The Fallacy of “Public” Education

Many people today are upset, and rightly so, about programs that promote “woke” values and “tolerance” for degeneracy. To counter this, some people support efforts to purge the schools of such programs and replace them with better ideas.  It’s easy to understand why people support such efforts, but this approach ignores the root cause of the problem,

So long as the government controls the “public” schools, there are bound to be conflicts over what should be taught there. Only if all schooling is supplied by the free market will the problem end. In a free market, parents can get schools that supply them with the sort of education they want for their children. As the great Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the dollar votes of consumers guide production. So long as a number of parents want a particular kind of school, free market entrepreneurs will supply it. Here is what Mises says: “The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain’s orders. The captain is the consumer. Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him.

“The consumers patronize those shops in which they can buy what they want at the cheapest price. Their buying and their abstention from buying decides who should own and run the plants and the farms. They make poor people rich and rich people poor. They determine precisely what should be produced, in what quality, and in what quantities. They are merciless bosses, full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. For them nothing counts other than their own satisfaction. They do not care a whit for past merit and vested interests. If something is offered to them that they like better or that is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors. In their capacity as buyers and consumers they are hard-hearted and callous, without consideration for other people.”

Mises recognized the free market solution to education, and he responded to a common objection to the idea, i.e., some parents might not have enough money to pay the school fees. Here is what he says in his great book Liberalism: “There is, in fact, only one solution: the state, the government, the laws must not in any way concern themselves with schooling or education.  Public funds must not be used for such purposes.  The rearing and instruction of youth must be left entirely to parents and to private associations and institutions. It is better that a number of boys grow up without formal education than that they enjoy the benefit of schooling only to run the risk, once they have grown up, of being killed or maimed.  A healthy illiterate is always better than a literate cripple.”

In addition to Mises’s response, private charity can help poor parents to pay school fees. And once children enter the work force, they can enroll in adult education courses. But we need to avoid falling into a trap. Some people, including economists like Milton Friedman, have proposed that the government provide education vouchers for poor families. But this is a dangerous idea, because it allows the government to set up requirements on how the families must spend their vouchers. When we say that government and schools must be separated, we mean completely separate. As I said in 1998, “Control follows tax money, so vouchers guarantee that the whole system of private education will eventually be absorbed into a gigantic government-funded propaganda machine, with the only pockets of diversity being schools that refuse any subsidies at all, though they will then be frequently outcompeted. This is precisely what happened on the university level, with a disastrous homogenization and dumbing-down. The idea of vouchers originated on the neoconservative right with Milton Friedman, but increasingly, the left has figured out that vouchers represent their dream come true: more special privileges for the poor, an expansion of the welfare state, the elimination of exclusive admissions, and the destruction of anachronisms like schools that still teach religious truth. We face an unholy alliance of big-government libertarians and equality activists of all stripes to rob us of what remains of educational freedom, and to do so in the name of serving up ever more of our tax dollars to the underclass. Vouchers reinforce the twin evils of public education: involuntary funding and compulsory attendance. As Mark Brandly of Ball State University has pointed out, compulsory attendance laws not only violate parental rights, they allow government to define what a school is, and therefore to outlaw such developments as small, informal neighborhood schools, held in homes, where one mother teaches arithmetic, another reading, another Christian doctrine, and so on. Yet today, such alternative schools are illegal. Vouchers do nothing to end that oppressive situation, and, in fact, go in the opposite direction: toward more draconian regulation and attempted abolition of religious education. Vouchers reinforce the twin evils of public education: involuntary funding and compulsory attendance.”

The great Murray Rothbard made a characteristically important point about education, one that puts into context the worry that poor children might not be able to attend private schools that require admission fees; “Every child coming into the world comes into a certain environment. This environment consists of physical things, natural and man-made, and other human beings with whom he comes in contact in various ways. It is this environment upon which he exercises his developing powers. His reason forms judgments about other people, about his relationships with them and with the world in general; his reason reveals to him his own desires and his physical powers. In this way, the growing child, working with his environment, develops ends and discovers means to achieve them. His ends are based on his own personality, the moral principles he has concluded are best, and his aesthetic tastes; his knowledge of means is based on what he has learned is most appropriate. This body of ‘theory’ in which he believes, he has acquired with his reasoning powers, either from the direct experience of himself or others, or from logical deduction by himself or by others. When he finally reaches adulthood, he has developed his faculties to whatever extent he can, and has acquired a set of values, principles, and scientific knowledge. This entire process of growing up, of developing all the facets of a man’s personality, is his education. It is obvious that a person acquires his education in all activities of his childhood; all his waking hours are spent in learning in one form or another. It is clearly absurd to limit the term ‘education’ to a person’s formal schooling. He is learning all the time. He learns and forms ideas about other people, their desires, and actions to achieve them, the world and the natural laws that govern it; and his own ends, and how to achieve them. He formulates ideas on the nature of man, and what his own and others’ ends should be in light of this nature. This is a continual process, and it is obvious that formal schooling constitutes only an item in this process. In a fundamental sense, as a matter of fact, everyone is ‘self-educated.’ A person’s environment, physical or social, does not ‘determine’ the ideas and knowledge with which he will emerge as an adult. It is a fundamental fact of human nature that a person’s ideas are formed for himself; others may influence them, but no one can determine absolutely the ideas and values which the individual will adopt or maintain through life.”

But even granting the truth of this, don’t children require at least some formal schooling? Yes, they do, but all that they need are the “three R’s”. Schools confined to the basics, with no frills added, can be provided at very low cost. And we shouldn’t forget that parents can homeschool their children. Rothbard, as always, is on target. “It has become fashionable to deride stress of the ‘three Rs,’ but it is obvious that they are of enormous importance, that the sooner they are thoroughly learned, the sooner the child will be able to absorb the vast area of knowledge that constitutes the great heritage of human civilization. They are the keys that unlock the doors of human knowledge, and the doors to the flowering and development of the child’s mental powers. It is also clear that the only necessity and use for systematic formal teaching arises in these technical subjects, since knowledge of them must be presented systematically. There is clearly no need for formal instruction in ‘how to play,’ in ‘getting along with the group,’ in ‘selecting a dentist,’ and the multitude of similar ‘courses’ given in ‘modern education.’ And, since there is no need for formal teaching in physical or directly spontaneous areas, there is no need for instruction in ‘physical education’ or in finger-painting.”

Let’s do everything we can to promote genuine free market schools, with no compromises!