The Educational Attainment of Americans Before 1850

It is widely assumed that few Americans prior to 1850 and the development of government-run school systems were capable of reading and that knowledge was sparsely distributed.  This is a myth which there is much evidence to refute.

Here is an excerpt from an article by Andrew Berstein which was published in The Objective Standard, Vol. 5, No. 4 (2010) under the title The Educational Bonanza in Privatizing Government Schools.

Prior to the mid-19th century, government schools did not exist in America. All schools were private, and education was widespread and outstanding. For example, in the Middle Atlantic colonies during the pre-Revolutionary period, professional educators established numerous schools to satisfy the demand for education.15 Philadelphia, for instance, boasted schools for every subject and interest. Between 1740 and 1776, 125 private schoolmasters advertised their services in Philadelphia newspapers—this in a city whose population was miniscule relative to today. Professional educators provided mentoring services in English, contemporary foreign languages, science, and a wide variety of other topics.16 Children who grew to be such brilliant scientists, writers, and statesmen as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and George Washington received their education at home or in private schools.

(As to higher education, by the late-18th century six private colleges operated in the colonies: Yale, the College of New Jersey [Princeton], the College of Philadelphia [Penn], Dartmouth, Queen’s [Rutgers], and Rhode Island College [Brown].)17

Predictably, the educational results of such a free educational market were superb. The literacy levels of Revolutionary America were remarkably high. For example, Thomas Paine’s book, Common Sense,written in plain style but enunciating sophisticated political principles, sold 120,000 copies during the colonial period to a free population of 2.4 million (akin to selling 10 million copies today).18 The essays of The Federalist, written by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay in support of a Constitution for the nascent republic, were largely newspaper editorials written for and read by the common man.

Sales of American books and educational materials in the early- and mid-19th century likewise indicate a high national literacy rate. Between 1818 and 1823, while the U.S. population was under 20 million, Walter Scott’s novels sold 5 million copies (the equivalent of selling 60 million [actually more than 77.5 million] copies today). Early in the 19th century, The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper likewise sold millions of copies.19 The McGuffey’s Readers, first published in 1836, routinely used such terms as “heath” and “benighted” in third-grade texts. They asked such questions as “What is this species of composition called?” and gave such assignments as “Relate the facts of this dialogue.” The fourth-grade reader included selections from Hawthorne, and the fifth-grade text, readings from Shakespeare. “These were not the textbooks of the elite but of the masses,” explains Thomas Sowell. “[F]rom 1836 to 1920, McGuffey’s Readers were so widely used that they sold more than 122 million copies.”20

Given the high quality of education in early America, it is no surprise that two renowned French visitors observed and reported on the phenomenon. In an 1800 book Vice President Thomas Jefferson commissioned, titled National Education in the United States of America, Pierre Du Pont de Nemours reported that Americans received an education far superior to that of other peoples. “Most young Americans,” he wrote, “can read, write, and cipher. Not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly.”21 Several decades later, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in Democracy in America that Americans were the most educated people of history.22

The bracketed text in red is my correction.  Footnote 17 explains that Harvard College, King's College in New York City (now Columbia University), and William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Virginia, which are all private colleges now, were founded by governments.  Harvard was founded by the Massachusetts Bay Colony and King's and William and Mary Colleges were founded under Royal Charters in the colonial period.  It is clear that the 1800 book Vice President Thomas Jefferson commissioned, titled National Education in the United States of America, Pierre Du Pont de Nemours stating that "not more than four in a thousand are unable to write legibly" did not include slaves.

The idea that a private education system would leave many Americans less educated than the government-run education system of today is belied by this history and by the fact that the approximately 11% of schools today that are private out-perform the government schools readily.  Home-schooled children also greatly out-perform government-schooled children.

