The public "government" school system has become a nightmare of its own
making. For decades, its proponents have done everything they can to keep
the public "government" education machine going. Moreover, they have claimed
that, without public schools, American children would not be educated and
that parents are not fit to decide how their children should be educated.
They often say that public schools are needed because children need to be
socialized at a very young age and that the state - not the parents or any
legal guardian - has a vested interest in the learning development of our
children.
The Left, unsurprisingly enough, has often complained that the public
"government" schools never receive adequate amounts of funding in order for
their schools to work. Obviously, that argument is always the same: we need
more money for the schools so that they can do the job of "educating" our
very young. Unfortunately, today's generation of Americans are unaware of
the fact that the modern welfare state has polluted their minds with the
belief that only the public schools can successfully provide a real learning
environment for our children - one that parents are just unqualified to
furnish for them. Therefore, this has become the very success story of
liberal collectivists who erroneously believe that the state knows the child
better than the parents. Because liberals cannot and will never be able to
successfully justify the welfare statism that they brought to this country
decades ago, they cannot and will never see the damage that their
socialism - as well as their love for it - has done to America. In effect,
they are, without question, largely and morally responsible for bringing
about their brand of statism not only to our country, but also to the
education system as well.
The Right, on the other hand, sees things somewhat differently. While many
conservative collectivists, historically speaking, have correctly noted that
the public schools are a disaster waiting to happen, they too have opined
that the public schools must continue to exist, despite their view that the
schools can be "reformed" via injections of what they erroneously view as
"free-market" or "market-oriented" approaches in order to make the schools
work. Somehow the idea of using the power of the state to strong-arm
families, educators, and local schools into accepting aberrant and
distorted - not to mention state-sanctioned (a.k.a. state-imposed) -
socialistic machinations under the rubric of "free enterprise" is very
appealing to conservatives, who push and call for them at every turn.
Because of these simple truths, it is morally and economically imperative
that the government control and monopoly of our education system is
dismantled immediately. It is the obligation and moral duty of the citizens
of our nation to take the education monopolists and their collectivistic
sycophants to task for their immoral and unconstitutional control of the
education establishment. That goes for every man, woman, and child who can
find it within themselves to oppose the union of education and state.
Furthermore, because of the pervasive evils of a top-down, bureaucratic, and
one-size-fits-all public "government" education system that functions at the
local, state, and federal levels, local parents, educators, and schools find
that they are unable to retain control of their own schools, thanks to the
political clout of big government politicians, teacher unions, and their
collectivistic union lackeys.
School vouchers
While a number of conservatives have ardently called for disenfranchised and
disillusioned parents to remove their children from Godless schools that
refuse to allow school prayer, post copies of the Ten Commandments on the
walls of the classrooms, and teach creationism over evolution, end political
correctness on school grounds, and many other forms of socialistic measures,
increasing numbers of them are ecstatically endorsing and even touting
school vouchers for religious parents to do just that. Their contention is
that, because God has been "taken out of the classroom" (largely thanks to
state and federal education bureaucrats, unions, and many Supreme Court
decisions that were handed down over the years), the schools can neither be
trusted nor relied upon to inculcate school children with religious
principles and moral values that ought to be a natural part of their
education.
What's even more distressing is that these conservatives, including some
libertarians, are deceiving parents, students, and the public at large
regarding these voucher claims by promoting them in the form of "school
choice" - that is, a disguised euphemism for reform of the schools simply
designed to broaden the choices for parents to educate their kids with the
help of the state. This reform is intended to bring schools on a path to a
separation of education and state - "intended" being the operative word
here.
A tax-funded voucher system seems like a good idea on the surface, except
that it's not. Why? Because there are quite a number of problems with the
money.
First, as almost everyone knows, vouchers are just a welfare-state scam that
basically snookers parents into accepting public "government" money to send
their children to a public or private school with the permission and
choosing of the state. Parents who take the money will find that the state
has already attached strings to the funds. It goes without saying that the
state will be making demands in return. That means that the parents and
their children will ultimately end up as permanent education wards of the
state. Once the private schools begin accepting public money, they will no
longer answer to parents but rather to the government. In the end, the
private schools eventually become carbon copies of their public
counterparts, resulting in their imminent oblivion.
Second, once private schools take the money, they will find themselves under
the regulatory gun of the state. Let's not kid ourselves. As soon as they
receive the funds, the schools will no longer be responsive to the
efficiency of the free market. In a real free market, private schools would
have to respond to market competition in order to remain in business. Those
schools that do accept the handouts won't have to worry about the incentive
to pare down costs if they are dramatically reduced or eliminated.
Third, private schools will eventually be priced out of the marketplace if
the voucher system becomes mainstreamed. There are only two ways that this
can occur. If the schools refuse to accept vouchers, then the families who
are desperate to have the money will patronize the voucher-funded schools,
leading to the closing of the non-voucher-funded schools. Moreover, if
schools are coerced into embracing the funding, then they may respond by
opting to go out of business in lieu of allowing themselves to be under the
federal microscope.
