Best Textbooks for a Free-Market University
by Mark Skousen
"In short, free-market economics is back in the college classroom."
Colleges Charge Big for Worthless Curricula
November 11, 2003
by Wendy McElroy
"There is an obvious solution: Return to a curriculum in which knowledge is valued
more than political correctness."
Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling by John
Taylor Gatto
reviewed by Hannah Lapp
"As for solutions to the state of our educational system, Gatto at one point advocates
a voucher, or school choice system, which would still be sadly deficient because of
its dependence on government funds. His real thrust, though, comes out beautifully on
page 79: 'Break up these institutional schools, decertify teaching, let anyone who has
a mind to teach bid for customers, privatize this whole business—trust the free market
system. I know it’s easier to say than do, but what other choice do we have?'”
Education and the Racist Road to Barbarism
by George Reisman
"The value of education is derived from the value of civilization, whose guardian and
perpetuator education is supposed to be. An educational system dedicated to the
barbarization of youth is a self-contradictory monstrosity that must be cast out and
replaced with a true educational system. But this can be done only by those who
genuinely understand, and are able to defend, the objective value of Western
civilization."
Foundation Funding in the Marketplace for Ideas
May 24, 2000
by Randall G. Holcombe
"Philanthropists like Carnegie and Rockefeller engaged in a different type of
philanthropy when they were alive than their foundations have become involved in
after they died. The production of tangible benefits was replaced by attempts at social
and political influence. One troubling aspect about this type of activity by foundations
is that those who run the foundations are accountable to nobody for their activities.
The person who gave the money is dead, and within broad limits the foundation’s trustees
can spend the money in any way they think appropriate, without answering to anyone."
The Free Mans Library by Henry Hazlitt
reviewed by William Henry Chamberlin
"This anthology of some 550 books dealing with politics and economics from the
libertarian standpoint is a most valuable and able contribution. Each work is briefly
summarized and characterized by Mr. Hazlitt himself or by some competent critic. Further
guidance is supplied by the introduction, distinguished by Mr. Hazlitt’s familiar
qualities of penetration, lucidity, and humor."
The Literature of Freedom
by Henry Hazlitt
"Such a compilation seemed to me to be increasingly urgent because so few writers and
speakers on public questions today reveal any idea of the wealth, depth, and breadth of
the literature of freedom. What threatens us today is not merely the outright
totalitarian philosophies of fascism and communism, but the increasing drift of thought
in the totalitarian direction. Many people today who complacently think of themselves
as “middle-of-the-roaders” have no conception of the extent to which they have already
taken over statist, socialist, and collectivist assumptions—assumptions which, if
logically followed out, must inevitably carry us further and further down the
totalitarian road."
The Nature and Significance of Economic Education
by Israel M. Kirzner
"If public policies seeking to increase the scale and scope of government intervention
in the economy are to be successfully fought at the legislative and executive levels,
the economic understanding of the public must certainly and urgently be enhanced. For
this to be achieved, the delicate interface between moral passion and scientific
detachment must be recognized and respected."
The Online Transformation of Economics Education
February 11, 2000
by Ross Emmett
"The much discussed e-commerce revolution has been accompanied by a quieter, but equally
far-reaching, transformation of educational services."
On the Importance of Economic Education
by Manuel Lora
"The majority of people on this planet are simply oblivious to the economic laws that
permeate human action. Though some are aware of the law of supply and demand, this is
barely scratching the surface. As Austro-libertarians, it is our responsibility to "get
the word out" as much as we can. From marginal revenue product and decreasing marginal
utility to the issues of central banking, time preference and minimum wage laws: he who
feels able to disseminate this message ought to do just that."
Political Curriculum: Education Essential to Keep a Free Society
by Philip E. Jacobson
A free nation must teach each generation about the history of
society so that they will be intellectually prepared to preserve
their freedom in the face of social changes.
What's Wrong with How We Teach Economics
by Brandon Crocker
"My old economics professor who thought advanced calculus was the key to understanding
economics was wrong. The key to understanding economics is understanding human action.
Economic education will improve in this country when works that portray the grand nature
of the economic process-works by Adam Smith, Wilhelm Röpke, Ludwig von Mises, F. A.
Hayek, and others-are given an important place in the university."
Education: Free and Compulsory
by Murray N. Rothbard
"The effect of the State's compulsory schooling laws is not only to repress the growth
of specialized, partly individualized, private schools for the needs of various types of
children. It also prevents the education of the child by the people who, in many respects,
are best qualified-his parents. The effect is also to force into schools children who
have little or no aptitude for instruction at all. It so happens that among the variety
of human ability there is a large number of subnormal children, children who are not
receptive to instruction, whose reasoning capacity is not too great. To force these
children to be exposed to schooling, as the State does almost everywhere, is a criminal
offense to their natures. Without the ability to learn systematic subjects, they must
either sit and suffer while others learn, or the bright and average students must beheld
back greatly in their development while these children are pressured to learn. In any
case, the instruction has almost no effect on these children, many of whose hours of life
are simply wasted because of the State's decree. If these hours were spent in simple,
direct experience which they were better able to absorb, there is no question that they
would be healthier children and adults as a result. But to dragoon them into a school for
a formative decade of their lives, to force them to attend classes in which they have no
interest or ability, is to warp their entire personalities."