The government-run schools have little reason to teach children good reasoning skills, the knowledge they need to earn a living, and the habit of independent, critical thinking.  Without these attainments, it is a very uphill battle for individuals to achieve wisdom and the necessary skills to make their own value choices well.  Government-run schools have a tendency to propagate myths that support Big Government and diminish the exercise of individual rights.  Government-controlled education endangers children, future adults, and our constitutionally limited republican government of a few enumerated powers.  Government-educated students generally have no idea what purposes and achievements define a legitimate government, no sound understanding of individual rights, no thoughts about the intelligibility of laws and regulations, and no commitment to the Rule of Law.  Because the People are divided about ideas of morality, the government schools downplay moral principles.  They have little knowledge of history and the many lessons of how governments have deprived their citizens of their rights.  They have no understanding of basic economics and are taught to believe in policies that deny the basic Law of Supply and Demand and the importance of production itself.  They massively promote group identifications and victim-hood and victimizer status for these groups in a highly divisive manner.  They systematically undermine the much greater diversity and wealth of individual choices provided by the private sector in favor of the rigid, group oriented controls of the government sector.

The government-run education system wallows in a profound conflict-of-interest and because it is coercive and tax-funded, it has no reason to improve.  In fact, the schools are more commonly provided with more money the more they fail, providing them with no incentive to provide a decent education.  Government-run and controlled schools very commonly put the welfare of their under-performing employees well ahead of that of their under-performing students.

The state of education in America today is tragic and is much of the reason that the state of government in America today is increasingly harmful to the freedom, security, and general well-being of Americans.

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.

An outline of my approach to reviving the economy

In mentioning that the Obama economy made it much more difficult for small businesses such as my materials analysis laboratory to continue to operate, a scientist with whom I had been corresponding about his analytical needs claimed that no one could do the job of reviving the economy better than Obama.  He then asked what I would do.  Here is my 13-point reply with minor embellishments:


1)  Kill ObamaUncaringTax, too nicely called ObamaCare.

2)  Kill the Dodd-Frank Too-Big-to-Fail Act which is stultifying the loan markets and setting up the next colossal financial bubble.

3)  Enforce the work requirement on government charity programs and begin rapidly phasing them out.  The private sector can pick up whatever programs it wants to.

4)  Stop the EPA's vendetta against the use of coal.  The mercury and other pollution arguments are greatly exaggerated and really mostly an excuse to act on the failed hypothesis that man's CO2 emissions are causing a catastrophic global warming.

5)  Recognizing that the catastrophic man-made global warming hypothesis is wrong, stop discouraging other fossil fuel use and freely allow the development of new sources of oil and gas. Open up leases on federal land and offshore for development.  End federal subsidies and mandates for green energy development. 

6) Kill the federal CAFE requirement for 54.5 mpg by 2025 or any other date.

7)  Authorize the building of the Keystone XL pipeline so the Gulf of Mexico refineries are fed plenty of Bakken shale oil and Albertan tar sands oil.

8)  Increase the retirement age for Social Security and the coverage age for Medicare.

9)  Eliminate the Dept. of Education, the Dept. of Energy, the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, the Labor Dept., most of the functions of the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Agriculture Dept., reduce the Dept. of the Interior, eliminate the Transportation Dept., and reduce the Dept. of Homeland Security.  Fold the legitimate functions of the Labor, Agriculture, and Transportation Departments into the Commerce Dept.  Eliminate corporate welfare programs in the Commerce Dept., as well as the labor union welfare programs now in the Labor Dept.  Kill the Davis-Bacon Act and federal requirements that union wages be paid on federal contracts.

10)  Convert the Medicare program into a defined benefits program so that Medicare patients care about how much they spend and will not allow overcharging.  All government fraud, waste, and abuse programs are a pretense and are only used selectively to occasionally prosecute someone who is not playing the game to the liking of the powers that be in government.

11)  Sell most of the federal lands with mineral rights and use payments to pay down the debt.  The main purpose of this is to see that the land will be used more productively.

12)  Convert the Social Security program over time from a Ponzi scheme to a tax-deferred personal investment program with the investment truly held by the investing individual.

13) Reduce tax revenues as drastic spending cuts are enacted and simplify the tax laws and codes.  Preferably move to consumption taxes as opposed to taxes that inhibit production.  Consumption taxes will eliminate almost all reporting of financial information to the government.  Eliminate Sarbanes-Oxley.  Government spending will be quickly reduced to 18% or less of GDP and then cuts will continue until it is no more than 10% of GDP.  The economy will grow by leaps and bounds as the cost of government is kept growing somewhere between the rate of population increase and the rate of GDP increase, but definitely significantly less than the rate of GDP increase.

