Arguing for private schools

Political Philosophy
1

My head hurts. I’ve been “discussing” this subject with my friend, who says not having a free education option would result in many un-educated people, who therefore can’t get jobs, which will widen the gap between the rich and poor. I realize this is one of the last things that would have to be changed in the development of a free society, if we were to reform the US. Also, as Yaron Brook has mentioned before, the mentality of the entire culture would be drastically different in a free society. I kept having to remind him of this, because he kept making comparisons to countries that exist now.

Anyway, perhaps you can review my answers or give me some logical counter points to some of his proposed scenarios, provided they aren’t too strawman:

_ 1. Poor families wouldn’t be able to afford to send their kid to school, since they wouldn’t have the money for such additional costs. _

This is obviously conjecture, and it assumes that the cost of living in a free society would still be as inflamed as it is today. I also pointed out that with education free’d up, there would then be competition, and thus there would be a “cheaper” education option. He wasn’t convinced that parents would somehow be able to plan ahead or make adjustments in living to pay for their kids education, but regardless he moved on to this:

_ 2. Many parents don’t care that much about their children’s education. They enroll them because it’s free. Also, what if the parents are drunks or gamblers and they don’t provide for the child’s education. _

I don’t know where he determined this about “many” parents, but I pointed out that if it is the case, then despite it being unfortunate for the child, he would still have options to sustain himself as soon as possible. He could get a job without education. If the parents are seriously neglectful, then the court could certainly step in.

_ 3. How do you know he can get a job? If they never send him to any schooling, and he can’t read or write, he will never get a good job, and be poor his whole life, due to no fault of his own. _

I didn’t really have a answer for this except that this is an extreme circumstance, to which he asserted that he has seen many many poor families in which the parents don’t care at all about the education of their children and if it wasn’t for public school the kids wouldn’t even know how to read. Again, I couldn’t say anything because although I agree that situation exists somewhere, it sounds extreme to me. I also pointed out that if the child is indeed doomed to an uphill struggle for survival his whole life because his parents screwed him over that badly, then he can be determined to do the opposite for his child, or choose to not have children, to which he said:

_ 4 But he can’t provide an education for his child, because he will be too poor, and the cycle will forever continue. _

Again, I find this to be an issue related to a controlled economy, not a free one, because there will be endless options for work, which brought my friend back to point 3. So the bottom line is: Will there be education options for the poorest people in a free society? How much education would REALLY be needed for a person to get a job which he could sustain himself on? If he or his parents REALLY couldn’t pay for school, could he find education elsewhere? Is this whole thing a ridiculous scenario? Should I turn to heavy drinking from this conversation?

His final analysis is_ : This will result in the poor staying poor. _

2

A few breif add ons to your responses:

  1. For the vast majority of parents, education will almost certainly be the second most important thing to get for a child after basic necesities. There is no reason whatsoever that no market would exist for cheap school in a free economy. A great example of this in action is this Cato study (http://www.cato.org/…ncome-countries) where researchers examined profitable private school in the slums of Kenya, Ghana, India, and Nigeria, literally some of the poorest places on the planet. In the cases where there were public schools, the private schools significantly outcompeted them, even when the public schools were “free.”

  2. At a certain point, a lost cause is a lost cause. Nobody likes to admit it, but if the parent doesn’t give a shit (which, as you say, is an extremely small minority), then unless the kid is a rare anomaly, there is nothing anyone can do about it. Why is forcing children to go to shitty slum public schools any better than the alternative? In most instances, it is preferable to let the kid enter the work force during high school and acquire some level of experience, skill, and references.

  3. Not all jobs require basic math or reading skills. And besides that, I would be willing to bet that in a free economy, there would be virtually universal K-8 education anyway due to its low cost and high demand.

  4. Same old, same old.

An important element to stress in these conversations is that education has been so regimented and standardized, that it would look unimagineably different in a free market. Why do kids today sit in rows of desks? Why do they go to school five days a week between roughly 7:30AM and 3:00PM? Why are all taught minor variations of the same established subjects? Why are classes regimented by age group as opposed to ability or interest? Why do schools waste sizeable portions of their budgets on sports while leaving more important subjects underutilized? Why, Why, Why???

EDIT:

If you really want to throw a screwball, you can also try bringing up the theories of Charles Murray. Put simply - education quality is close to irrelevent in terms of success. Schools are not artists who mold clay children into beauiful sculptures, but are art apraisers who simply grade alredy existing statues.

