The Free Market and Education
A review by Ken Schoolland

Last summer I spoke at a conference of the Lithuanian College of Democracy and asked these questions: "Do you trust the campaign promises of politicians?" None of the participants answered "yes" and all answered "no." "Do you trust government officials more than your parents?" Again, not a single person said "yes," all said "no" to these questions, it is odd that nearly everyone still entrusts the decisions on education of children to the government instead of to the family.

Tolerance

If tolerance is the acceptance of diversity, then tolerance is no more important anywhere in society than in education. Tolerance of diversity in education can begin with a re-examination the use of government force for three objectives:

1) regulating school alternatives,
2) financing government schools,
3) compelling attendance

Government force is inherently hostile to the tolerance of diversity. Said George Washington, "Government is not reason, it is not eloquence. Government is force. And like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."

There issues are brilliantly and bluntly examined in Sheldon Richman's new book, Separating School and State. In a free society, it is dangerous to have only one source of schooling - where the government is master and the parents and the students are treated like servants. No, indeed! There must be choices if the people are to be the masters and the government the servant. There must be competition among providers of education with the freedom of entry into, and exit from, the field of competition. Superb providers must be rewarded for success and bad providers must be penalized. It is not acceptable to sacrifice the future of our youth to anything less.

The consumers of education services must be allowed the freedom of choice concerning education - where to find it in a way that is most suitable to their individual needs and whether or not to pay for it. In a free society, individuals must be free to pursue their own goals.

Young people learn more by what their elders do than by what they say. The young cannot learn about the virtues of a free society in a system of compulsory attendance and compulsory financing. This is hypocrisy.

Despotism over the mind

Richman's book examines the long history of battling for control over the minds of young people. In the 19th century, the British philosopher John Stuart Mill said, "A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another, and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it established a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body." [p.61]

Indeed, this is precisely what has been intended by rulers throughout time. This was the intention of rulers in Sparta where children were forcibly removed from their families; the state determined the course of their lives, strict censorship and indoctrination was used to bring about obedience and a willingness to die for the state in war, and where authority rested with an elite few. This also became the model for Plato's idealized Republic.

Later in Prussia, Martin Luther urged this model upon the state in order to complete his religious war. "If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service· how much more has it the right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil·" [p.40] Of course, Luther wasn't warring with the devil. He was warring with Catholics with whom he disagreed. The same was also true of John Calvin in Geneva.

This system of compulsory education became most firmly entrenched by the Prussian King, Frederick William III in 1807. The King's government first exercised control over the teachers and abolished schools that didn't accept the State. Exams were required of all professions and were administered by the state. Attendance was compulsory and, if the parents didn't cooperate, their children were taken away from them. This was all a preparation for the warlike state that was to follow.

German philosopher Ernst Troeltsch emphasized the point saying, "The school organization parallels that of the army, the public school corresponds to the popular army." And Johann Fichte, a key contributor to the development of the German school system stated, schools "must fashion the person, and fashion him in such a way that he simply cannot will otherwise than what you wish him to will." And Franz de Hovre added in 1917, that a fundament feature of German education was: "· education to the State, education for the State, education by the State." [p.41]

This became the ideal totalitarian model for Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Stalin's Soviet Union. In Russia, at the congress of the Communist Party education workers in 1918 it was asserted, "We must remove the children from the crude influence of their families. We must take them over and, to speak frankly, nationalize them." Well, to speak just as frankly, it is now time to take our children back · to privatize them once again.

U.S. Education: The Rise ·

America has had its own history of the nationalization of children as well, with sad and tragic consequences. An early signer of the declaration of Independence urged the adoption of compulsory education, Benjamin Rush bluntly declared, "Let our pupil be taught that he doesn't not belong to himself, but that he is public property." [p.45] That is clearly and odd way of declaring independence.