Education In America
by Susan Alder
"Many parents and churches consider their involvement in the modern Christian school
movement to be reclaiming what was lost in the last century. They try, as much as
possible, to keep themselves free from government interference. Many refuse to report
enrollment figures to state or federal education agencies on religious grounds."
Education in Colonial America
September 1983
by Robert A. Peterson
"Armed with love, common sense, and a nearby woodshed, colonial mothers often
achieved more than our modern-day elementary schools with their federally-funded
programs and education specialists. These colonial mothers used simple, time-tested
methods of instruction mixed with plain, old-fashioned hard work. Children were not
ruined by educational experiments developed in the ivory towers of academe."
Market Education: The Unknown History by Andrew J. Coulson
reviewed by George C. Leef
"After reading Coulson’s lengthy exposition, it is impossible to avoid the
conclusion that abandoning the education marketplace in favor of government
schooling is one of our greatest national blunders."
Market Education: The Unknown History by Andrew J. Coulson
reviewed by James E. Bond
"The title of Andrew J. Coulson’s book is misleading. The book is far more than an
engaging historical account of “for-profit” education; it is a compelling brief for
closing down the public schools and letting the market supply education much as it
supplies any other consumer good, from milk to cottages."
Origins of Federal Control Over Education
by Charlotte Twight
"Intentional misrepresentation by government officials undergirded passage of both the
National Defense Education Act of 1958 and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act
of 1965. With the NDEA, the bill’s ostensible justification was the “Sputnik crisis”;
with the ESEA, it was the “war on poverty.” But those fanning public apprehension about
the Sputnik crisis did not believe it was a crisis, just as those promoting the ESEA as
an antipoverty measure understood that it would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.
It matters little how many come to understand the truth now: the bills became law; they
altered U.S. institutions; and in due time they ineradicably changed public perceptions
of the accepted (and hence acceptable) role of government."
The Origins of the Public School
by Robert P. Murphy
"Most people-who were themselves educated either in the public schools or who used
state-approved textbooks and state-licensed teachers-were taught that the founders
of the American public-school system were simply devoted to ensuring opportunity to
all Americans, rich or poor. But we have seen that the main thrust of the system was
to assimilate those elements of the population, such as the Catholics, poor, and
foreigners, who did not fit the mold of what a "proper" American should be. School
was transformed from a voluntary setting of learning into a coerced detention center,
with its wards being fed consciously selected information in an attempt to produce
acquiescence in the status quo."
Public Education versus Liberty: The Pedigree of an Idea
by Michiel Visser
"Now that many parents have taken things into their own hands, thus
re-conquering bits of sovereignty ceded long ago, we wait for political leaders who
will not be afraid to state the truth. That the attempt of the state to educate has
failed. That it is time to undo the antiquated legacy of absolutism. That we must once
again separate state and school. Thus we await the liberation of our schools."
The Spread of Education Before Compulsion: Britain and America in the Nineteenth Century
July 1, 1996
by Edwin G. West
"This essay will accordingly look at the history of the subject to enquire to what extent
the altruism of typical parents extended to education as well as to other necessities
before governments intervened. I shall first examine conditions in England in the
nineteenth century prior to the introduction of compulsory education. I shall then make
a similar investigation of the United States to see if there were interesting parallels."
The Underground History of American Education
by John Taylor Gatto
"John Taylor Gatto documents how the basic philosophy of state-sponsored schools was
lavishly funded by power elites in huge tax-exempt foundations (especially the
Rockefeller Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation) and came to service their
interests in The Underground History of American Education." - Steven Yates.
Hitler's Ghost Haunts German Parents
August 12, 2005
by Alexandra Colen
"Of all religious groups Baptists were among the most fiercely persecuted in the Soviet
Union. They were not just Christians but they also distrusted the state, preaching an
institutional secession from state-run institutions. Many Baptists belonged to the
German-speaking minority in Southern Russia and Kazakhstan. In the late 1980s and early
1990s, they emigrated to Germany, the land where their forefathers had originally come
from. Today, these Baptist immigrants from Russia, as well as the Low-German Mennonites,
are being prosecuted in Germany because they are unhappy with what their children are
learning in the German public schools, which they consider too secular. Children are not
allowed to opt out of classes or school activities and homeschooling is illegal in
Germany since Adolf Hitler outlawed it in 1938."
Homeschool Civics Lessons
by Cathy Cuthbert
"Our government, like every government since before Plato conceived of his Republic,
knows full well the danger that homeschooling represents. My final Homeschool Civics
Lesson is therefore the most important to learn: homeschoolers must be eternally vigilant."
Homeschooling and Educational Choice
by Dennis L. Peterson
"Undoubtedly the best possible school choice plan would be the free market: no
government coercion to attend any school. That means total freedom to choose—whether
that choice be public schools (should any survive the competition of the free market),
private schools, homeschooling, or even no school at all. Let the market, which has
brought the United States such unsurpassed material prosperity, bring us a similar
educational prosperity."