That is the gist of my program to transform the American economy consistent with the American Principle of government limited to the protection of our equal, sovereign individual rights to life, liberty, property, the ownership of our minds, bodies, and labor, and the pursuit of happiness.  The key to the preservation of our rights is a rich and vibrant private sector where we are free to pursue our own values, to trade goods, services, and ideas, and to associate with others of our choice for the purposes of our choice.

There are many other reforms needed to fully protect all of the rights of the individual.  Some of these will have major economic implications as well.  For instance, all education should become private education.  It is not the business of the government to educate the people, since that would be an infringement of the rights of many and government has a very serious conflict-of-interest problem with respect to teaching about its legitimate functions, about ethical matters that must enter into issues affecting the freedom of conscience of the People, and about the history of failure of big government and the success of highly limited government.  Much more needs to be done to protect privacy, the freedom of movement, freedom of speech and the written word whether in press or on the Internet, freedom of assembly, freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of trade and the ownership of one's own labor and its fruits, the freedom to create a domestic partnership contract with any consenting adults of one's choice, and the freedom of property ownership, including that in one's mind and body.

Plano, Texas Suppresses Student Speech

The Plano, Texas school district has banished all religious expression from its schools.  Religious expression is surely a form of freedom of conscience, which is the sovereign right of every individual.  It is hardly surprising that government-run schools, which are mostly controlled by the forces of big government, are now prohibiting virtually all non-verbal student speech in any school-related activities.  This has resulted in a court case, Morgan v. Plano Independent School District, hearing which the Fifth Circuit chose to uphold the school district's speech restrictions based upon the United States v. O'Brien immediate scrutiny test of "time, place, and manner."  Apparently, this test will allow schools to further erode all student speech relating to religious and political content.  The Cato Institute joined three organizations that support religious liberty to file a brief asking the Supreme Court to re-examine the Fifth Circuit's approach in favor of the alternative Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District test that free speech cannot be suppressed unless that speech "materially and substantially disrupts" the educational process.

The statist authorities want to train students from an early age to give up their inconvenient freedom of speech and their freedom of conscience.  It is very important to stop this.  Of course, the best way to stop this is to end the reign of government-run schools and to promote private educations.  As we discussed recently, private schools have the added benefits of generally providing a better education and they are less expensive compared to the real costs of the public schools.

Disclosure:  I hold a grudge against Plano, Texas.  In the late 1960s, I was given a speeding ticket there for going 45 mph in a 35 mph zone.  I had exited US 75 going north, returning to Tulsa from a visit with a Brown University friend who lived in Dallas, and was driving through farmland.  I was concerned about what the speed limit was and could find no speed limit signs.  Soon, a police car pops out and pulls me over for a speeding ticket.  He hauled me into town where I had to wait for a judge to finish his checker game.  I had to pay a fine on the spot.  On returning to US 75, I searched again for a speed sign and found none.  Plano, Texas was then a small town, which it is no more, and was raking in income from unsuspecting interstate drivers.  It was their racket.  So, I have an additional minor reason for wanting to see the Supreme Court clean Plano, Texas's clock.  The need for freedom of conscience and freedom of speech are much more important, of course, but I will still have an added bonus in this if the Supreme Court makes the right decision.

The Public School Scandal

I have stated over and over that our biggest problem in the fight for the equal, sovereign, and unalienable rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in the United States of America is the fact that the education of our young is controlled by government.  Government at the local, state, and federal levels always has a conflict of interest in education.  American children need an education in which a cornerstone of their knowledge is knowing that legitimate government, as stated in our Declaration of Independence, is that government which governs with the consent of the governed for the purpose of securing their individual rights.  They need to understand that the purpose of the Constitution was to insure that the federal government had very limited powers dedicated to the purpose of securing individual rights and nothing more.  To understand how important this is, students need a knowledge of the history of great numbers of governments which oppressed the People.  They need a realistic knowledge of the Capitalist system with its free markets for goods, services, and ideas and how that system serves every unique individual by allowing them many, many choices and an easy path to forming many voluntary associations with others for specialized purposes of their own.  They need to understand that socialism cannot accommodate individual rights, cannot recognize the individuality and uniqueness of each of us, and cannot allow us to develop and express ourselves as the individuals we are.  Students need to understand that a Capitalist, free market society offers a richness of life no other system can offer.  Yet, all governments inevitably want to grow and want to feel needed in far more ways than the protection of our individual rights.  And frankly, many politicians hunger for power and learn how to use special interest groups to help them attain it.  Hence, government has a fundamental conflict-of-interest when it is put in charge of running our education system.

