Failed Federal Education Ideas

I just read Edward Hudgins article Obama offers more of the same failed education ideas.  It is an easy read and a good review of the futility of federal spending on education going back to George H. W. Bush.  He points out that despite all of the federal spending on education, there is only evidence that student knowledge has not increased.

The level of student knowledge and thinking skills was poor when local and state governments were the only governments controlling the K-12 schools and there has been no change with federal controls and spending.  Government spending on education is generally popular because almost everyone agrees that education of children is very important.

But eating is also very important and most of us agree that it would be nuts to have government-controlled farms, food processing plants, food distribution, and kitchens.  It would be even more appalling if we were all required to take our meals at the government-operated and controlled kitchens, because eating is so important.  In fact, because eating is so important, we would be very unlikely to entrust it to the government.  So why do we entrust the education of our children to governments?

Americans are said to be pragmatic more than principled.  A real pragmatist is actually the most principled of people, but it takes a great deal of high level thinking to understand that, so most people see no inconsistency in the idea of being an unprincipled pragmatist.  Many would claim that there is an optimal degree of commitment to principle that each pragmatist seeks within the context of his society.  But with respect to the education of children, it appears clear that Americans are not even in that respect principled or pragmatic.

They have been conned.  The con is not very sophisticated.  The failures of government-controlled education are really, really obvious.  The damage to American children is horrific.  The lingering damage into their adulthood is all too clear.  The resulting retardation of our economy is also very obvious.  Strangely, the very fact that everyone recognizes these facts is actually used by every President to justify spending still more unproductive money on education.  The same is true at the state and local levels of government.  Hope springs eternal that more money spent on government-controlled education will improve its quality.  It will not.

What is more, government controlled education has a critical conflict of interest.  Throughout history, most men have been the servants of their rulers.  The Norse god Loki recognized this and claimed that freedom for man was an illusion.  America has historically managed to be the home of an unusually free people.  We proclaimed famously that the only legitimate purpose of government was to protect the rights of the individual and we rebelled against the most powerful military nation in the world at the time in the name of that principle.  Now we pretty much forced to send our children to government-run schools that claim that principle to be false.  If we do pay for both the public schools and a private school for our children, the curriculum is still substantially controlled by governments.

What else would one expect of government but that it would revert to the historical tyrannical ruler known so well to Loki?  We are not even ruled by a government equivalent to the government we rebelled against in 1776.  Ours is a more tyrannical government despite being a democracy.  That government is actually very happy if most of the people are dumbed-down servants willing to be ruled by the political class of Progressive Aristocrats, most of whom have never escaped government indoctrination themselves.

As I have many times, Hudgins calls for more school choice and for private education.  Only private education will ever be capable of providing the knowledge and critical thinking skills needed by a people to be free and to stay free.  With greater knowledge and better thinking skills, we will flourish as self-managing individuals and the standard of living will rise rapidly in our society.  The stagnation of the Big Government era in freedom, knowledge, and our standard of living will be ended.  The rule of a tyrant such as Obama would no longer be tolerated.