Home Schooling: A Personal Experience
by Hannah Lapp
"My own formal education, and that of most of my 11 brothers and sisters, consisted of
eight years of schooling at home. Our teacher was Mother, or our big sister Lydia. Going
to school meant going to an upstairs hall or other suitable room in one of the sundry
and fascinating dwellings we called home in those days."
Homeschooling As A Better Alternative To Public School
September 29, 2005
by Chris Liakos
"The homeschool environment promises a more wholesome atmosphere and academic progress
that can be monitored closely by parent instructors with a vested interest in the
student's learning outcome."
Homeschooling Facts
by Greg Beato
Homeschooling for Liberty
by Tom Smedley
"Well, suppose we politely refuse to hand our children over. Suppose we raise our
children to regard all the claims of the state, starting with its asserted claim to
30 hours of their lives every week, with skepticism. How likely will these children
be to go along with other statist demands in the future?"
Homeschooling Must Be Decriminalized: Parents Really Do Know Best
September 18, 2003
by Ariel Dillon
"Although there are no restrictions on homeschooling at the federal level, and it is
never once mentioned as illegal in California law, the California Department of Education
(CDE) has regularly tried to undermine parental freedom to teach children at home. The
most egregious example was a statement made by the CDE, since toned down, which said that
any homeschooled child is a truant. Social service workers have also harassed families by
forcing entry to private homes, privately interviewing, and strip searching children,
simply because the children were not enrolled in a formal school."
Lessons from Homeschooling
September 1998
by Donald J. Boudreaux
"But parents today increasingly avoid “education specialists” because these alleged
specialists are so bad that non-specialist parents outperform them at the task of
education. The average home-schooled child scores in the 85th percentile on standardized
achievement tests a full 35 points higher than the score registered by the average
public-school student."
The Myths of Home Schooling and the Inferiority of State Education
by Dain Fitzgerald
"It’s high time we all stop patronizing the system, offering modifications to
an inherently inefficient and indecent status quo. Home schools, the ultimate in
private schools, offer the ultimate solution."
Public School Failures, Homeschool Successes
by Dennis L. Peterson
"In short, homeschooling not only works, but is helping to erode the public school
monopoly. The more this message gets out, the more serious will become the
homeschooling option."
Raise Your Own
by Cathy Cuthbert
"Libertarians like to talk about all the free market solutions that will spring up
once government schools are put out of business. There would be an explosion of choices
spanning all teaching methodologies and espousing every world view. I am confident of
the virtues to come from free market education, so much so that I choose to volunteer
in the movement to separate school and state. Yet despite the anticipation of a glorious
free market triumph, I am not completely optimistic. I don't foresee the abandonment of
full-time, institutional schooling and the serial parenting that has risen around it,
a hurdle barring true education reform. Why? Because child rearing is not an activity
that should be hired out. The relationship between mother and child is not economic;
it is deeply personal."
The Rise of the American Empire
by Cathy Cuthbert
"It may take time for homeschool families to emerge from their parents’ public school
brainwashing, but with intellectual freedom will come the inevitable rejection of
government lies and statist sophistry. I predict that homeschoolers will dominate
the minority that brings about the next American revolution, just as homeschoolers
dominated that minority in the first American revolution. And I expect my homeschool
family to be part of it."
The Seduction of Homeschooling Families
by Chris Cardiff
"While educational statists will never be able to put the homeschooling genie back
in the bottle, they've made great strides in coaxing him to do their bidding. Many
homeschooling activists recognize the dangers and are sounding a clarion call to
resist the seductions of state-funded "freebies" and the inevitable strings attached
to them."
Toward an Educational Renaissance
by Chris Cardiff
"Can parents be trusted to educate their own children? The underlying assumption of
America’s vast government school system is that they cannot. Yet homeschooling families,
illustrating the powerful concept of spontaneous order in a free society, belie that
assumption."
Who Controls the Children?
by Carl Watner
"Homeschooling, as the State has already recognized, contains an explosive and potential
force for change, possibly away from statism in the direction of voluntaryism.
If there is to be a change, it must originate within the individual, and must proceed
from individual to individual. Homeschooling certainly follows this method. There can be
no mass conversions. Only as the philosophy of voluntaryism is passed down from father
to son, from mother to daughter, will the situation change."
Access to Achievement: Opening up good schools for all
by Chris Lambert
"The demand for private education is enormous-and not just from parents of the brightest
students. But only a minority can afford it, because they already pay tax towards the
state system. It's time to build a new system that supports parents who want the right
school for their children's abilities - and needs- so that non-state education becomes
accessible to all, says top private school teacher Chris Lambert in this ASI report."
Alliance for the Separation of School & State
"Separation of school and state applies to schooling the approach Americans have
used for churching: Government doesn't run, compel, or finance Sunday School. We
believe the same approach should be applied to Monday school, Tuesday school, Wednesday
school, etc., etc."
Can the Free Market Provide Public Education?
by Sheldon Richman
"There is no good substitute for the decentralized, spontaneous entrepreneurial
process that full privatization of education would stimulate. But entrepreneurship
has preconditions: freedom and private property on both the supply and demand sides.
That means no government money. Asking for government finance is equivalent to
the Founding Fathers’ asking King George to finance the American Revolution. He
might have agreed—but it would have been a very different revolution."