1 Like
3

If you really want to throw a screwball, you can also try bringing up the theories of Charles Murray. Put simply - education quality is close to irrelevent in terms of success. Schools are not artists who mold clay children into beauiful sculptures, but are art apraisers who simply grade alredy existing statues.

I haven’t read Charles Murray, but I have heard about his ideas. That doesn’t seem like an accurate description. Surely, he doesn’t argue that “education is close to irrelevant”, does he? Especially since on wikipedia I found this quote: “America’s future depends on how we educate the academically gifted.” Just from that , it doesn’t seem like he thinks education is irrelevant.

And that second part is your metaphor, not his, right? Feels like more of a quote from Caddyshack than something a Harvard graduate would say.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiRGRvE\_Wqg

4

If you can’t afford to raise your kids (or don’t want to), that isn’t my problem. This needs to be stressed.

However, I think a decent set of parents could educate their children very well in the following manner.

You would have to homeschool your kids. Curriculum and resources are free on the internet, so this shouldn’t be a problem. A stay at home parent would be required, so there is the main cost right there. After this, if there are subjects that the parents can’t teach because the parent doesn’t understand them, tutors could be hired later.

5

  1. At a certain point, a lost cause is a lost cause. Nobody likes to admit it, but if the parent doesn’t give a shit (which, as you say, is an extremely small minority), then unless the kid is a rare anomaly, there is nothing anyone can do about it. Why is forcing children to go to shitty slum public schools any better than the alternative? In most instances, it is preferable to let the kid enter the work force during high school and acquire some level of experience, skill, and references.

  2. Not all jobs require basic math or reading skills. And besides that, I would be willing to bet that in a free economy, there would be virtually universal K-8 education anyway due to its low cost and high demand.

There would be no mandatory (primary) schooling in a FMS? I would argue that parents are negligent if they don’t provide a formal education for their children. Reading, writing, and doing basic math is crucial for almost any job. You have to get a bank account, apply for jobs, understand your paychecks, craft a resume, etc. You can’t survive without these skills unless you’re paid in cash.. and even then, you’d need to know how to count to make sure you’re not getting taken advantage of. You need to know how to read just to live in modern society (read street signs, sign contracts, take a driving test, use a computer). This isn’t to say that poor people can’t have children, but they need to make sure they can provide an education for their children, just as they need to provide them with food, clothing, and shelter. An education is just as important, and children who grow up without an education generally do not (and cannot) catch up.

On average, adults at the lowest levels of literacy:

  • Earn about $230-$245 per week
  • Work only 18-19 weeks each year
  • Are more than three times as likely to receive food stamps (17%-19% as compared to 4% of those who read at the highest levels)
  • Are almost ten times more likely to be living below the poverty line (41%-44% as compared to 4%-8%)

Between 31% and 40% of prisoners read at the lowest literacy level, which is at least ten percentage points worse than the national average

6

A stay at home parent would be required, so there is the main cost right there.

This isn’t strictly true. I currently work nights and stay at home with my daughter during the day. But a night-time work schedule is a cost in and of itself.

7

I agree that not educating a child is akin to child abuse, and as such is not consistent with individual rights, and as such, should be outlawed. I think there is a threshold (somewhere–the exact place is a long, long debate) where parent(s) give up the right to their children.

Of course, the above implies that we must have, as a necessary part of law enforcement in the USA, an infrastructure of free child care for children taken from their parents (e.g. orphanages).

Now, if you think through the implications of this, somewhere in there lies free basic education for children unless you imagine that some can be deemed “too poor to have children” and must give them up because of that.

Now, on another thread I did bring up the idea that a base-level free education for everybody is a requirement for a functioning democracy. I agree that “that future society over there” would be different than we have now, but in retrospect it occurred to me that discussing that future society is only a theoretical device to help us define what we should do right now but I’ve learned to be very, very careful using this device as it’s a dangerous one indeed.

I also brought up (and still another thread) that the currently in-vogue answer to public schools–charter schools–are in the process of wiping out private education in the USA by creating a “hybrid” that no fully private school could–or would want to–compete with. Charter schools are dangerous in this regard because once private schools are dead, they will stay dead for a long time.

Charter schools, meanwhile, are publicly funded and as such will eventually be morphed into plain old public schools in terms of regulations and burdens placed on them (if taxpayers are footing the bill they will want their pound of flesh I guarantee it). Yes, private schools will once again flourish once charters morph back into public schools in form, and we’ll be back to square one, but this whole mess will set the cause of private education back about 30 years or so.