Finally, the idea that parents need vouchers to get their children out of
the ailing public schools and place them in their better-performing private
counterparts perpetuates the myth that parents do not already have "school
choice" for their children. On the contrary, parents certainly do have that
choice today. That choice is no different than the other choices they have
in their lives, choices like food, entertainment, cars, clothes, etc. When
voucher proponents talk about "school choice," what they're really saying is
that parents have no choice of where they can take other people's money and
spend it for their children's education.
Another way of looking at the deleterious effects that vouchers bring to
families and children is that the program is equivalent to food stamps for
schools. Voucher advocates often say that they don't support food stamps or
any other government assistance programs such as public "government" housing
and public "government" medical-care programs.
There's more to this problem than meets the eye. Some parents who apply for
the voucher programs to send their children to nontraditional private
schools will immediately discover that they are not eligible for the
state-funded program. States will never give their approval to remit the
funds to schools that admit only a certain group of students (customers) of
race, gender, and class. Schools that want to be acceptable will have to
satisfy academic, curriculum, and textbook standards established by the
state. The teachers will have to satisfy those requirements as well. If any
educator is found not to possess the certifications as well as the proper
degrees from state-run and state-approved colleges, they will not be hired,
considering the school wants to be put on the list of government-approved
schools.
Parents who choose to homeschool their children will not be allowed to
receive the vouchers, considering that the state will discriminate
homeschooling parents on the grounds that they do not possess a
state-recognized degree from the state's own approved college or university,
possess neither the experience nor the certification to educate their
children, and are not able to obtain the funds to cover the costs for books,
videos, software, and supplies that may have been paid for by the state's
voucher program.
Other parents who choose to enroll their children in a religious or
parochial school quickly learn that they are denied access to the funds,
because a majority of the religious schools, in all honesty, are extremely
discriminatory. These schools employ instructors and admit only pupils who
adhere to their own particular religion. If a religious institution refuses
to compromise its principles and values, they will be denied the vouchers.
As human nature would tell us, the temptation to succumb to government
demands would be too great. After all, as with all federal regulations, the
demands would be meager in the beginning, but eventually they would grow to
become terribly invasive.
If there's one group that's mostly overlooked, especially when "school
choice" does not fit in the educational scheme of things, it's the
taxpayers. They are forced to subsidize others who have the privilege of
"school choice." Taxpayers may not realize this, but they are the sole
source of funding used to disperse public "government" vouchers, so that
parents can employ the money to furnish each school-age child an education
under the rubric of "school choice." Childless married couples - that is,
those who choose not to have children - already spend thousands of their tax
dollars to educate the children of married couples, yet they will now be
forced to drop more money, whether they like it or not. While communities at
the local level are not forced to pay taxes to feed and provide clothing for
the children residing in them, they are, however, forced to subsidize their
education.
Not all vouchers are a bad idea though. Currently, many private voucher
programs do exist. If all school taxes were dramatically slashed, or
preferably repealed, then the money used to pay for the current school
system would be available, giving parents a real school choice. This would
immediately launch a free-market education system, in which there would be
more funding for better schools that respond to consumer demand and respect
consumer sovereignty. Moreover, there would be more privately-funded voucher
programs, giving parents (consumers) more choices and more options to spend
their private education dollars as they see fit. If a separation of
education and state were enacted, the free market would immediately take
over the education system, allowing parents and their children to patronize
schools that consistently meet their needs. Even if such a separation was
never allowed and school taxes were cut on a drastic scale, it would require
the public "government" schools to compete with the private-voucher-funded
private schools, forcing the government schools to either clean up their act
or get out of the way.
Tuition tax credits
Another government machination that allegedly fixes the problems plaguing
our education system is the tuition tax credit. It is essentially designed
to alleviate the school tax burden for parents by allowing them to reduce
their school or income tax liability dollar-for-dollar just so that they can
enroll their children in private schools.
It is often claimed that the one advantage that tuition tax credits have
over public "government" vouchers is that they do provide tax relief for
parents who, if given the credits, would keep more of their money from which
would most likely be taken. That is absolutely true, as tuition tax credits,
on the surface, seem like a better alternative to public vouchers anytime,
any day of the week.
Another claim from tax credit proponents is that such credits are superior
to the public voucher system because they result in less government control
of the schools and less of a chance of uniting church (through religious
schools) and state, due to their indirect nature and the unintended
consequences that often follow.
Except there's only one problem with this alternative: they lead to greater
control and regulation of the private school industry. To believe otherwise
is a pipe dream. Such a measure would open the door to more perverse
conditions, such as cash subsidies to parents with children by childless
couples, private schools complying with federal tax audits, the denial of
parental authority over how the schools spend the money per pupil, and so
forth.
With all the problems associated with the public "government" schools, isn't
it time to pull the plug on them and put an end to the pervasive evil that
is the bedrock of the public "government" school monopoly?
© 2006 by Todd Andrew Barnett. All Rights Reserved. Permission to reprint
any portion of or the entire article is hereby granted, provided that the
author's name and credentials are included.
