One of his favorite arguments: “Why, we can’t trust the free market to educate our children, the very idea! The free market excels at many things, they say, but it doesn’t guarantee ‘equitable’ education for our children.”
What are the apologists for “equity” public schools talking about? It means a guarantee that all children receive a “quality” education and “equal opportunity” to learn. “In the cruel free market,” says the public school bureaucrat, “the rich get the best schools, the middle class get the mediocre ones, and the poor kids are left in the dust.” That, they say, is not fair, it is not “equity”.
But why not apply his “equity” theory to food, clothing, and housing? Shouldn’t all houses, food stores, and clothing factories also be owned and operated by the government to ensure “fairness”? After all, the rich eat better, wear warmer clothes, and live in better homes than the poor or middle class. That’s not fair, is it?
That’s not fair.
In a free market, those people who make more money than others usually do. They risk more, work harder, work smarter, persevere more, make better life decisions, or choose a career that has greater opportunities to gain wealth. Why shouldn’t they enjoy the just fruits of their work, their character, their life choices?
Furthermore, what economically successful people earn is not taken away from those who earn less. Is it the fault of the successful person that the less successful person doesn’t work as hard, persevere as much, or make better decisions? If you’re looking to blame people’s income differences, don’t blame those who are successful. Blame life, human nature.
Nature makes all men and women different: different talents, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. It has always been this way since human beings came out of the trees and began to walk upright. Kicking income disparities is kicking human nature, which is kicking reality.
If “equity” for all people is our goal, then for every “inequality” between poor, middle class, and rich people, whether it be in food, housing, health care, or education, people must be financially plundered by the government. more successful with taxes to remedy what they did not cause, and that is not their fault. This notion of “fairness,” extended to all aspects of our lives, will turn America into a socialist or communist economic police state. In such a police state, the successful are punished and “leveled” by progressive income taxes, so that all of us end up miserably the same and equally miserable.
But this is an old story, the story called envy. The unhappy who hate the happy, the unsuccessful who hate the successful, all seeking to save their self-esteem by bringing down those they envy. The communist soviets tried for eighty years. The result: a chaos of poverty, slavery and failure.
“But,” say lovers of fairness, “why punish children? Is it their fault that their parents are poor?” No, it is not, but neither is it the fault of those who are not poor.
Even assuming we wanted this “equity” for our children, have our public schools really given children equal opportunity and “quality” education during their 150 years of control? Jeanne Chall, in her book, “The Academic Achievement Challenge,” cites grim statistics indicating that 70 percent of inner-city 4th graders read below grade level, that a prison population in increase is made up primarily of men whose reading and math skills are at or below the eighth-grade level. These are just the tip of the iceberg of the statistics that prove the total failure of public schools.
Public school employees may have the best intentions in the world. And that? What matters are the results. For all practical purposes, public schools therefore only create inequity for our children by providing a third-rate education, especially inner-city children. Our government-controlled public schools condemn millions of children to a life of failure, while school officials speak of pious goals about creating educational “opportunity” for all children. Could our children be worse off if public schools were eliminated and low-cost, competent, free-market schools or tutors taught our children?
To ensure “equal education” for all children, you must create a massive public school system to enforce this guarantee. Once a government monopoly takes control of your children’s education, quality education for your children is out the door. We demand “equitable” education and condemn millions of children to a miserable future.
Conversely, if we allow children’s natural love of learning and a free market for education to flourish, even poor children, as generations of American immigrants have shown, will become middle class or even wealthy. Throw away public schools and let school choice and open competition prevail, and the majority of poor children will finally get a quality education and reach their full potential.