Yet, in America, as in most countries, government is in charge of the education of our young.  We know that the quality of government-run education in many other fields than history and civics is also very disappointing.  The governments that run the welfare system, the DMVs, job licensing, metro transportation systems, regulate health insurance and electricity rates, and much else equally poorly, do not do much better with education.  In many cases, they also spend far more money on education than they tell us they spend on it as I reported in this post on Washington, D.C. public schools.  According to a study released on 10 March 2010 by Adam Schaeffer with the Cato Institute's Center for Educational Freedom entitled They Spend WHAT? The Real Cost of Public Schools, this problem of under-reporting the real cost of public school educational expenses is very widespread.  He examines the reported spending and the real spending per pupil for six metropolitan regions, including the five largest for K-12 public schools.  He also compares the cost of the K-12 public schools to an estimate of the cost for private schools in that metropolitan area.  The results are very enlightening and offer a sound reason for hope that we can convince the People that government-run education is a very bad deal indeed.

The Cato Institute report compiled public school K-12 costs for the central city school district, for the highest income adjacent school district and for the lowest income adjacent school district.  I have complied a table to condense the most important of the results found by Adam Schaeffer in the following table:

The public school districts under-reported the true cost of public education per pupil anywhere from 3% to 151%.  Only the low-income North Chicago school district did a faithful job of reporting their real expenditures, though the low-income district in the Phoenix area of Deer Valley at 13% and the low-income district in the Washington, D.C. area of Prince George's County at 17% were much more accurate than most in their reporting.  Los Angeles city school district was the worst: they spent more than 2.5 times as much as they claimed to spend per pupil!  The other districts spent between 22 and 85% more than they reported spending.  It turns out that many voters when told about the difference in real spending from what they thought was being spent per student were very upset.  They indicated that they were not willing be taxed so much as they were for the purpose of spending so much.

Equally interesting as the great deception of the People about the amount spent on public education, is the fact that the public education is clearly no bargain compared to private education.  The public school districts spent between 21% and 201% more than the local private schools!  In 8 out of the 18 public school districts examined, the public schools spent more than 100% more than (twice as much) did the local private schools per pupil.  Only the Houston school districts and the low-income school districts of Phoenix, Los  Angeles, and Washington, D.C., were less than 50% more expensive than the local private schools and all but one of them was one-third or more higher in costs.

Now, I am pretty sure that these private schools are generally offering as good or better educations than the public schools.  I am very sure that if they spent as much as the public schools do per pupil, most private schools would offer a substantially better education.  It would seem very clear that the taxpayers in many of these examined school systems could be convinced that a voucher system that allowed them to send their children to a private school instead of the public school money-eater would be preferable both for providing their children a better education and to save the local tax district a huge amount of money, as they shut down more and more of their schools.  Indeed, even the taxpayers with no children to educate would clearly be better off.

Some will argue that many of the private schools are associated with religious groups.  Indeed, in a country in which the taxpayer has to pay for these very expensive public schools and then has to shell out a substantial amount of money for a private school, there is likely to be another motivation of the effort and commitment, such as a strong belief of some kind.  But, if public policy allows a healthy voucher system, the market for private schools will expand greatly.  Many secular schools will be established, as will be schools with strong arts programs or strong science programs.  The competition to provide good educations at reasonable prices will produce many more good schools that people can afford more readily than the bloated socialist holding cells we call schools today.

So, when the topic of public education comes up in your school district, do not feel bashful about informing your conversant that public schools are ridiculously expensive and provide a poor education compared to what a private school can and will provide.  Let's get the People to demand a shift from government-run schools to private schools, where the parents will once again have a say in the education of their children and the taxpayers will have some relief.  The public schools are just one more case of the gullible being taken for a ride by government.

School Superintendent Fires All High School Teachers in Failed High School

Central Falls High School in Central Falls, Rhode Island has a 48% graduation rate and huge numbers of students failing courses.  The town of Central Falls grew up around the falls on the Blackstone River, which began powering manufacturing operations in the mid-1700s.  The area claims to have produced more of the arms used in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars than any other.  Central Falls was home to many manufacturing enterprises, but especially to the textile industry.  Now, it is a terribly depressed city with a median income of $22,000 and an unemployment rate well above the already high Rhode Island rate of 12.3% in December 2009.  But, the high school teachers earn $72,000 to $78,000 per year, teaching from 7:50 AM to 2:25 PM during the school year.