Competition in Education: The Case of Reading
by Daniel Hager
"The nature of accountability in the public and private sectors is fundamentally
different. Perhaps nowhere is the contrast more vivid than in education, particularly
the teaching of reading to young children."
Deschooling Society
by Ivan Illich
Education
by Dr. Mary Ruwart
The good doctor answers tough questions about education in a free society.
Educational Freedom
August 1975
by Scott W. Bixler
"Letting the market function unhampered in education would most likely produce an
explosive and enthusiastic growth in the number of private voluntary schools. Parents
would be free to send their children to trade schools, rightwing schools, left-wing
schools, church controlled schools, "progressive" schools, or whatever type for which
there was a sufficient demand. Those which satisfied their customers would flourish. Those
which did not would have to close."
Education in a Free Nation: Children Can Learn without State-Forced Schooling
by Liz Hanson
"With government totally removed from the business of education,
we will, I believe, be able to reexperience the uniqueness, diversity,
and freedom that is our human heritage."
Envisaging a Free Market in Education
by Kevin McFarlane
For-Profit Schools Are Making a Comeback
by Joshua Hall and Richard K. Vedder
"Despite huge subsidies for public schools and opposition by public-school
teachers’ unions, the for-profit education industry is growing dramatically, far
outpacing the growth of the U.S. economy. Dissatisfaction with public schools, rising
household incomes, and other trends suggest that for-profit schools have a bright future."
Freedom of Education Will Solve Our Education Crisis
by Jack D. Douglas
"Unfortunately, almost all of the politicians and so-called expert educationalists
rushing forward to solve this latest education crisis seem to have forgotten the
simplest facts about the early history of American education, which enabled this
country to produce far more than its share of the world’s most creative thinkers.
This ignorant panic is inspiring a headlong rush into the central planning and
bureaucratization of education that have been increasingly destroying the effectiveness
of U.S. education for over 40 years."
A Free-market University
by William H. Peterson
"It’s Universidad Francisco Marroquín, founded in 1972 in rented space in the capital
city of Guatemala. Clues to its philosophy are seen in the name of one of its newest
buildings, the Ludwig von Mises Library, so designated in foot-high polished brass
lettering over its entrance, and in the fact that members of the UFM faculty have been
published on the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal as much as those of
any American university."
Higher Education at Lower Cost
August 31, 1998
by Richard K. Vedder
"But things are changing as entrepreneurs see the possibility of turning a profit while
offering a good education at a competitive price—even without subsidies. A for-profit
school can hire people whose main job is to teach, for much less per hour. It can gain
efficiencies through technology and have fewer administrators. The University of Phoenix,
now in 12 locations and on the Internet, is one of America's largest universities."
Introducing Children to Liberty: A Golden Opportunity for a Free Nation's Survival
by Danielle M. Woodrich
Advocates raising children according to A. S. Neill's principles
to create "an opportunity for a culture based on liberty to survive
and prosper."
The Invisible Miracle of Catholic Schools
Summer 1996
by Sol Stern
"Catholic schools are already transforming the lives of thousands of poor black and
Hispanic children, many of whom are not Catholic. Unlike the public schools, which have
trivialized their curriculum and abandoned their standards in the name of
multiculturalism, Catholic educators have remained committed to the ideal that minority
children can share in, and master, our civilization’s intellectual and spiritual heritage.
Indeed, Catholic schools are among the last bastions in American education of the idea
of a common civic culture."
Learn in Freedom
by Karl M. Bunday
"This site is about learning in freedom, taking responsibility for your own learning. It
shows you how to use your own initiative in learning, so you can use schools and
teachers just when they are helpful to you, and voluntarily chosen by you. There's a
specific page on this site to show you how to get started in learning in freedom, and
there are plenty of other pages on this site about other subjects. To find a specific
page on this Web site, you can keep on reading for more links from this home page, which
links to the main pages on this site, or you can use the site map or the search links
on the bottom of every page (and on the top of most pages) to help you find what you
are looking for. Besides internal links, there are links to more than 1,000 other Web
sites on this site's more than forty pages."
Learning from the miraculous achievements of St. Adalbert
by Charles A. Byrne
St. Adalbert School in Cleveland, on a budget approximately
one-fifth that of a comparably sized publicly funded school,
educates poor children who were getting D's and F's at other
schools so that 92% go on to post-secondary education and the
rest get jobs.
Learning Lessons Our Schools Can't Teach
by Mary J. Ruwart
"How can our children learn to abhor aggression when we teach them in a system built
on it?"
A Lesson from the Third World: On the Extraordinary
Success of Private Education in Africa and India
by James Tooley
Private schools succeed, unlike state schools.
Marva Collins Way by Marva Collins and Civia Tamarkin
reviewed by Bettina Bien Greaves
"The success of Marva’s method has been astounding. As a result, she has received
nationwide attention in the press, radio, and TV. In five years, her enrollment grew
from four to 200. Yet Marva says she performs no miracles. She just works hard! This
book shows just how hard. It relates her struggles with the establishment, starting
her own school, and coping with expansion. It explains in considerable detail just how
she teaches, even listing at the back the books she uses. Anyone who is teaching, who
is considering teaching, anyone who is homeschooling, or who simply loves children, will
find this book fascinating."
