Trusting government to educate our daughters and sons is one of the greatest sins that we are doing to future generations, it is even worse than the public debt.
I oppose public education on moral and practical grounds. Public schools will, by their very nature, try to push the agenda of those in power, at this time that is an agenda that perpetuates big government and takes away kids responsibilities to make up their own minds about right and wrong. Public schools take part in the cycle of power: people in power direct what is taught in schools, which is that government can solve everything and thus getting the next generation ready for control.
A lot of you have attended public schools, and so it is very hard for you to realize how much better the alternative could be. Government schools are inefficient, the majority of the education dollars are spent paying for the bureaucracy around the education system and not for better teachers, classrooms, materials, etc. Federal control is bad, state control is only slightly better, local control is better still, following this to the logical conclusion is that the best control is at the family level, where parents decide by themselves what the best education is for their children.
Something that may at first seem inconsistent in my position is the fact that I also oppose school vouchers. But think about it: Vouchers are just a way of getting more of the private dollars to make the round trip to Washington (and Sacramento) while creating a bureaucracy. From the pure economics standpoint, vouchers would do to private education the same thing as government scholarships have done to higher education: increase the price. Vouchers are a subsidy, they artificially inflate the market for education. Even a tax rebate to parents send their children to private schools is wrong, what about people who dont have children, shouldnt they get a rebate as well? It is much simpler to take the middleman out. Have each parent take the responsibility for paying for his children education.
Roberto Leibman
email: statesenate@leibman.net
web: http://www.leibman.net/statesenate2004