The State Education Commissioner, Deborah Gist, authorized the Central Falls School Superintendent, Francis Gallo, to turn the failed high school around.  Gallo asked the teachers union to agree to extending the school day by 25 minutes.  She also asked that teachers spend some time tutoring students before and after classes, eat lunch with them once a week, undergo more rigorous evaluations, attend a weekly after school planning meeting, and take two weeks of training each summer.  She offered them $30 per hour for 90 minutes of after school planning time a week and for the 2 weeks of summer training.

The teachers union wanted $90/hr. for the extra work.  They did not get that, so they refused the offer, knowing that the School Superintendent would have to fire the teachers, administrators, and assistants of the high school staff if they refused her offer.  Francis Gallo did just that.

Someone earning about $75,000 per year while working about three-quarters of the year is making money at about a $100,000 a year rate.  Surely one should expect such a person to be a professional.  Or viewed from another angle, surely one should expect a teacher to be a professional.  I cannot figure out why a professional needs a union, which will always require its members to behave in an unprofessional manner appropriate to at best semiskilled workers.  In any case, a professional teacher ought to be appalled at the degree of educational failure at Central Falls High School and should feel duty-bound out of professional pride to undertake the additional work needed to actually teach its students.  Possibly, the students are unreachable.  If a professional teacher were to conclude this, then that teacher would move to another school where the students are teachable.  But, to be happy drawing a high school teaching salary of $75,000 per year and not being able to graduate as many as 50% of the students, that is despicable.  The fired teachers surely deserved to be fired and apparently should have been fired long ago.

Unfortunately, Central Falls will fill the public school with more teachers and attempt to continue public education.  They may do better, but public education is always a failure.  Its internal contradictions are numerous:

• One of the chief lessons of history is that government must be highly limited, but government will not properly teach this in a government-run school.  This is an inherent conflict-of-interest.
• The central purpose of education is that children should learn to think rationally and independently.  Government does not want this to be the case:  it wants docile followers, so we have another conflict-of-interest.
• The study of ethics is central to education, but ethical ideas are commonly a bone of contention among Americans to such an extent that government-run schools will not allow genuine ethical discussions because they may become "confrontational" and may bring in religious ideas.
• Political issues must be discussed, but political viewpoints either rest on limited government or with extended government they must rest on imposing ethical ideas upon the citizens under threat of force.  Again, there is confrontation and the introduction of religious ideas, if powerful government is advocated, as the government always wishes it to be.
• The government cannot resist using the government-run schools as propaganda mills designed to mold its future voters into the beliefs the government wants them to have.
• The government cannot resist advocating ideas of class warfare and racial and sexual victimhood, since these ideas give the government many excuses to expand its powers.

The proper and wise way to provide the children of Central Falls with a decent education is to close down the government-run schools and start up more private schools.  The educational mandate of private schools is much less in conflict with the needs of American students and it has the property of being freely chosen, rather than imposed by force.

Are the Public Schools a Public Trust?

Flying home to Baltimore from Tulsa on Sunday, I sat next to an architect who was an ardent defender of the public schools and was adamantly opposed to competition from private schools. His arguments are very revealing when examined carefully. On my other side sat a proud Marine who was home-schooled by his mother who had been an English teacher. This Marine was a carpenter and was presently assigned to a unit that performed extensive honor guard duties in Washington, DC. He was able to give me a very accurate and incisive summary of the Global Warming fraud. It was also clear that he was very knowledgeable about computers.

The architect argued over and over that the public schools are a public trust. I responded that in many areas it was clear that the public schools had not earned the publics' trust given the quality of the education they provided. I also argued that public schools have an inherent conflict of interest which makes it impossible for them to fully address many issues and biases them to provide false propaganda.

