In the view of Terry McAuliffe, former Virginia Gubernatorial candidate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”
According to Mary-Michelle Upson Hirschoff, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law, it is not even clear that parents have an unambiguous right to have their children excused from instruction they regard as objectionable. She states: “The curriculum of a public school in a democratic system of government is necessarily a subject of political debate. These controversies dramatize the inherent tension between the interests of the state and the interests of the parents in shaping the child’s development.”
And what is the position of Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers? She declared war on “culture warriors” who are “bullying teachers.” She elaborated: “But culture warriors are labeling any discussion of race, racism or discrimination as CRT to try to make it toxic. They are bullying teachers and trying to stop us from teaching students accurate history.” She opposed those who want to “limit learning and stoke fears about our public schools.”
Whatever happened to the axiom, “the customer is always right?” This is a basic foundational premise which operates all throughout the private economy. The customer wants to purchase new dungarees with holes in them that look ten years old? All the buyers need to do is snap their fingers and their wish is the command of the business sector. Do they want electronic vehicles? Entrepreneurs hasten to provide them. The same with computers instead of typewriters; cell phones in place of land line telephones and cameras; “roughage” instead of food that makes life worth living. They like large groceries instead of mom and pop stores, or, electronic shopping? Again their wishes are sovereign. “The customer is king” might well be the motto of the capitalist system.
Why is this not working in education? Why are there millions of parents outraged with what their children are being taught? The problem is so serious that Attorney General Merrick Garland has felt the need to involve the Federal Bureau of Investigation to quell these protests.
What is going on here? What is going on is that when it comes to public education, the children and their guardians, the parents, are simply not “customers.” Rather, they are wards of the state. Yes, their taxes finance public schooling, but they simply have no say in what goes on there, any more than they have control over other gigantic government bureaucracies. Wait, I spoke too quickly. They do have the ballot box. But this power can be implemented only every two or four years, and mainly impacts politicians, and only very, very indirectly, tenured bureaucrats in the teachers’ unions.
Instead of begging, pleading, complaining about the corrupt miseducation intellectually crippling their children, they should transfer their children to private schools. Why do they not do that? It is simple. Then, they would have to pay twice over, once through taxes for the “education” of other children in public schools, and a second time, directly, for their own kids’ private education.
How did this system get started? Public schooling began in most of the country in the late 19th century. It was initiated, mainly, by Protestants who wished to rid the country of the supposed evils of Popery and Catholicism. They did not have the power to ban private schools of the latter. They did the next best thing from their perspective: forced parents who patronized them to pay twice over. They were unscrupulous, but good economists; they knew that demand curves slope in a downward direction. Force the Catholics to pay double, and a lot of the impetus of Catholic education would be lost.
So, parents unhappy with woke public education being crammed down the throats of their children have a natural constituency: Catholics. And in addition Jews and members of other religion groups who also provide private education.
Forced school busing was beat back by massive numbers of outraged parents, and this latest attempt to impose political correctness can also meet the same fate, if the non “customers” can but become organized instead of limiting themselves to sporadic protests.
Walter E. Block is Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics at Loyola University New Orleans and is co-author of An Austro-Libertarian Critique of Public Choice (with Thomas DiLorenzo).
READER COMMENTS
Peter Gerdes
Jan 1 2022 at 4:03pm
It seems to me that one of the primary justifications for public funding of education in the first place is the (supposed but plausible) positive externality to society that education creates.
While parents should certainly have some say it seems only appropriate that if you want to tell people like my wife and I who don’t have children that we should support education with our tax dollars that the provided education at least plausibly offers those positive externalities.
While I’m skeptical that anything as politically controversial as the more absurd aspects of what is often called CRT are beneficial it does seem like the state has an interest in ensuring children get accurate information.
In other words, it seems inappropriate for the state to fund education at a private religious school that spends all it’s time drumming in moral and theological ideology but refuses to educate pupils about the evidence for evolution or expose them to thinkers who argue against theism. Maybe parents should probably have the right to send their children to such schools but it seems fair that if you want to use public funds to subsidize that (at least beyond a refund on that portion of your own taxes) that the school should have to provide certain basic familiarity with major ideas like evolution.
