Too many of our schools are not doing a good job. The number of children who have not gotten a fair chance in life because of the schools they have had to attend and the education they did not get is a disgrace.
The teachers unions and many well-meaning people say the answer is more money. Others are not so sure.
A growing number of people think that one part of the answer is "choice". I am not talking about limited programs which allow parents to try to choose which public school their child can attend. I am talking about giving parents money or credits that they can use to send their child to whatever school they choose, public or private.
Milton Friedman is one of the most famous and long-standing proponents of this kind of choice in education. (I am not sure how far back his support for choice goes, but he wrote about it in Capitalism and Freedom, which was published in 1962 {see chapter VI}.)
What I would like to do, from time to time, is to present comments from other people about choice in education. These people may not be as famous as Milton Friedman, but perhaps what they say or how they say it will be of interest.
The following is by Jim Hopkins, a columnist in The New Zealand Herald. It is from February 9, 2007:
"Six or seven weeks off at the height of summer (ha! ha!) may have been appropriate 100 years ago when 80 per cent of us worked on the land and the kids had to help with the harvest, but it's nonsense now.
It doesn't fit how we live. Blimey, if schools were restaurants, they'd be closed all weekend and only open Monday to Thursday from 11pm.
And woe betide any customer foolish enough to ask for something that wasn't on the menu. They'd very quickly be told to learn what was put in front of them and be grateful.
See, it's not just when schools operate that's beyond our control, it's everything about them.
We're told when we must send our children to school, we're told how long they must stay there, we're told where they'll be taught and what they'll be taught and how they'll be assessed.
And should any plaintive parent dare to ask if their child is on the Pill or having an abortion, they'll promptly be told, "That's none of your business! But don't forget, you're breaking the law if your child isn't schooled!"
So that's the deal. CMT (Compulsory Military Training) may be gone but CET (Compulsory Educational Training) certainly isn't.
We have no choice about sending the kids into barracks or which barracks they attend and if, after 11 years of CET, 25 per cent of them can't read or write then that's the luck of the educational draw, sunshine.
Factories with an equally dismal record might have to close – or change – but the good folk in the learning workshops simply get more money.
And those obliged to supply their conscripts get no say in the matter at all. We can choose our doctor, our lawyer, our supermarket, our partner and our job.
In fact, just about the only things we can't choose are which side of the road to drive on, whether we pay taxes and the school we send our kids to – unless we want to make some real estate agent very, very wealthy.
Anyone seeking a system perfectly designed to perpetuate incompetence, a system where the customer is always wrong and the retailer can supply what they wish, need look no further than the nearest school."
(The entire column can be found here.)
Comments