Education should aim at helping students to learn to think for themselves. They should learn about the necessity to observe reality objectively, to analyze what they see and experience critically, learn logical thinking, learn that one's ideas should be self-consistent and non-contradictory, learn that the rights of the individual are paramount to living in a civilized society, and learn to prioritize the threats to the individual. After all, learning is the most individual of all activities, even when we interact extensively with others in the process. This is because we have learned nothing if we have not carefully and consistently exercised our own judgment in evaluating the truth of everything that we are taught. Some things we recognize as true, some things we recognize as false, some ideas are packages with both true and false contents, and some we place in the category of things to be examined further before assigning them to true or false or packages of mixed contents. It is critical that we commit ourselves to this evaluation of everything we are taught, or we have not learned anything.

In view of this, what is the conflict of interest in the public schools? Broadly, it is this: politically we threatened either by anarchy or by government. Nearly all Americans agree that anarchy is intolerable. The Framer's of the Constitution also recognized it as intolerable. But, they well knew from the example of the rule of the American colonies by Great Britain, that government, even the one they all recognized as one of, if not, the best government in the world prior to our revolution, was the greatest threat to the rights of the individual except anarchy. Their answer to this dilemma was to form a constitutionally strictly limited representative government. Even then they did not trust it very far, so they designed in many checks and balances between multiple branches of government. Then the people went still further and demanded a Bill of Rights, which was supposed to further guarantee the rights of the individual and in some cases the role of state government. Even then, Jefferson said that the people would have to frequently revolt to keep the government from becoming tyrannical! Many said that one of the reasons for the 2nd Amendment of the Bill of Rights was to ensure that the people would have the means to revolt if they needed to. The recent need of the people to revolt against Great Britain had not been forgotten.

For a long time, most Americans received their education in private schools. Those who did not, still usually received it in lightly regulated public schools organized in small school systems governed by local boards of education. The parents of school children generally personally knew several of the school board members and these members were not the elite education specialists and distant school board members running most of our much larger school boards today. Then they lived down the street as neighbors and you did business with them. As long as this was true, the schools generally taught that the purpose of government was to protect the rights of the individual. In time, the socialists who were generally the primary advocates of public schools, succeeded in making the school systems much larger and in breaking the bonds between the parents and the school board members. They were then able to place more and more elitist professionals on the school boards, especially those committed to socialism. Of course, most of these people called themselves Progressives in the late 1800s and the early 1900s. Then later they called themselves Liberals, because by then people had forgotten in substantial part that Liberals in the 1800s were the defenders of the rights of the individual.

These new Liberals were Socialists who believed the elite should run government and see that it managed the lives of the majority of the people who were not capable of managing their own lives. The school system was re-directed to "teach" children that they should look to the government to solve all social problems, that the Constitution was dominated by an Elastic Clause that allowed government to do anything it said was for the Common Good, and that there were many, many people who desperately needed government help in managing their lives. Of course they were not so bold as to tell these children that the elite thought most of them were unable to live their lives as well as the elite were prepared to help them to by bombarding them with politically correct thoughts. In the interest of advancing their socialist agenda, the public education elites opposed the idea that the purpose of government is to protect the rights of the individual. Sometimes this was a flat denial of these rights and other times they undermined the idea of individual rights by claiming that everyone had a right to demand the services of others to provide them an education, health care, a chicken in every pot, and even freedom from fear.

So the first conflict of interest is that public schools being run by government prove to be poor wardens to guard against government intrusions that violate the rights of the individual. Just as the checks and balances in the Federal Government proved to be susceptible in time to power-sharing agreements between the branches of government and then between the government and the states, the public schools achieved their power-sharing goals with respect to local and state governments and even the Federal Government. Compulsory, tax-supported schools are now run by the teachers unions. These union members hold almost all teaching jobs and hence can claim to be the vast majority of the education experts. They recommend slates of school board members at election time and the people almost always vote for them on the recommendation of the education experts. In turn, the public schools take most of the local tax revenues and they teach children that government needs to become bigger and expand its power. Of course, this usually results in the schools getting still more tax money and the politicians, except the most dimwitted, see the advantage in having more future voters willing to give them more power. More and more, state governments and the Federal Government give public schools money also. Thus, instead of being taught that we must assiduously oppose the expansion of government, that it is the problem not the solution, the young are taught to embrace the usurpers and tyrants.