Richman reveals that there was no need for government intervention in education on the grounds of improving literacy. The private market was already making such progress that America in the early 19th century was among the world leaders in public literacy and education. According to Jack High and Jerome Ellig, in The Private Supply of Education, "Private education was widely demanded in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Great Britain and America. The private supply of education was highly responsive to that demand, with the consequence that large numbers of children from all classes of society received several years of education." [p.37]

And historian Robert Seybolt asserted, "In the hands of private schoolmasters the curriculum expanded rapidly. Their schools were commercial ventures, and, consequently, competition was keen · Popular demands, and the element of competition, forced them not only to add new courses of instruction, but constantly to improve their methods and technique of instruction." [p. 38]

Alexis de Tocqueville and other visitors from Europe noted how well educated the populace was - and for good reason. Literacy rose to between 91 and 97 percent in Northern states and to over 80 percent in Southern states where slavery still existed and Blacks were yet legally forbidden to read. In 1850 in Massachusetts, before schooling became compulsory, the literacy rate reached 98 percent, higher than it is today. Massachusetts officials now boast of only 91 percent literacy - and this may be too optimistic. Despite hundreds of billions of dollars in government spending on education today, experts say that more than half the adult population could be considered functionally illiterate. ["A Nation of Illiterates," U.S. News and World Report, May 17, 1982.] Functional illiterates are not able to do very basic things such as to read a bus schedule, fill out a job application, or write a check. Concluded High and Ellig, government intrusion "displaced private education, sometimes deliberately stiffing it [and] altered the kind of education that was offered, mainly to the detriment of the poorer working classes."

And the fall

Despite the highest levels of literacy existing in the U.S. in the 19th century, many still clamored for compulsory education. Says John Taylor Gatto, in Our Prussian School System, "A small number of very passionate American ideological leaders visited Prussia in the first half of the 19th century; fell in love with the order, obedience, and efficiency of its education system; and campaigned relentlessly thereafter to bring the Prussian vision to these shores. Prussia's ultimate goal was to unify Germany; the Americans' was to mold hordes of immigrant Catholics to a national consensus based on a northern European cultural model. To do that, children would have to be removed from their parents and from inappropriate cultural influences." [p. 42]

So the Protestants like the idea because it would impose an ideology on the Catholics. The nationalists liked the idea for indoctrinating the immigrants. Business liked it for shaping habits to the corporate mold. Unionists liked it for keeping the young out of competition in the workforce. Socialists liked it for the high degree of centralized control in shaping values. And educators like it because of the benefits of a captive audience, reduced competition, and the security of their pay.

But the consequence to generations of Americans has been dismal. Astonishingly, even Albert Shanker, President of the American Federation of Teachers, had this to say, "It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy that our own market economy." [p. 11]

Sheldon Richman identifies several reasons why a free market in education is more likely to serve student and parent demands than a government school.

Government vs. Private

1) Attitudes - Where there is choice in education, the consumer is king. Individuals in society are free to pursue their own goals than by goals chosen for them by others. And these goals will suit each person better. Likewise, the attitudes of the providers of education will improve because they must please the customer when the customers have the choice of going to other providers. Instead of behaving like hauty rulers, requiring students and parents to cower and plead for a respectful education, competition prods teachers to cater to the demands of the students and parents.

It is understandable that the education establishment might resist this change in their status, but teachers, themselves, need the kind of discipline and motivation that they often impose on their students. Teachers, too, must be subject to the carrot and the stick·reward for successful performance and penalties for sloth. The worst of teachers have no justification to be teaching and the best of teachers must be praised and rewarded for their successes. Along with the most esteemed of professions, teachers deserve the opportunity to become rich as a result of being truly great.

There are so many paths to education· not just one path with all children progressing at the same rate for a fixed period of time. Such conformity is a guarantee that many students at the high or low ends of the class will become either bored or disruptive. There is nothing more natural to the human spirit than to imitate one's elders. What if the table was turned? Would teachers be motivated to teach for 12 years, receiving nothing more than paper stars and a grade report for all that time and effort? I think not. So why would they expect students to be motivated by so little reward?

2) Decision making - in the market, individuals can affect their own lives immediately with their own decisions. Richman demonstrates that in the government system of majority rule, even if such rule was ever able to be achieved, then an individual can only affect his own life by first persuading 51 percent of the population to go along. This is terribly frustrating and can take a lifetime of energy just fighting against those who are pushing in the opposite direction. Majority decisions do not assure correct decisions, they just count heads. This is no way to treat individuals. Henry David Thoreau noted how majorities can often be wrong when he stated, "A man with a conscience is already a majority of one."