8

_ 1. Poor families wouldn’t be able to afford to send their kid to school, since they wouldn’t have the money for such additional costs. _

They already are paying for it through taxes so they can afford it if you let them kep their taxes. If not then they are forcing someone else to pay for it which means your friend has to justify why he wants to force one person to work harder for another. Plus, the kid can be home schooled and their other creative options if you remove government force (for example community baby sitters that specialize in educational subjects - Imagine someone on your block acting at private teacher and babysitter for 5 kids.

The poor are the victims of central planned education since they cannot afford to break free of it. The rich can (and do).

_ 2. Many parents don’t care that much about their children’s education. They enroll them because it’s free. Also, what if the parents are drunks or gamblers and they don’t provide for the child’s education. _

Really? The parents don’t care for their children? Straw man and frankly what a terrible view of man. This is a non issue since some kids already have these parents and public education obviously does not help them.

_ 3. How do you know he can get a job? If they never send him to any schooling, and he can’t read or write, he will never get a good job, and be poor his whole life, due to no fault of his own. _

Einstein says 'Hi" and laughs at this premise. Some of the most successful people did poorly or skipped education.

Besides, last time I checked our progressive education system fails to do these things too!

_ 4 But he can’t provide an education for his child, because he will be too poor, and the cycle will forever continue. _

Ford, Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, etc. etc also laugh from history at this premise. The phrase shirtless to shirtless in three generations tells the story of success.

_ This will result in the poor staying poor. _

Every day is a new canvas for an individual to paint. Determinism is an excuse to not be a man and one’s own artist.

9

A shorter answer to the objections you raise in #1, and that others have taken up in detail, is that this is the situation we have anyway with government schools (especially the one about a self-perpetuating cycle of poverty); might as well save the money.

10

To add to Spiral Architect’s #3 Helen Keller

Education or the gaining of knowledge is done(accomplished) by each individual . Teachers or their product" education " is not well understood from this perspective.

Teachers teach, students learn(or not), while having a teacher makes learning easier it isn’t necessary.

As to public education in America with Jefferson and his contemporaries’ opinions on the matter , I think , were motivated by the importance they placed on books, the expense and rarity of them specifically. If somehow the internet, or the dissemination of information were in their time as ‘cheap’ as it is today, their opinions about the state’s role in education may well have been different.

11

You should ask him to stop and ask himself what the purpose of money is.  He’s treating money as an end in and of itself but it’s not; all the money in the world really can’t buy happiness.  (How many celebrities hate themselves and hate their lives?  How many janitors, truckers, et cetera positively radiate joy- true, guiltless joy?)

His entire argument seems to be based on the implicit premise that poverty is antithetical to human life; metaphysically the same as a hurricane or a plague.  Which it isn’t.  Poverty itself isn’t GOOD for you, either.  But money is only a tool.

It’s a tool you use to exchange values, but every person chooses their own values.  Some people won’t be satisfied with anything less than conquering the world; some people are content to spend their lives wallowing in drug-numbed oblivion.  It doesn’t matter whether or not they actually get what they want; the important thing is only that everyone is free to pursue their own values for themselves!!

So. . .

1. Poor families wouldn’t be able to afford to send their kid to school, since they wouldn’t have the money for such additional costs.
2. Many parents don’t care that much about their children’s education. They enroll them because it’s free. Also, what if the parents are drunks or gamblers and they don’t provide for the child’s education.
3. How do you know he can get a job? If they never send him to any schooling, and he can’t read or write, he will never get a good job, and be poor his whole life, due to no fault of his own.
4 But he can’t provide an education for his child, because he will be too poor, and the cycle will forever continue.
His final analysis is : This will result in the poor staying poor.

1.  Loans.  If two good parents truly want to send their child to school, but can’t afford to at that point, they’re perfectly free to borrow the money and pay it off later.

(for that matter, the child could help to pay it off at some point!)

2.  For the child of drunks and gamblers as described, education is the least of their worries.  It’s a straw-man.

3.  Yes, because a seven year-old can learn to read while an adult cannot.  “He’ll never be able to learn because he’ll never have any money because he’ll never get a job because they never sent him to school”- anyone who fits that description has never made an attempt at happiness, doesn’t actually want money or knowledge or success, and fully deserves their fate.

4.  The example from 3?  See 1. . . Provided his own offspring don’t see right through his hypocrisy and run away to become famous capitalists!

 

The poor who do stay poor (because it does happen, sometimes) fully deserve to.

Some people want a bigger house, a newer car, a loving family, et cetera.  Some people want to know everything there is to know, to do everything there is to do, to invent something or discover something profound.

Someone who dies in the same state they were born in has earned nothing and deserves nothing better.