One of the most important reasons for becoming educated is to think about ethics and to formulate a person code of ethical principles. Traditionally, most people thought that this involved religious teachings, which have been removed from the public schools in accordance with the separation of church and state. I think that ethics should be understood in terms of the individual life whose support, security, and happiness in this world requires rational personal choices based upon personally chosen values. But whether ethics has a religious base or a rational personal base, public schools are unable to address serious ethical issues. The personal rational base is clearly in conflict with the goals of the socialist, who has been reduced to propagandizing ecological anti-humanisms, racial group think, income bracket group think, gender group think, and a polarization between victims and oppressors based on race, gender, and income bracket. This is a remarkably poor substitute for an individual rational ethics.

So much for the idea that the public schools are a public trust!

Another argument by the architect was this: Private schools will not take in most public school students because they are too hard to teach. Interesting. First, there was a time when almost all children in many communities were taught in private schools. Why is it that this cannot be done again? Is this because the human race has become less teachable? If so, is this not evidence that the public schools have failed their trust? After all, they were supposed to provide everyone with a good education, not make them impossible to educate. Or if some people truly cannot be educated, then how can private schools be criticized for a failure to do the impossible?

When I pointed out that DC public schools spent $24,600 per student per year and that many private schools would be happy to educate the DC students better for such a sum, he simply asserted that no they would not. Then he proceeded to say that the DC schools should be given more money so they could educate the DC children. He suggested $50,000 per student. Well, if private schools would not educate them for $24,600 per year, I wonder if they would be willing to do a better job than the DC public schools for $50,000 per year then. I am sure they would! I am also sure that a true competition from private schools given nearly equivalent tax money through the choice of parents, would help the public schools to improve.

I do not think they will ever be able to provide as high a quality of education as private schools will, however. But, when the school, whether private or public, has to persuade the parents to give them money for the education of their children, there is little doubt that the schools will pay more attention to the individual needs and capabilities of each student and be more responsive to the parent's ideas of what their children should learn. This loss of control, of nearly tyrannical control is dreaded by the public schools. Yet this loss would cause parents to become more involved in their children's education and this would be good. It also means that the parents have given a particular school a warrant to discipline and teach their children, which compulsory public schools lack. They feel this lack, because teachers were constantly sending home parent and student contracts which I refused to sign on the basis that they were meaningless since the schools were compulsory. There can be no such thing as a contract which one is compelled by force to sign.

The architect also commented that homeschooling was a bad idea because many homeschooling parents were not qualified teachers. This riled up our Marine companion a bit, since he had earlier noted that he was home-schooled and now noted that his mother had been an English teacher. Of course the elitist architect was not apologetic about his comment about the Marine's parents' teaching qualifications. He also made no attempt to respond to my point that home-schooled children outscored public school children on the standardized tests, except to claim that they must teach to the test. I responded that I was pretty sure they teach less to the test than do public school teachers in general. I did not then point out that many homeschooled students are taught by professionals, who may not be teacher certified, but who were often once better students than most public school teachers were.

As the reader can see, none of the architect's arguments for compulsory and exclusively public education hold up to analysis. Some were very revealing of his elitist viewpoint and his conviction that many people are almost impossible to educate. I think that most people are capable of learning much more than they do in the public schools. The evidence is strong that this was once the case for even many very poor African-American students, who seem to be the unnamed students this architect deems to be impossible to educate, at least for less than $50,000 per student per year. For evidence that such students can be educated, I direct the reader to Thomas Sowell's book Black Rednecks and White Liberals for an extensive and fascinating chapter on the subject. The book is generally so good that I lent it to a friend long ago and he will not give it back!

The Cost of Public Schools

Today I mean the cost in tax dollars to support public schools, not the cost in ethical relativism, ignorance, group think, and propaganda devoured. Andrew Coulson of The Cato Institute did some looking into the numbers for the Washington, D.C. public school system. Through the last couple of years I have seen the cost per student given commonly in the range of $9,000 to $12,000 something. He states that the most commonly cited figure is $8,322 per student now. Why do these numbers vary so much? Well, it turns out that it is because it all depends on how much the school system decides to hide from the public.

Coulson found that for K through 12 in 2007-2008, the local operating budget is $831 million, the capital budget is $218 million, federal funding is $85.5 million, and the D.C. Council kicks in an additional $81 million. There are 49,422 students, some of whom, on a given day, actually come to school. Divide this number into the sum of the annual funding and the cost per student is found to be about $24,600, which is rather a bit more than $8,322.