Nock On Education
by Wendy McElroy
"Nock's alleged elitism may have been nothing more than his ability to recognize
intellectual merit and the ensuing respect he paid to it. In a society that recognizes
and applauds widely different abilities in fields such as athletics and music, it is
odd to encounter an enduring resistance to the idea of widely different abilities to
simply learn."
Non-state education franchises
"In most countries, the state provides education or makes private education difficult
under its tax and regulatory regimes.
Nevertheless, in many developing countries, entrepreneurial groups have arisen to provide
a better education than students might sometimes get from the state. They charge relatively
modest fees, and are financed almost totally from fee income, but still make a profit
(or, if they are non-profit organizations, a surplus). Often, the most successful will
be those who have pioneered particular approaches to education and franchise it out to
local operators. Accordingly, these chains benefit from brand reputation and recognition,
gain from economies of scale, and are large enough to cross-subsidize (or just take a risk
on) disadvantaged students."
Paul Goodman and the Reform of Education
by Samuel M. Thompson
Private Education for the Poor?
by Claudia R. Hepburn
"This author details startling facts about the public and private sector in educating
impoverished children."
Private K-12 Education: Society's Best Investment
April 12, 2000
by Alexander Tabarrok
"The children and their parents have spoken. Millions of them want out of the government
schools and they are asking for our help. Charities and philanthropists interested in
American society will find few causes with as much power to improve a child’s life today
and an adult’s life tomorrow than scholarships for K-12 education."
Public Failure, Private Response
January 1999
by Doug Bandow
"Such private programs offer a glimmer of hope to children and families trapped
in a failing public monopoly. Political reform remains important, but advocates
of children need not wait for politicians to act. Indeed, developing successful
private scholarship programs will not only help struggling students; it will also
make real political change more likely. Instead of pouring their money and energy
into failing public schools - as did publisher Walter Annenberg with $500 million
in 1993-businessmen, foundations, and philanthropists should develop alternative
private educational options."
School Choice for Inner-City Kids
by Timothy P. Ehrgott
"In August 1991, a private group in Indianapolis, Indiana, decided to address the
education problem by focusing on low-income students trapped in the government-run,
inner-city schools. This effort, now emulated in ten other American communities, offers
a challenge to those who have put their faith in routine reform efforts around the
country."
A School with a Money-Back Guarantee
by Scott Payne
"In Lansing, Michigan, one finds a new wrinkle in education: a money-back guarantee.
HOPE Academy, a primary and secondary school operated for profit by Eleanor Sambaer
and Marina Farhat makes this unique offer: Give us your kindergartner. If, by the
end of the academic year, your child can’t read at least on a second-grade level, you
get your money back."
A Solution to the Education Crisis
by Robert W. McGee
This paper explores the possibility of privatizing education and
attempts to answer questions such as: Is providing for public education
a legitimate function of government? How would education be funded if
government didn't do it? How would a privately funded education system
provide for those who couldn't pay?
State Subsidy to Private Schools: A Case History of Destruction
by John Chodes
"This is a story of how government aid entangles private schools in public policy and
eventually leads to state control. It is especially pertinent today because many parents
with children in public schools are lobbying state legislatures for help: tax credits,
vouchers, or even direct subsidies to put their children into private schools. Parents
hope that they can obtain government aid and still maintain control over their children’s
education."
Toward a Market in Higher Education
by William G. Stuart
"The alternative is to abolish government regulation of higher education and sell
public universities to private operators, who then will organize the institutions
to compete effectively with private colleges for students."
Anarchy Revisited: An Inquiry into the Public Education Dilemma
by Robert H. Chappell
Compares the educational viewpoints espoused by European anarchists of 19th century
and the views of American anarchists Ivan Illich and Paul Goodman of the 20th century.
Are Parents Boycotting Public Schools?
May 7, 2002
by Wendy McElroy
"With reports of homeschooled children outperforming those educated by government
schools in national spelling bees and on some tests, parents who would never resist
authority in any other area seem willing to step forward for the sake of their children's
well-being."
Big Schoolmaster
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"As American education has become more centralized, it has also become more
left-wing, more dim-witted, and more anti-parent. Only one small area of freedom
remains: the private school. Nothing is worth subverting that freedom."
The Central Fallacy of Public Schooling
by Daniel Hager
"Children who are turned over to the state become molded by the state. Most parents
cannot conceive of a totally privatized alternative because they themselves have been
indoctrinated by public schooling to believe in its alleged necessity. However, it
is fallacious for parents to think that children can escape government schooling
without having their traditions and beliefs subverted."
Changing the Education Paradigm
December 13, 2005
by Scott McPherson
"We don’t have a Department of Sustenance because food is far too important to be
controlled by a government bureaucracy. Likewise, we don’t need education central
planners of any kind, from the federal Department of Education to state boards of
education to local school boards. It’s time we stopped arguing about petty details
about how best to run state schools and instead started talking about true educational
freedom in America."
Compulsory Schooling No Substitute for Good Schools
by Claudia R. Hepburn
"Free, compulsory schooling does not result in a universally educated citizenry when it
is insulated from market forces."
