An Introduction to Public Schools

3/6/2010.

You know 1 of the 1st things they teach you in India when you go to work at a call center that handles calls from Americans? They teach you to talk to an adult American the way you talk to a 10 year-old native.

The products of our public school system don't know what Australia even *is*. They know that the American Civil War had something to do with slavery but not what a *civil* war is. They don't know that the country they live in is a Republic.

At least it homogenizes the immigrants and keeps the kids out of the labor market.

The problem with schools is that they are designed for the lowest of the low. It's the promising children who get screwed the worst by that system. All the schools care about is that as many children as possible achieve a passing score, which in practice means they can add and speak in complete sentences. There is no incentive for them to produce a small number of excellent students.

Imagine if the government put a free supermarket on every street corner where you could get food for free. Now imagine if public supermarkets that charged for food *still* survived, and you had to pay taxes for the government food whether you ate it or not. Wouldn't that prove that the government supermarkets were probably incredibly bad? And how would that be fair to the people who pay twice for food?

And what's the justification for public school that doesn't apply equally to public supermarkets? Or public *anything* for that matter, short of pure luxury goods?

Public education is supposed to be the great equalizer, but instead it's quite the reverse. Those who have money already get better public schools than those who don't. And those who want to do whatever it takes to get their children into good schools are crushed by a system which treats them as a government paycheck and not a customer.

1) You have to pay for public schools whether you use them or not. So to use another schooling scheme requires you to pay twice. You'd have to be pretty rich to do that.

2) Private schools can't compete with public schools because public schools are publically funded, so there aren't as many private schools as there would be otherwise. Just as if the government opened free grocers stores in every town, most private grocery stores would close.

3) Private schools are hamstrung by government standards that limit how flexible they can be in the educational approaches they use. For example, apprenticeship type programs are basically illegal.

Home schooling just isn't an option for many families. In fact, I think 1 of the big problems with public schools is they are so bad, they virtually force a lot of people to home school when they’re just not really in a good position to do that.

Ask yourself why there aren't more low-cost cheaper private schools. The answer is largely that such school can't compete with schools that are free.

Imagine if we had government-owned supermarkets that gave out free food. Most private supermarkets would disappear.

The government, however, wouldn't cater to niche markets. So you might have specialty stores that sell organic food or gourmet foods or other things for which there is no mass market foreclosed by subsidized government supermarkets.

If I suggested ending the government supermarkets, would you honestly argue that if the government supermarkets were to disappear, all that would be available would be gourmet and organic food and people who wanted normal foods would have to create their own supermarkets?

People may want the McDonald's of education. It may not be the best, but will be cheap, efficiently provided, and it will take into account the fact that rational people have a wide variety of priorities they have to balance. It will be a lot better than the Amtrak of education.

If you want to know what an unregulated, unsubsidized system would look like, compare it to other unregulated, unsubsidized systems. For example, why does no fast food restaurant try to get you to commit to buying a burger each week for a year before they'll sell you a burger? (Answer, because their competitors don't and there are lots of competitors. So it's not surprising with fewer competitors you have more lock in.).

Of course in a regulated, subsidized system most of the private alternatives will be specialty niche solutions. Of course they'll have to charge more and use aggressive techniques to compete with public schools that have numerous unfair advantage. And of course they won't really be varied when they have to meet legal standards that prevent them from actually innovating.

Why don't we have any of the problems you think we'll have with schools with any other unregulated industry? Why don't we have these problems with food? With housing? With cars?

Would you argue that, for example, a restaurant that had to serve every kind of cuisine would serve better French food than a restaurant that only served French cuisine?

Don't drink the Liberal kool-aid and fall into the silly trap of believing that people would walk off cliffs left and right if the government didn't prohibit suicide. (Or worse, require all cliffs to be fenced.).

The vast majority of parents and children are victims of the public education system. They face reduced choices, a lack of innovation, and a system that treats them as a coerced entitlement rather than a valued customer.