I have heard many discussions about how it is difficult for private schools to take on the education of a child for about $8,322 per year, so they could not take over the public school burden of education. But.......the story is clearly very different when you realize that the public schooling cost for a virtual non-education is on par cost-wise with the very elite private school, Sidwell Friends, that Chelsea Clinton attended. Would any sane person actually send their child to the dangerous and dilapidated D.C. public schools rather than an elite private school? No!

It clearly makes much more sense just to provide parents with a scholarship voucher to use on the school of their choice. Sure, the amount on the voucher may be less than $24,600 per year per student, allowing one to save considerable money for the poor beleaguered taxpayers. Florida's McKay Scholarship program provides money for special-needs children and the average scholarship for 2006-2007 was only $7,206. Sure, the cost of living is lower in Florida, but special-needs education is more expensive to deliver than general education. It is clear that private schools are now available to do a better educating job even at a cost of $12,000 to $15,000 per year per student in even the D.C. area. Many new schools would soon arise to meet the need if parents were given such scholarships.

The quality of the education in D.C. schools is indecently poor. This school system is awash in bureaucracy, inefficiency, and out-right corruption. Parents should be allowed to put it out of business or force it to meet the competition. The fantasy that this public education is free and that it even is education, must be challenged. The forces enforcing its monopoly on the education of our young are truly evil. Those forces include egalitarian socialists and the teacher's unions.

Neither is interested in the individual student learning to think for himself.

School Choice Popularity in Maryland

A bill has been approved by the Maryland Senate to allow Maryland businesses to take a tax credit of up to 75% for a donation to an educational organization that provides scholarships to students. The bill has 78 sponsors in the Maryland House, which is more than enough to pass it, if Sheila Hixson, chairwoman of the House Ways and Means Committee, will allow it to be presented to the full House for a vote. Whether she does or not, this development is very significant because it shows how strongly disappointed many citizens are with the public schools and how desperate they are to maintain and promote private schools.

This is happening in a generally solid Democratic state. The governor is a Democrat and both the House and the Senate of the Maryland General Assembly are controlled readily by the Democrats. The Democratic party here, as everywhere else, is very beholdened to the public school teachers unions. This bill is opposed by the Maryland State Teachers Association. This group claims that the state cannot afford to give out handouts to private schools when public schools are cash strapped. Actually, Marylanders are very generous with their public schools, but no matter how generous they may be, it is never enough to make the teachers unions grateful.

Baltimore City schools are horrendous. The schools of Prince George's County, one of the two counties abutting Washington, D. C., are also very bad. Prince George's County School System is the second largest school system in the state, while Baltimore City is about tied with Baltimore County as the 3rd largest school system in the state. Many families in Prince George's County fled Washington, D. C. in large part because its schools are terrible. Now, there is pressure from many families because they wish to send their children to better schools. This pressure is particularly keen in areas with particularly poor schools, which turn out to be some of the most intensely Democrat strongholds in the state. Democrat politicians are now getting the message, partially.

Let us examine the opposition of the Maryland State Teachers Association. A business volunteers to give $100 to educate children. The corporation tax rate in Maryland is 7%. So, the corporation would usually pay $7 to the state out of $100. If the corporation gives this $100 to educate children, then it reduces its taxes by $75 - $7 = $68. Thus, education gets $100 and public education loses some fraction of the $68 less collected by the state. With this program, more students are educated privately, so public education has fewer students to educate, allowing them to spend a lot less money. More net money is going to the education of students and because private schools are better than public schools and many spend less money per student than our troubled public school systems, the total cost of education may actually drop. Our youth are net beneficiaries.

Ah, but the Maryland State Teachers Association does not like this. Is this not clear proof that the teachers represented by the Maryland State Teachers Association are not true professional teachers, who would, of course, put the interests of the students first? Yes it is. They are simply semi-skilled blue collar union workers. No more. It is clear that their priorities lie with having their hands in the government cookie jar and feasting at great expense upon the cookies put there by many hardworking citizens of the state of Maryland. It is time that Maryland citizens put the education of their children ahead of the interests of the public school teacher unions.

What is especially important here is that even Democrat parents are beginning to realize that their children are being poorly served by many of the school systems, especially those controlled most completely by the Democrats and the teachers unions, and they are rebelling. In fact, with enough vigor to get Democrat legislators to act despite the protests of the Maryland State Teachers Association.