If you were to freely give your money to what is advertised as a dog training facility and it turned out to not be a dog training facility but a kennel where they simply fed the dogs and kept them in cages; what would you do upon hearing that information?  A sensible person would divest, allocating their much needed funds into something more worthwhile that's honest.  If you wanted to give to a kennel, you'd give to a kennel, right?  Now, what if that company said "well, too bad, you're invested, you can't divest, besides; what about the poor dogs?", and continued to pull an automatic draft from your check every time you got paid?  What would you do then?  File suit?  Of course you would.  So why, I ask you, are we putting up with the sorry state of our public school system?
   
    To provide the reader a little background, I went to public school in Beaufort, South Carolina where my mother is still a teacher and my dad is training to be one himself, so I am very much familiar with the problems in the system.  In fact, the problems are so immense, so irreparable, that I simply say, "what's the use?  Why try getting a dead horse in race?".  Now, I know there will be those who will call me a cynic when it's just the opposite, I have the utmost faith in humanity, (which is why I deem public schools so unnecessary) others will call me a crazy anarchist and an anti-establishmentarian (which, in all actuality, is a great American tradition) as if "conservative", "libertarian", "old-right winger", or "free-marketeer" are too nice of words to pin on someone who wants to deny children education.  However, to be honest, the truth is just the opposite: I want children to be educated, educated to the fullest; and that's precisely why I wish death upon the public school system.

    A writer and "individual anarchist", as he was called, Albert Jay Nock put it best when he said that public schools did not provide education, but training.  He felt (as I do) that education was the seeking of knowledge simply for the sake, and love, of acquiring knowledge.  Education was a choice to Nock, and to fulfill a choice is a privilege, not a right as many modern "liberals" try to claim these days (I put "liberals" in quotations because modern "liberals" are not liberals in a classical sense).  Since education is a choice and a privilege, one's education should be voluntary, therefore, paying for that choice should be voluntary.  Toward the end of his life, Nock espoused a rather cynical view of humanity, believing that most people may as well not even learn how to read being that few people actually do anything worthwhile with literacy.  I don't quite espouse such a belief because, as I mentioned, I am not a cynic, but I do see in many people an utter disregard for any skills learned passed elementary school.

    A big problem with abolishing the public school system is that no one is alive anymore that remembers what it was like before it was established.  The truth is that the local-community schools (paid for by the parents of the children or voluntarily by the local community), private schools, and Christian and Catholic schools provided much better education for those that attended than our modern public schools.  It's also true that private schools have a much better graduation and college rate than public schools because the parents and students take their education much more seriously.  This is because exposing schools (universities and colleges, I'm talking to you too!) to the rigors and risks of the free-market place would ensure better schools, better conditions, and better teachers because the inadequate ones would be liquidated.  Teachers would be paid on merit and quality rather than seniority or rank in the teachers' union; if they're a good school, more people will send their kids there which would enable them to bring down the price and afford them a better budget; that budget, them being a business rather than a government bureaucracy with a set budget will use that money more wisely for (I know, this is crazy) educational purposes and paying the teachers.

    There is also the issue of the parents.  Teachers complain about the uncaring parents almost constantly, to the point that it almost sounds like merely passing the buck.  Believe me, it's not.  Parent involvement in their child's education is a severe problem, and one that the government can never, ever solve if they mandate it, pass legislation, or do anything other than refusing to invest in education any longer, forcing the parents to pay their hard-earned dollars for education, rather than telling them and their children that they have a right and an entitlement to everything under the sun.  It's that air of entitlement that has reduced "education" in this country into a joke.  It started out as a right to education, then a right to misbehave and receive no punishment, then a right to an unearned self-esteem, and now, a right to not care whose money your wasting.

    An argument against me that states that I wish to deny children education would, perhaps be valid, if that was what the children were actually receiving--it's not.  Education, if I may state again, is acquisition of knowledge for the love of knowledge.  Education requires either a love of knowing or a desired goal.  What our public school system provides is the opposite--training for something unknown free of goals or love of anything.  It's an obligation, a duty, not a choice.  Since the State (der Stat to invoke the proper imagery) is incapable at providing or sustaining the right to choice (choice is freedom, der Stat is the apotheosis of freedom), and choice is inalienable to education, der Stat is, by all accounts, incapable of providing education.  What they can provide, however, is training, which is what they try to do with public schools.

    What I mean when I say "training" is mindless indoctrination, not free pursuit of knowledge.  Public schooling doesn't show students the tools for expanding their minds or acquiring skills but conditions them into an attitude and state of mind of cynicism, entitlement, and moral relativism--not exactly a spring-board for the intellect.  It's because of this separation from reality, the laws of nature, philosophy, and epistemology, even ethics that leaves students ill-prepared for life after school and under the delusion that everything, including knowledge should be handed to them.  Granted, that doesn't necessarily mean that every child will be a government stooge and we plunge into a real-life Idiocracy, but the pool of potential great minds is diluted in the process of public schooling.

    Public schools, at the end of the day, have proven (like Social Security) to be possibly the largest malinvestment (as Ludwig von Mises said) in American history.  Being that a malinvestment is irreparable, it needs the legs pulled from under it so it either floats away or collapses in its own weightlessness.  Either one is fine with me, frankly, I don't much care which direction public schools go as long as it's away.  To take my money, by force, to buy legs to prop up a falling institution yelling "I can fix it!" is beyond immoral.  It's like using over-priced duct tape to fix a leaky dike; you can say you fixed it--for now--but what happens when that dike finally breaks?  My ultimate problem with the government's "solutions" is that they don't even bother using duct tape, but scotch tape!  Several billions of dollars of it too! 

    Not only this, but our president now wants to do the same thing the government does to public schools to colleges and universities, and early childhood development.  He's advancing a bill that revokes vouchers for D.C. area kids to attend private magnate schools!  To help people pay for college, he's seeking to nationalize Public Allies--a group he worked for that "trains" people to work for not-for-profits organizations and community activism--as a "boot camp" for college hopefuls between ages 18 and 24.  He wants to nationalize a "zero to five" program that will basically raise kids from the cradle to "prepare" them for public schooling (which sounds kind of Hitler youth-ish to me).  He pushes all of this under the guise of "education" but this is impossible.  Where is the choice?  Where is the pursuit for the sake of love and thirst for knowledge?  Without either of these, it is impossible to be educated!  The public school system has tried this approach of dutied training to no avail, and the grand solution is to expand that approach?  If we want our children to be anything more than trained monkeys, the best course of action is to burn down the entire public school system and use the ashes for something way more useful.  Like fertilizer.

And that's the Real Spit
-WilliamPitt

(Read old entries at: http://williamdavidpitt.bustablog.com)