De-worshipping Public Education
by Karen De Coster
"It’s high time that the public resist the inherent dangers of continuing on a path
toward a more socialized, bureaucratic, and just plain immoral taxpayer-funded public
school system. Taxpayers need to reject the public education nipple and look toward
the same market they covet for their goods and services – the free market."
Disestablishing Public Education
by Anna David
"C/CSA is run much like a business, with a 15-member board of directors, seven of whom
are corporate executives. Their leadership, which includes aggressive management of
financial resources and continual student performance measurement, has resulted in a
school that boasts a 97 percent average daily attendance rate and a majority of students
at or above national grade-level average performance levels. Last year, for example,
nearly 88 percent of the school’s six-year-olds were at or above the national grade-level
average in reading. By comparison, 26 percent of Chicago public school six-year-olds
had reached the grade-level average. Similar results appear in math and vocabulary. In
addition, C/CSA operates year-round for about $1,000 less than the $6,000 spent per pupil
in Chicago public elementary schools."
Disestablish Public Education
by Leonard P. Liggio
Libertarians need to offer solutions to the problem of public education, otherwise
desperate parents might adopt proposals offered by economists from the Chicago school.
Education
by Murray Rothbard
"If education were strictly private, then each and every group of parents could and
would patronize its own kind of school. A host of diverse schools would spring up to
meet the varied structure of educational demands by parents and children. Some schools
would be traditional, others progressive. Schools would range through the full
traditional-progressive scale; some schools would experiment with egalitarian and
gradeless education, others would stress the rigorous learning of subjects and competitive
grading; some schools would be secular, others would emphasize various religious
creeds; some schools would be libertarian and stress the virtues of free enterprise,
others would preach various kinds of socialism."
Educational Decarceration
by Daniel Hager
"As technology proliferates, it will drive increasingly deep wedges into the
structure of tax-funded schooling and open the system's rationale to widespread
critical examination. From that process families can hope to wrest control of their
children from the state, and children can hope to be sprung from their prisons."
The Educational Octopus
by Mark J. Perry
"What then should we conclude about the quality of public education in the United
States given the following facts? Public school teachers send their own children to
private schools at a rate more than twice the national average--22 percent of public
educators' children are in private schools compared to the national average of
10 percent."
Education in a Free Society edited by Tibor Machan
reviewed by Karen Y. Palasek
"Editor Tibor Machan states in his introduction to this collection of four essays
that “The primary concern in this book is whether human individuality is compatible
with coercive public education.” Each of the four perspectives offered takes a unique
approach."
Education Reforms Typically Ignore Root Causes
November 6, 2000
by John D. Merrifield
"Why is K-12 reform an unending, increasingly urgent process? Answer: Because the
proposed reforms rarely address the underlying problems. Most proposals aim to improve
the school system without fundamentally changing it."
Ending the "phony" debate over equal education vs. local control
by Sheldon Richman
The debate is "phony" because the right to have your children
educated at the expense of someone else is a bogus right created
by government.
Enterprising Education: Doing Away with the Public School System
by Andrew Young and Walter Block
"All the arguments in favor of a public provision of primary education prove to be
unfounded and/or incorrect. The failure of the state to provide a high quality service
to all (its explicit goal) has rendered public primary education illegitimate; and the
immeasurable waste of resources and rejection of consumer desires has left public
education borderline immoral."
ESOPing Schools
July 30, 2000
by Chelsea Mao
"One of the more interesting proposals that Vedder offers is to give ownership of schools
to teachers, principals, and staff through Employee Stock Option Plans (ESOPs). As
stakeholder in their own “company,” school employees would have an incentive to adopt
strategies to increase revenues and reduce costs."
The Failure of American Public Education
by John Hood
"We not only fail to hold individual students accountable for poor performance, we
have also failed to hold the entire government-controlled school system accountable
for its performance since at least World War II. Public education is itself a failure."
Freedom of Religion and Public Schooling
by James R. Otteson
"Government support of religion, many people believe, violates freedom of conscience,
politicizes and trivializes important values, and violates people’s rights. If the same
is true of government support of education, doesn’t consistency require people to reject
it, too?"
Free the Schools!
by Harry Browne
"Imagine a world where you pay no school taxes, and you choose a school for your
child the way you buy a new computer or a new car."
Government Schooling: The Bureaucratization of the Mind
by Thomas E. Lehman
"Americans must begin to realize that the separation of education and state is equally
as important as the separation of church and state. Only then will American students
begin to experience academic diversity, intellectual growth, and a crime-free learning
environment. Only then will we be liberated from the bureaucratization of the mind."
In praise of truancy
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
"Students themselves sense this truth, as they endure, day after day, bogus recycling
lectures, egalitarian theorizing, and truncated and left-wing versions of history, in
a general prison-like atmosphere. They know better than anyone that the public schools
speak for a discredited ruling regime. With truancy, students are only declaring their
independence. They should be allowed to do so without penalty to themselves or their
parents."
Keeping the Nation At Risk
This article originally appeared in The American Prowler on April 25, 2003.
by David Salisbury and Myron Lieberman
"Everywhere pro-parent measures have passed, reformers have faced intense opposition by
the teacher unions. With over 3 million members and dues-revenues that exceed $1 billion
a year, the unions are an empire-like force. Through strong-armed political tactics and
hefty financial and in-kind support to candidates who support teacher union positions,
the unions are a virtually insurmountable obstacle to reforms that are essential to
educational improvement."
