Alberta’s premier, Ralph Klein, recently mused out loud about implementing a voucher system for education, which lets individual parents decide which school, public or private, will receive their education dollars. Predictably, champions of public education were quick to condemn the idea. According to the education critic for the Alberta Liberals, Don Massey, “[Vouchers] allow money to be siphoned off to private schools; and they are not as accountable as schools in the public system.”
Not as accountable? The past several decades have witnessed the systematic “dumbing down” of public education: the curriculum got diluted with non-academic subjects and frivolous activities; proven methods for teaching reading, writing, math, science and reasoning got replaced with unproven, inferior methods; and objectivity got sacrificed to “political correctness” propaganda, such as environmentalism, collectivism, and moral relativism.
Consequently, many students are not acquiring the academic knowledge, discipline and skills — particularly logical thinking skills — that they desperately need in order to guide their lives toward success and happiness.
Many parents know (or at least sense) this but feel helpless against the Great Wall of education bureaucracy. Many believe the problem lies not in the idea of public education, which they regard as noble, but in the way public schools are managed and funded. But the truth is that public education is inherently destructive. Why?
Public education involves forcing people, via taxation, to pay for public schools. Individual parents are thereby denied the right to choose which school receives their education dollars, i.e., the right to reward the best schools for performance. This makes schools directly accountable to politicians and government bureaucracies — not to parents.
If parents could pay schools directly, schools would have to earn those dollars by satisfying individual parents. And since parents are primarily concerned with the interests of their children, schools would have to deliver real value to children, which requires focusing on the child’s educational needs.
To succeed, a school must out-compete other schools for students by offering the best value for their money. If parents don’t like what their child is getting, they don’t have to waste countless hours arguing with teachers, principals, bureaucrats and politicians — they are free to take their education dollars and go elsewhere. This creates a powerful incentive for schools to continuously improve the curriculum and teaching methods.
Nobody can predict what new discovery will be made to improve education, but freedom of competition provides the best environment for positive innovation.
Public education poisons this environment. The enormous amount of “guaranteed” (i.e., extorted) cash flow attracts various types of people with various “interests”: empire builders who measure their success and importance by how many people and dollars they control — not by the quality of education delivered; union bosses who want teachers to be paid according to “loyalty” — not performance, education gurus who want their “new ideas” implemented without a reality check, and countless other “special interest” groups — socialists, cultural relativists, environmentalists, etc. — who seek to “dumb down,” socially engineer, and brainwash children as a means of gaining political power.
Parents are forced to compete with all these “special interests,” which virtually drown out their child’s interests.
Sure, parents can make phone calls, write letters, attend meetings, make speeches, organize petitions, etc., but all this involves much time with little hope of success. (Parents are busy enough these days trying to overcome high taxes.) When politicians and bureaucrats get bombarded with all kinds of contradictory demands they become “talking heads” emitting empty assurances, vague generalizations, and blatant contradictions in order to appease as many competing “interests” as possible.
Sure, parents can exercise their vote in the next election, but one vote in today’s chaotic political arena of poor candidates is virtually worthless.
Why not give individual parents a real vote by protecting their right to choose which school receives their education dollars? After all, it is the responsibility of individual parents — not governments — to prepare their child for adult life.
Champions of public education argue that parents already have choice within the public system, such as freedom to switch public schools or enrol in a charter school. Such options have made schools more accountable to parents, but only marginally so because the power-lusting education bureaucracy still controls the money. A voucher system would allow private schools to compete for the money extorted from parents, thereby significantly increasing the incentive for all schools to give parents more value for their money.
A voucher system would significantly improve education by making all schools more accountable to parents. Kids are worth it!