Van
Jan 4 2022 at 11:43am
Should schools be able to teach creationism rather than evolution? Should they be able to teach the kids critical race theory? The critical question for me is “Who gets to decide?” A parent should not have to pay twice to remove their kid from a school that teaches courses to which they object. They should simply be able to vote with their feet and their dollars by moving their kid to another school. That means a free market in education. Coercive funding through taxation leaves control in the hands of non-parents. Who cares about a child more than his parents? Not someone thousands of miles away who does not even know them.
Unfortunately, many people have the notion that if the state does not provide for education it won’t get done. Not true. The literacy rate was high before compulsory education was initiated. And James Tooley has documented how the world’s poorest countries have affordable private education. See his book “The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey into How the World’s Poorest People Are Educating Themselves.” So the argument that poor people would remain uneducated with a free market is just another excuse to continue the monopoly.
Peter Gerdes
Jan 1 2022 at 4:13pm
To be clear I don’t think there is any doubt that mainstream Catholic schools meet the kind of standards I am talking about (I hated going to Catholic school but I can’t deny they covered all the basic concepts/skills).
Those basics could certainly include factual familiarity with aspects of the complicated history of racism and slavery in this country. However, I think where most of the pushback is coming from is that many parents (accurately) perceive that the goal is to instill a certain attitude/moral viewpoint about such events not just factual knowledge.
And this is hardly a new problem. It’s been happening forever. Race just makes it more of a flash point. I remember being in highschool and having to push hard to be allowed to get extra credit for writing a letter to my congressperson opposing, rather than supporting, anfi-deforestation efforts in the amazon. (I never bothered to write it since I was never convinced it was better to oppose them I just resented the attempt to tell me what view I should have about the issue).
I don’t really know what to do about the problem given the lack of conservatives joining (or being discouraged from joining) the mainstream teaching profession.
David Ferguson
Jan 3 2022 at 9:36am
I’m guessing you received public education in a one-size-fits-all government school which could not survive a competitive market. Am I right?
Matthias
Jan 1 2022 at 6:54pm
Wouldn’t a relatively simple improvement be to allow kids to go to any public school instead of just the one that comes with their address?
That way at least there would be more competition between public schools, without the complicated politics of privatisation.
(Privatisation is probably still a good idea.)
robc
Jan 1 2022 at 7:36pm
Or make charter schools easier.
Privatization is still better, but charter schools and vouchers are key-hole solutions.
Phil H
Jan 2 2022 at 1:12am
I don’t usually take this kind of argument seriously, because it’s just silly. X works perfectly well for cellphones, why shouldn’t it work for children?! Well, because children and cellphones are different kinds of things…
But seeing as I’ve taken the time to read it, I might as well have a go at trying to think about it. One of the problems with private schooling is that you get a rich class that reproduces itself through expensive schooling and jobs-for-the-boys (see: Eton). But perhaps some kinds of market discipline could legitimately counter that phenomenon. One way would be if schools were not selective about their intake. One of the ways in which markets work (and generate competition and equality) is by saying: whoever’s got the money gets the goods. But historically, that’s not how schools have worked, with their selective interviews, legacy places, and networking. If all school subscriptions were blind, i.e. the school couldn’t tell who was applying, and just took a random selection of those willing to pay the price (or auctioned off school places blindly), then that might, over time, alleviate the problem of class formation. (Though, if they are day schools, catchment area house prices might still drive the formation of classes, so this might have no effect.)
My biggest worry with private education is that we would simply return to a pre-modern two-tier society where some people do not buy education for their children, and then form an underclass. I just don’t think this is an OK way to live, and no amount of social mobility will make it OK (even if social mobility weren’t stymied by self-reproducing overclasses, which it is.)
grc
Jan 2 2022 at 8:20am
Maybe the voucher system can be set up to address some of your concerns? For example, the money attached to the voucher can be inversely proportional to the kid´s parents income. This way, you make children from poorer backgrounds more financially attractive to schools, hopefully reducing that segregation you fear. And even if that doesn´t decrease the amount of segregation to a large degree, at least the schools with more disadvantage kids will have a better funding. It is also important to keep in mind that there are already big differences between schools, not just private vs public but also public schools differ a lot between them. So it is not like there is a complete equal opportunities kind of situation that we are risking by moving to a voucher system.