Knowledge, Ignorance, and Government Schools
by Sheldon Richman
"Hayek called the competitive market a "discovery procedure." As he pointed out, there
are things we can know only if the market is permitted to reveal them. We don't know
what we will learn tomorrow. The implications of that fact for education are enormous.
Without real entrepreneurship, we are deprived of innovations that could transform our
lives in remarkable ways. Without a free market in education, we really don't know what
we're missing."
Less is Good, Nothing is Better:
How the State Can Improve British Education
September 3, 2005
by Sean Gabb
"The only answer is to get the state entirely out of education. The education budget
should not be expanded, or its administration reformed. It should simply be abolished.
That £49 billion - now, I believe, £63 billion - should be handed back to the people
in tax cuts; and these should be directed at the poorest taxpayers. The schools should
be sold off or given away, and the bureaucrats be made redundant. The people should
then be left to arrange by themselves for the education of their children."
Let Qualified People Teach
March 9, 2001
by Richard K. Vedder
"Increased teaching barriers help maintain teacher shortages and increase pressures to
raise salaries for existing teachers. Yet, the main supporters of the new proposed
standards are not the teacher unions (who reportedly even oppose some of the new
provisions), but rather the colleges of education, who derive tuition income and state
subsidies from students taking their courses."
Liberate the Public Schools
by Steven Greenhut
"Despite what the noxious teachers unions say, the answer is not "more money." Do any
readers really believe that what the D.C. schools are lacking is sufficient tax dollars?
Clearly, something is wrong with the foundation of the system."
Limited School Choice Programs Miss the Point
April 9, 2003
by John D. Merrifield
"Without the full-fledged competition that only a universal, non-discriminatory program
can foster, choice programs can only produce modest benefits. The current programs mostly
fill empty seats in existing private schools. Milwaukee, with the nation’s oldest,
largest, and most generous voucher program, has not expanded private school capacity
enough to eliminate waiting lists. But in a mature competitive system, school
entrepreneurs would form new schools to pursue the huge opportunities to profit by
improving upon existing offerings."
The Problem of Education Doesn't End at the 12th Grade
by Lawrence W. Reed
"Education reformers have scored points everywhere by painting K-12 public education
as an unresponsive government institution in need of competition, accountability,
even privatization. If they take a look at universities, they will find much the
same thing."
Public Education: An Autopsy by Myron Lieberman
reviewed by George C. Leef
"The intellectual case that public provision of educational services is optimal or
at least preferable to the market alternative has sustained such devastating
rebuttals that it is, in the author’s words, 'beyond life-sustaining measures.'”
School Censorship: Compulsion Creates Conflict
August 1988
by John Semmens
"The conflicts in education are in fact conflicts over a much more fundamental issue: the
locus of sovereignty, and hence, the locus of personal responsibility. The person or
institution which possesses sovereignty must be the one which takes on the
responsibility. By affirming the legitimacy of tax-supported education, voters have
attempted to transfer their responsibilities for the education of their children to
another agency, the state. Yet, at the same time, they affirm their own sovereignty
over the content and structure of the educational system. That they have lost almost
every battle in their war with tenured, state-supported educational bureaucrats, is the
direct result of the public's abdication of personal responsibility, family by family, for
the education of their children. The war was lost on the day that parents, as
voters, decided to transfer the financial responsibilities of educating their own
children to other members of the body politic."
The School-Choice Choices
by John D. Merrifield
"School-choice advocates usually speak of only two alternatives: public-school
choice (open enrollment among public schools) and private-school choice (taxpayers
subsidizing private-school tuition). Yet two other alternatives hold even greater
promise for improving education: child-centered funding and outright (consumer-funded)
privatization."
Separating School and State by Sheldon Richman
reviewed by George C. Leef
"Richman convincingly argues that nothing short of the complete depoliticization of
education will rescue it from its current degraded state. He contends that the proposals,
supported by many free marketeers, for vouchers, contracting out, charter schools, and
other marginal reforms will do little if any good as long as the state is still the
major player in the field of education. We need to stop wasting our efforts on trying
to untie the Gordian Knot of public education. There is but one solution to the
crisis: the tie between school and state must be cleanly cut."
The Separation of School and State
February 25, 2004
by Wendy McElroy
"The cost of public education is not measured in tax dollars alone. A universe of
educational possibilities has been obstructed by the attempt to enforce a government
monopoly over how, where, when, and what children learn."
Service Without a Smile
by Sheldon Richman
"How do you square compulsory attendance and school taxes with freedom and free
markets? Government schools were set up because freedom wasn’t trusted. By design
they have shifted a major part of child rearing from parent to state, and have equated
subservience to authority with good citizenship."
Shall the State Educate the People?
by Thomas Hodgskin
No. Says this article from 1847.
