Education

Changing the Education Paradigm

by Scott McPherson September 1, 2005

America doesn’t have a Department of Sustenance. Why not? Eating is one of the most important things we do. Without food, human beings die. Still, we’re content to allow individual citizens and families to choose for themselves how best to fill their tummies. Yet, when it comes to the less — though nonetheless very — important job of education, we’ve ...

Evolution or Intelligent Design? None of the Government’s Business

by Sheldon Richman August 22, 2005

You’d think that with all he has to do — including fighting the global struggle against violent extremism, or whatever they’re calling it this week — President Bush would be too busy to make the really big decisions: such as what ought to be taught in science class. But ...

Public-School Outrages

by Anthony Gregory August 1, 2005

Americans across the political spectrum see the failure of the government school system in teaching the basics, such as reading, writing, math, science, and history. No matter how many tax dollars have been spent or reform proposals implemented, the dismal performance of public-school students continues unabated. A recent case involving a student’s arrest helps to ...

Why Not a Free Market in Education?

by Jacob G. Hornberger March 25, 2005

Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is a smart man. Such being the case, why isn’t he able to recognize the real solution to the woes of public schooling? Gates recently published an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times in which he stated, “Our high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, ...

National Wealth Tax to Fund Education?

by George Leef March 25, 2005

Like all socialist enterprises, “public education” in the United States is very high in cost and very low in positive results. While some students graduate from public schools with sharp intellectual skills (often owing more to their home environment than to their school instruction), many others drift aimlessly ...

What’s Wrong with Public Schools?

by Sheldon Richman March 25, 2005

The following is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of Separating School & State: How to Liberate Americas Families (1994) by Sheldon Richman. Its time to admit that pubic education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybodys role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. Its ...

Liberate Us from the Educators

by Scott McPherson January 10, 2005

The state’s monopoly on education is perhaps the worst thing that has ever happened to children in America. From the earliest days of the republic, education was provided by parents, churches, and local communities. The first proposals for state-supported schools were merely calls to address an absence of ...

Government Can’t Run Schools Like Businesses

by Thomas L. Johnson January 1, 2005

What this all boils down to is, are we trying to raise sheep — timid, docile, easily driven or led — or free men? If what we want is sheep, our schools are perfect as they are. If what we want is free men, we’d better start making some big changes. — John Holt, The Underachieving School Just ...

The Great Voucher Fraud

by Laurence M. Vance December 1, 2004

The mantra of “school choice” is repeated endlessly by proponents of educational vouchers, and is getting louder. But does an income-transfer program cease to be an income-transfer program just because it is recommended by conservatives, libertarians, a Republican president, and free-market economists? Advocates of educational reform are agreed on one thing: the doleful condition of the public school system. But ...

State-Run Schools: The New Caesaropapism

by Lawrence M. Ludlow September 1, 2004

After two and a half years of the so-called war on terror, it is disturbingly clear that the attacks of 9/11 were the result of an immoral U.S. foreign policy and that the government’s inability to prevent the attacks represents a massive and inexcusable failure. Nonetheless, faith in government reached epidemic levels in the aftermath of 9/11. Instead of wholesale ...

Spotsy High a Prison

by Thomas L. Johnson September 1, 2004

How can we speak of democracy or freedom when from the very beginning of life we mold the child to undergo tyranny, to obey a dictator? … How can we expect them, when school-life is finished, to accept and use the rights of freedom? — Maria Montessori, Education for a New World Two Spotsylvania High School students have been very ...

How Brown v. Board of Education Throttled Black Schooling

by Sheldon Richman August 1, 2004

The Law of Unintended Consequences is always in force. Given the inherent uncertainty of the future and the interconnectedness of things, any action is subject to the likelihood that some effects will be unexpected. Among these, some will be welcome, others distasteful. There is, in this law, a practical argument for ...