I think your concers about some parents not buying education to their kids are easier to address. School vouchers cannot be used to buy anyting else than education so no possibility to not take your kid to school and cash in the voucher. Also, there are compulsory schooling laws. Plus, I would imagine most people value education more today that they used to in the pre-modern times you talk about.
robc
Jan 2 2022 at 9:13am
That problem, if it really exists, is alleviated by vouchers.
The question I ask of people is: Do you support public education or public schools? We can have the former, via vouchers and mandatory schooling laws with an entirely private system.
There is no need for the latter.
There are problems with a voucher system, mainly it creates a floor in school pricing. There is no incentive to charge less than the voucher amount.
As far as me questioning the two class problem, it already exists within the current public school system (at least in the US) so not sure how privitization will make it worse.
Phil H
Jan 2 2022 at 11:39pm
Yes, vouchers + lottery place selection sounds like it might work. But… it also sounds pretty much like the system that already exists, without vounchers. You move to an area, there are two or three schools within commutable distance, you choose the one you want your child to go to, apply, and then whether or not you get the place is decided by lottery… that’s how things work now, and it’s the same way that things would work with vouchers.
So I think that the voucher argument is actually misplaced (perhaps deliberately so!). What voucher advocates are interested in is reducing government intervention in how schools are run, which is really quite a different question from how parents subscribe to the school. Perhaps that’s why the voucher question is so intractable. (1) Vouchers themselves don’t do the business; (2) Voucher supporters knowingly or unknowingly support them because they will be a wedge to reduce regulation of schools; (3) Voucher opponents oppose them because they also know that vouchers are a wedge.
Things like regulation of curriculum, exam requirements, class size rules, and teacher qualification rules are much more directly related to parents’ interests, and vouchers don’t really address them.
robc
Jan 3 2022 at 7:28am
No, it isnt much like the system in place. Currently one of the drivers of housing issues is geographic school placement. Some places have limited school choice, many dont.
But charter schools helps. As do vouchers.
And you missed the point of the article…of course parents are interested in how schools are run, THAT IS THE ENTIRE POINT. Parents want schools that teach what they want taught. The public school system cant provide that. Charter schools help, vouchers, help more, complete privitization helps the most.
Jens
Jan 4 2022 at 2:22am
The last paragraph is actually quite a good starting point for another discussion that might also somehow lead to something like a point.
I don’t think parents should be able to decide everything their children learn (that’s a major interpretation point of your “parents want schools that”, i know it’s not the only one).
That doesn’t mean that parents shouldn’t play a decisive role in their children’s education and growing up. In fact, because of their intrinsic motivation, 99% of the time they are better suited to be the personal caretakers of their children than anyone else.
Personally, I am quite happy that my parents did not have sole decision-making power over my educational career. That doesn’t mean they’re bad people.
Phil H
Jan 4 2022 at 7:37am
“Parents want schools that teach what they want taught.”
Sure. But if you have a regulated curriculum, or required national tests, then privatisation isn’t going to make that much difference, because the schools will still have to teach the same stuff to get the kids through the tests. More than “what they want taught,” the vast majority of parents need their children to come out of school with some qualifications that will enable them to get into university, or start their careers. Simply privatising the schools won’t make the kind of diffrence you’re talking about.
Which is why I suggest that this whole privatisation argument is a bit of a dead end. It’s much more a proxy argument about what should be taught in schools; and as such it’s doomed to be fruitless. Much better to address the issue directly.
There’s a whole separate issue about the economic efficiency of schools, and whether market discipline could help with that. That seems entirely possible to me, but in order to even define efficiency, you need to specify desired endpoints, and that doesn’t yet seem possible to do.
robc
Jan 4 2022 at 9:55pm
No reason for that assumption.