They Pry Them from Our Cold Dead Fingers
by Sharon Harris
"That big yellow school bus takes our children to huge government buildings where most
of their waking hours are spent. Where each day begins with an invocation of loyalty to
the state. Where their most treasured spiritual values and symbols are banished. Where
peer pressure replaces family values. Where the truly important questions of life can’t
be asked, much less answered. Where pop culture surpasses the classics. Where socialism
is taught – both in theory and by example. Where conformity and indoctrination are far
more important than thinking or reading…"
The War Against Life
February 2, 2003
by Butler Shaffer
"Contrary to those who look upon government schools as failures, I have long regarded
them as shining accomplishments for state purposes: to produce herd-oriented men and
women incapable of making independent judgments, and who are thus prepared to submit
to external authorities for direction in their lives."
Whose Kids Are They?
by David Boaz
"But perhaps the best argument against compulsory schooling is the one raised by Isabel
Paterson in The God of the Machine, in the form of a question to educators who
support compulsion: 'Do you think nobody would willingly entrust his children
to you or pay you for teaching them? Why do you have to extort your fees and collect
your pupils by compulsion?'”
Will Universal Preschool Give All Kids a Head Start?
November 30, 2005
by Wendy McElroy
"This is the great danger: the presumption that government can raise children better
than parents. If universal preschool is voluntary, then it may merely create another
massive and ultra-expensive bureaucracy that accomplishes little.
If it is compulsory, then universal preschool will extend the government's usurpation
of parenthood so that all 3- and 4-year-olds are under state supervision."
Why Free Schools Are Not Free
by Frank Chodorov
"If we start with the premise that education is a proper function of the State we must
be prepared to accept the corollary: that the kind of education the State dispenses
will be that which those in control consider desirable."
Friedman And North on Vouchers
by Milton Friedman
"My ultimate objective is precisely the same as Gary North’s, but I do not believe
that we can get there from here without a transitional measure. That is what the
voucher proposal is intended to provide."
The Political Economy of Educational Vouchers
by Dwight R. Lee
"The special interests that comprise the public school lobby have been able to
subvert educational policy to their narrow advantages with the same political influence
that will be used to frustrate any reform that threatens those advantages. These special
interests would be emasculated by a system of educational vouchers that worked in the
way envisioned by the advocates of vouchers. It is for this reason that we will never
get a voucher system that is worth having. If educational vouchers are in our future
it will be because the public school lobby will see them as the best vehicle for
maintaining or enlarging their special interest advantages. Educational vouchers will
never serve to increase the range of freedom in education, and may do much to restrict
it."
School Welfare
7/23/1998
by Michael Chapman
School vouchers lead to government control of private schools.
The Truth About the G.I. Bill
January 1, 1997
by Thomas J. DiLorenzo
"People who advocate tax-funded school vouchers for private schools frequently hail
the G.I. Bill of Rights education vouchers for World War II veterans as a model.
In truth, the G.I. Bill was a budget-busting middle-class entitlement scheme that had
destructive effects on higher education, and set the stage for virtually all our
current educational problems."
Vouchers: Competition or Conformity?
by Sarah Erdmann
"Though some believe healthy competition will be the result of the voucher system,
on the contrary, voucher-supported schools will become part of the monopoly of education
by the government. Today, the salvation of free, non-politicized education in the
United States rests on home-educators and those private schools that are willing and
able to resist this socialist movement."
Vouchers: Politically Correct Money
by Gary North
"The standard argument in favor of school vouchers is that vouchers will restore lost
parental authority over their children's education. This argument reveals a failure to
understand the crucial relationship between moral authority, legal authority, and
economic authority, It has persuaded a lot of parents to promote a reform that will
not only not fulfill its stated goals but will actually undermine some parents' authority
even further."
The Voucher System - Trap for the Unwary
April 1971
by Robert Patton
"If such a plan were ever adopted, powerful interests would immediately begin lobbying
in support of restrictive legislation that would undercut the element of free choice
in the plan as it now stands. Under pressure from strong special interest groups such
as Shanker's United Federation of Teachers, laws might be passed to require that
teachers in private schools meet standardized licensing requirements and that the
physical plant of private schools meet arbitrary standards established by the
government. Laws could (and would) follow laws, self-proclaimed reformers would come
to advocate the imposition, on private schools, of what they would term "academic
standards"; and, just as we now have a costly system of public education that wears
the label "free," we may easily end up with a system of state education that bears
the appellation 'private.'"
What American Education Needs
by Walter E. Williams
"The question I pose to these critics of vouchers and tuition tax credits is: which is
the more serious and costly risk, that associated with the prospect of increased
government intervention in nonpublic schools that might accompany vouchers and tax
credits, or continued educational destruction of the nation’s youngsters, particularly
its black and Hispanic youngsters?"
Why Conservatives and Libertarians Should Support School Vouchers
by Joseph L. Bast
"School vouchers would improve educational quality and are wholly consistent with the
goals of limiting government and maximizing liberty. Vouchers also would restore the
justice that all parents and taxpayers deserve as a matter of right."
School Choice via the Universal Tax Credit
by Lawrence W. Reed
"Proponents of educational tax credits prefer them to vouchers on the grounds that
they entail less government regulation of private schools and less risk of entanglement
between church (through religious schools) and state because of their indirect nature.
Unlike vouchers, credits do not transfer money from the state to schools or taxpayers."
Toward Freedom of Choice in Education
by Joseph R. Peden
Tuition tax-credits would be a step foward. School vouchers would be a step backward.
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This page was last updated on August 12, 2007.