^{Miss Wilke is an advertising writer.}

^{JUST WHAT does "academic freedom" mean? Judging from the events of recent years, it means :}

• ^{the students’ rights to decide what they will learn}
• ^{the faculty’s rights to decide what they will teach and under what conditions}
• ^{the institution’s obligation to present all points of view}
• ^{everyone’s right to an education, through college}
• ^{the right to the same education as someone else, regardless of aptitudes or economic means}
• ^{the lowering or abandonment of standards of learning and accomplishment to make universal education possible and uniformly equal}
• ^{anyone’s right to disrupt the learning of others}
• ^{everyone’s right to learn on the other side of town}
• ^{the right to appear at school in straggly hairstyles and sloppy dress}
• ^{the right of boys and girls to share the same athletics and locker rooms}
• ^{government subsidies of education based on race, sex and economic status}
• ^{all of the above}

^{Of course, the only reasonable answer can be: "None of the above." These are just some of the preposterous claims masquerading today as academic freedom.}

^{The only meaningful academic freedom is the basic right of an institution’s board to determine all conditions of education in the school under its management. That’s why real academic freedom will be unrealized until educational institutions are free of government financing and control.}

^{If a board is supposed to represent the interests of all the taxpayers, the result must be chaos. How could it be otherwise? The public body is a hodgepodge of interests, ideas and beliefs, all with a legitimate claim on a public system.}

^{It is the tax base of education that gave one taxpayer the power to remove prayer from the schools. It was the tax base that justified bringing prayer into the schools in the first place. It is the tax base that justifies busing – and also anti-busing activities. And inviting Communist speakers to campuses. And protesting against Communist lecturers. And teaching sex in the primary grades. And removing sex from primary classes. And fighting over textbooks. And all the rest.}

^{This pushing and pulling at the school system frustrates everyone and accomplishes nothing but disruption.}

^{All education requires a point of view as to content, methods, directions, and the like. No point of view can be taken without offending someone. The nothingness that results from trying to accommodate all points of view could be called non-education. It’s the essence of socialized education. It is the government control and enforcement of "equal opportunity" that has inevitably driven education to its lowest, most ineffective level.}

^{That’s education under the public imperative. And what is the alternative? What is the private imperative?}

^{With private funding, schools must deliver the kind of education parents want for their children. How could schools avoid it? They would be individually selected on the basis of their performance. If they didn’t offer what enough parents wanted, they would go out of business.}

^{If schools were free to determine their own programs with an eye toward the market, everyone’s freedom would be broadened by virtue of the choices that would become available.}

^{The academic freedom of the institution to chart its own course would establish the only possible realistic basis for the academic freedom of students: a variety of offerings to choose from.}

^{There would be schools with prayer and schools without. Some with athletic programs and some without. Some with coed athletics. Some allowing freaky dress. Others not. Some highly specialized. Some general. Some low cost. Some expensive.}

^{All would prosper or fail on the basis of how they met the desires of the public.}

^{Some things would be missing-the fighting, rioting, shouting, arguing and disruption that takes place when one system is supposed to be all things to all people.}

^{This same academic freedom, the institution’s right to provide the program it chooses, would also provide real academic freedom for teachers. There would be a real market for different points of view and new methods. The teachers’ creativity would be stimulated by the variety of approaches and educational programs available as well as the drive toward improvement supplied by competition. There would be no lifelong lock-in to a stale job – no stagnation or inertia rewarded with raises acquired by carrying a sign.}

^{No one can say what forms true academic freedom would take and how it would develop and all that it would produce. But some things are certain. Unlike our present static system, improved forms of education would not only be possible, they would be assured. And correspondingly, the archaic and ineffective would disappear.}

^{Does anyone remember why we have those summerlong vacations?}

^{There was a time when heat in the summer was a problem. And in some places, maybe the youngsters were needed to help in the fields. Now we have air conditioning. And most families don’t raise their own produce. But we still have those long summer vacations -often a problem for teenagers, a bore for youngsters, a trial for moms.}

^{Under a system of private education, it is reasonable to assume that school facilities wouldn’t remain unprofitably idle for months at a time.}

^{In some instances there might be a choice of terms- on a rotation basis. Or continuous terms with several shorter vacation periods during the year. Or the choice of going to school year round. Or the alternative of going to school part time or in adjustable periods to accommodate employment in the case of high school and college students who want to work.}

^{And the "free lunch" would be free at last. Instead of being paid for by the taxpayers, free lunches offered by a private school would be a competitive inducement to gain enrollment. It would only have promotional effect if the school’s fees were competitive with those in comparable schools; so "free" in this case would take on some meaning.}

