America," in which she
documents how the educators have subverted our education system so that
it cripples millions of American children intellectually and morally.
And, sorry to say, Republican politicians are no better in their
advocacy of government vouchers. Governor Jeb Bush of Florida got the
state legislature to enact a voucher plan for pupils in the worst
schools. Governor George Bush said that he favored letting
disadvantaged students in poorly performing schools use federal Title
One money for private school tuition. He's proposed allowing states to
use as much as $2 billion in federal block grants for voucher programs.
And now, even liberal professors, like Paul Peterson of Harvard, have
come out with a liberal case for vouchers. We suspect that the reason
why liberals and progressives are joining the government voucher
bandwagon is because they realize that in the end government money will
turn the private schools into public schools in all but name only. We
know from experience that once private schools become dependent on
government money for their existence, they will buckle under government
controls and regulations.
What conservatives and libertarians should be striving for is getting
the government out of the education business, not more deeply into it.
Our aim should be to turn all public schools into private schools.
Public vouchers would go in the opposite direction, bringing the private
sector under more and more government control.
Anyone who instinctively understands what it takes to maintain a free
society would recognize that a government controlled education system is
incompatible with the principles and values of a free society. If we
really want to get poor children out of rotten public schools, the best
way to do it is via privately sponsored vouchers. In fact, private
voucher programs have already helped more children get out of the public
schools and into private ones than government vouchers.
One of the most successful private voucher programs was started in
June 1998 by entrepreneurs Ted Forstmann and John Walton who established
the Children's Scholarship Fund with $170 million. The fund is
assisting nearly 40,000 low-income children in communities nationwide.
Ted Forstmann believes that free-market competition should apply to
education as to any other economic activity in our society. He said, in
a speech given at the National Press Club in October 1998:
- Defenders of the status quo attempt to stifle debate by
constantly saying that 90 percent of kids are in the public system, and
therefore all resources and efforts must focus on the public system.
But their premise should lead us to exactly the opposite conclusion. A
system that can command -- even enforce -- a 90 percent market share is
a system with overtly monopolistic characteristics. And as a country,
we made a judgement about monopolies, and a hundred years before that
founding fathers like Jefferson recognized that monopolies were inimical
to freedom and competition. They were correct: monopolies always
produce bad products at high prices. ...
The price of public education has gone through the roof. Since 1956
alone, spending in constant dollars is up from over $2,000 per pupil to
nearly $7,000. And while the price has gone up, the quality of public
education -- whether measured in terms of SAT scores, NAEP scores,
international rankings, parental satisfaction ratings, or simply basic
safety -- every measure has either stagnated or declined. ... The point
is that in free societies like ours, what's normal isn't deterioration,
it's constant progress.
We have nothing but praise for men like Ted Forstmann. What he
says about progress surely applies to the homeschool movement, where the
freedom to innovate, create, and expand personal interests and horizons
has made homeschooling the most exciting educational phenomenon in
America since 1776.
If monopolies are bad in the private sector, they are worse in the
public sector, and the public education system is proof of that. We are
forced to pay, in taxes, the highest price for the worst possible
product. What could be worse than schools that will not teach children
to read proficiently and effectively? What could be worse than schools
that require four million children to be drugged each day with Ritalin
so that they can sit in their seats and be intellectually lobotomized
without resistance?
Government monopoly education and individual freedom cannot coexist
for very long. One of the other will have to go. Which one will it be?
Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education,
including "NEA: Trojan Horse in American," "Is Public Education
Necessary?" "The Whole-Language/OBE Fraud," and "Homeschooling: A
Parents Guide to Teaching Children." His books are available on
Amazon.com or through the Paradigm Company, 208-322-4440.