Billy Kaubashine
Jan 2 2022 at 12:50pm
On a tangent, but related subject…….When was the last time a wealthy individual founded a new university? I would have thought that guys like Buffett and Gates would have gone the Stanford route and immortalized themselves by founding world class universities.
robc
Jan 2 2022 at 1:50pm
Does Falwell count? Although Liberty was founded in 1971.
Billy Kaubashine
Jan 2 2022 at 8:39pm
That wasn’t what I had in mind. And I suspect that you knew that very well.
robc
Jan 3 2022 at 7:31am
He was wealthy (not Gates/Buffett level) and founded a university.
Maybe he had different goals than Leland Stanford…but maybe not, depending on how you look at it.
Ted
Jan 2 2022 at 2:15pm
The customer believes it’s an issue because of lies told to them by bad news. There are better ways of helping the forest grow and handling a few bad apples that aren’t burning the whole thing down.
Mrs. C. E. Dibb
Jan 3 2022 at 4:41am
It might be a good idea for Primary Schools to settle for teaching children the Three “R’s” and teaching them thoroughly. Give them a grounding in the appreciation of good literature, music, mental arithmetic, and the basic essentials of Geography and History, the elements of respect and love for Nature.Social engineering of any kind should be strictly discouraged, aside from a straightforward unambiguous nudge towards the 10 Commandments.
John McClain
Jan 3 2022 at 6:43am
I’ve pursued this question pretty much my whole life, I’m dyslexic to the extreme, got eye surgery giving me my left eye about two, and barely graduated high school, with a “classical education”. I am educated solely because our mom was a librarian, my elder sister realized my problem, when it interfered with our “bedtime stories”, and she taught me to memorize word shape, rather than the alphabet I didn’t have.
I fought the school system for our own children, “one size fits all”, and considered this ‘plandemic’, the perfect opportunity for us to fix our system.
I am well knowledgeable in history, and with our “Louisianna Purchase”, the effort, intent to have it surveyed, divided in to four proto-states, and become states most ricky tik, was strongly supported by the “state education system”, established by Madison, to get those “States” in the short order he did. I’ve long considered this one of the most single important factors of our “mass misinformation system”. We have never “looked back” from that event.
Semper Fidelis,
John McClain
BillD
Jan 3 2022 at 9:33am
“Privatize Education” is the libertarian version of the underpants gnome project.
Yes, parents should have input into curriculum. Probably the system should be changed over to vouchers.
But most people, especially those outside of major urban areas, are OK with their public schools. And when one looks at private schools outside of parochial schools one sees most of the same pedagogy seen in public schools even if it is done better. Schools, private and public, broadly reflect the attitudes of the communities in which they exist. And when they don’t people really do speak up.
And I find it deeply ironic for the professor to cite the customer being right axiom. I can think of few things more destructive to the university education system than placing more focus than deserved on the desires of 18-22 y.o. customers over the past 30 or so years.
Thomas Hammett
Jan 3 2022 at 3:10pm
A correction to your last paragraph. The customer is the one who pays. Rarely are the 18-20 year-old students the ones who are paying the bill, and schools should pay relatively little attention to them concerning curriculum.
robc
Jan 5 2022 at 9:24am
Today, with the cost of tuition and student loans, they 18-20 year olds are the ones paying. Or, more likely, their future selves 25-35.
MrLiberty
Jan 3 2022 at 11:40am
It would seem to me that if the title of the piece is “Privatize Education” then the focus of the article should be on that, rather than on it as a passing thought that was virtually dismissed in the piece. I have many of Dr. Block’s books and know that he is not a proponent of whining to school boards, but of walking away and taking the power back into one’s own hands, but he truly missed the opportunity to emphasize that here. Additionally, there are candidates for state legislature who oppose government monopoly schools and the taxes stolen to pay for them. Where is the call to support them, promote them, encourage them, etc? Where is the call to reach out to the top where the problems begin (every state constitution demands “free” education)? Where is the promotion of homeschooling over private schools as a possibly more-functional alternative? Where is even the promotion of parents banding together to hire a teacher directly to educate their children as was the norm in the 19th century in small towns, etc? The history lesson was great, the acknowledgement of the double cost was great (although the amount of property taxation pales in comparison to the cost of private school), but the solutions were seriously lacking.
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