^{Total educational programs might be offered in this same free and easy competitive way. For example, builders and developers in increasing numbers would likely include schooling in their master plans, in the same way that they now include recreational facilities in the price of the home itself while keeping prices competitive.}

^{There was a time when a development attracted buyers with just a swimming pool. Competitive pressures have led more and more builders to include recreation and in expanding ways. It is becoming more and more common to find included such features as tennis courts, putting greens, barbecues, clubhouses, game rooms – even golf courses and lakes.}

^{In appealing to families, proximity to schools has always been a prime consideration for builders. Can anyone possibly believe such facilities wouldn’t be provided if there were no public monopoly of education ?}

^{Whenever competition comes into play, extra services automatially result.}

^{There would likely be programs accommodate working mothers roubled by mid-afternoon dismissals. There might be pre-school programs tied in with elementary school enrollments.}

^{Educational franchises could pop up faster than Jack-in-the-Boxes or McDonaldses – based on formulas that would make education more palatable, more fun, and more effective.}

^{It is likely that companies in established educational fields would offer systems using their materials. An encyclopedia company or publisher would be in a good competitive position for introducing educational programs.}

^{In spite of the fact that the government is currently hostile to companies providing related services within an industry, calling it monopoly, great efficiencies can be offered by companies already in a field, economies that are passed along to the consumer quite naturally under competitive pressures.}

^{The only real and deleterious monopolies are those that are forced upon us by government sponsorship and protection – the monopoly of education being a prime example.}

^{A private system would offer schools appealing to different learning capacities as well as different economic levels. There would be good schools and programs for the handicapped and those needing special attention. There would undoubtedly be schools for advanced students that would avoid the difficulties posed by "skipping" youngsters into advanced age groups. We wouldn’t be stifling the genius in our young Edisons as the uniformity of public education has done in the past.}

^{Standards of accomplishment would be vitally significant because schools would have to depend on their reputations and performance for continued existence.}

^{We could expect to see more schools in connection with churches – schools that are not economically feasible in competition with forcibly financed public schools. Academic freedom would then become a reality for certain religious sects that have been harassed for years by public educators in spite of the controversy over the separation of church and state and the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.}

^{Those who see only illiteracy as the alternative to socialized (public) education should remember that our early colleges, such as Princeton, Harvard and Yale, were all founded and funded by church initiative, not the government.}

^{It is also interesting to note recent research by the University of Texas indicating some of the failures of our public efforts to educate everybody. Of the 10,000 adults tested, 20 per cent cannot read newspaper help wanted ads, 13 per cent can’t address an envelope properly, 58 per cent can’t extract the meaning from a simple paragraph, 30 per cent can’t figure out airline schedules. One out of five were found to be functionally illiterate.}

^{Socialized education, like all aspects of socialism, is not anything so much as it is an emptiness, a void, an absence of expression and ideas.}

^{It is accepted because somewhere along the line we have made the mistake of defining free and responsible institutions as those which present all points of view. There never has been and never could be such a thing.}

^{"Equal Time" on T.V. and unbiased reporting in the press are utopian concepts and noticeably non-existent. Freedom of the press is the right of anyone to take a point of view in his newspaper and bear the responsibility for factual accuracy. It is the resulting existence of many newspapers that gives us the choice that makes freedom a reality.}

^{And academic freedom – what is it?}

^{It is the right of people to get the kind of education they want from the choices available on the market. As it is, there is no market at all.}

^{It is the right of teachers to teach what they choose, any way they like, as long as there is a market for their services. It is not a license for quackery and demagoguery at other people’s expense.}

^{It is the whole body of freedoms that depend on an institution’s right to offer what it will, as long as it can survive in the market place.}

^{It is the freedom of choice only possible through privately funded institutions.}

^{It is the variety of offerings that encourages differences, and the appreciation for individual differences, on which the progress of civilization depends.}

^{It is the only system that can make learning as much fun as it should be, because it is the only system that can meet individual needs.}

^{It is the system that places educational responsibilities where they belong – with parents and students.}

^{It is the system that produces people with direction and goals. Not the kind of education that turns out people who think the absence of goals is a goal in itself.}

^{It is the only system that can challenge young people of all capabilities and give them confidence in accomplishment.}

^{It is a system of proliferating choices . . . a system that can change and grow.}

^{All of the above.}

^{And more. Much, much more.}

^{An act of Congress can’t provide academic freedom. Only private competition can, with the inexorable pressures of competitive alternatives pushing toward improvement and perpetuating progress.}

^{Just two things keep the public system going. Financing by force, through taxation. And the willingness of people to accept the socialist notion that there is no alternative.}

^{There is, of course. The alternative to nothing is everything.}