Some say that it is egoistic to be concerned with individual goals. But it is far more egoistic to use political power to impose one's own values on all others by the force of government. True respect and tolerance comes from persuasion, not from the point of a gun.

Because of the overwhelming requirements for effective political action in the collective, government run system, there is a disincentive for effective information gathering and analysis. Richman effectively argues that the bureaucracy has incentives to obscure real costs and decision making procedures and to disguise this information so that it cannot be used by individual parents who seek change. In the marketplace, the cost is clear: the price of tuition. And the quality is diverse and easily recognizable by contrasts. In the government, monopoly costs are hidden by a multitude of indirect taxes and regulations.

Government schools pretend to be free when they are not. Every penny of expenditure has to first be taken from the people through direct and indirect taxes. Asking the government to provide a service is like taking blood from one arm to put it back into the other arm, and throwing half of the blood on the ground in the process. The costs of government schools far exceed the costs of private schools, especially when taking into account hidden costs, i.e. "free" property upon which they are built, separate pension funds that are often paid from other sources, and taxation that only hits private competitors.

In the private school, by contrast, all these costs must be incorporated in their price. Waste and inefficiency are immediately reflected in higher prices or lower profits - and thus opportunities arise for their competitors. This is not so with government schools. My surveys usually reveal that most people think that more than half of government spending is wasted. Waste in the government sector is usually rewarded with bigger budgets and staff.

3) Financing - This is often rationalized because it is argued that education of the young is a public good and that it must be paid for by all so that there will be no free riders. These are absolutely fallacious arguments. It can more easily be argued that a poor education in a government monopoly is a public "bad" because it sacrifices the opportunities lost to young people. Should all of life be controlled on the basis of a perceived gain or loss to society? If so, then you have a society of slaves.

And what about free riders? The imposition of taxes does not eliminate the free riders - it merely changes who the free riders will be. And those who usually win in the political arena are the powerful, not the powerless. And what of the ethics of forcing people to pay for things against their will? I cannot force someone else to give me money. That is theft. If I have no right to steal, then I have no right to ask a politician to do this theft on my behalf. When the politician acts for me, it is still theft and the politics involved does not cleanse the action. Large numbers of people who wish to steal from others, are still thieves if they must resort to violence to achieve their ends.

What is the lesson that we teach our children when we do such things? Do we teach them that it is wrong to steal? Or do we teach them that it is OK to steal if they ask a friend to do it for them? Or do we say that it is OK to steal from others if we can outnumber them? No. We must teach our young to find voluntary means to achieve their own goals.

4) Education packages - Votes for a school board to govern public schools are unconditional packages. Individuals cannot choose what they like and don't like, they cannot change their minds until the next election. They have no way of enforcing election promises and, even when elections are allowed, only one candidate can be selected. The one selected is that swamped by the votes of other school board members. Typically any government board is ruled by a core elite, says Richman, and the whole system tends toward more centralization.

From 1945 to 1980 in the U.S., 100,000 school districts have been reduced to fewer than 16,000 super districts of immense size and entirely removed from individual contact. The student body grew by 9 percent, the budgets mushroomed and teachers increased by 57 percent, administration personnel increased by 79 percent, and other personnel increased by 500 percent. Over a 25 year span, scores fell steadily. And throughout this time, teachers earned enough to send their own children to private schools in far greater proportions than parents in the general population.

In the marketplace where there is competition, parents and students don't have to accept the package. They can change to other alternatives, large (as great as nationwide franchises like Berlitz) or small (as intimate as the room in your house). Most important of all, the family chooses its own values in a free society rather than having them crammed down their throats by the government textbooks, curriculum, teachers, and associated propagandists. Freedom is not only humane and practical; it is the most ethical course for society.

For those looking for a concise, yet sophisticated and well-researched, book on the case against government schools, there is nothing better than Sheldon Richman's Separating School and State. I first saw Richman in action as chair of the Libertarian party national Platform Committee fourteen years ago. He was brilliant then - and the years have only made him brighter.