Private Education For All

Education should be viewed from the standpoint of the individual and thus it becomes the responsibility of the parents and not the responsibility of the State.

It is recognized that it is the duty of the parents to feed the child’s stomach. Consistency demands that it is also the duty of the parents to feed the child’s mind.

As education is the duty of the parents and is for the benefit of the individual, efforts should be concentrated on ways and means of removing the State from the field of education and returning it to the people.

If education is returned to the people, they will organize their own private schools just as they organize their own private businesses—without the aid of the State. The cardinal principle of private enterprise is that the customer is always right and in accordance with that principle thousands of businesses have arisen to meet the perverse whims and needs of the customer. With schools returned to the field of private enterprise that same cardinal principle will be foremost. Thousands of schools will arise, adapted to satisfy the varying needs of the millions desiring education—schools for the handicapped, schools for the slow, schools for the gifted, schools that grant diplomas, schools that grant no diplomas in the belief that education is never finished, schools with curriculums as varied as the needs of those in them.

“The principles of free private enterprise built America. Those same worth-while principles which have worked so well in creating our society will work equally well in producing the finest schools in the world; for the competition of the schools endeavoring to serve the demands of its customers, the children, will force the schools to hire the best, which means not good but excellent salaries. Competition will necessitate that the buildings and equipment be up to the minute in order to attract pupils, and the schools will have to run efficiently in order to keep costs down.

The mass of the people are well able to pay for private schooling. They are now paying for the schooling their children are receiving. They will pay for it if the schools are privately organized, and they will be aided as they are today if their parents cannot pay for their living expenses. Private grants of charities, foundations, businesses, and just plain people interested in seeing the children acquire the opportunity to study will take care of this problem efficiently and with as little embarrassment as possible.

Education in a society based on the fundamental principles of free enterprise should be in accord with those principles and should itself be a living example of the virility, efficiency, and morality of free enterprise.

O.B. Johannsen

From The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 8, 1955.