All Posts Tagged With: "government schools"

School-to-Work: A Large Step Down the Road to Serfdom

Gary Wolfram is the George Munson Professor of Political Economy at Hillsdale College. It’s been five years since Congress enacted the “School-to-Work Opportunities Act.” School-to-Work is a federal program that ostensibly is designed to improve the work skills of children in the nation’s government schools. The theory is that our education system should prepare children [...]

1Sep1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

Government Is No God

Assume you need surgery to remove a brain tumor. Two physicians in your town offer to perform this operation. Dr. Smith specializes in neurosurgery; it’s his sole occupation. Dr. Jones, however, divides his time among a variety of occupations. Along with performing neurosurgery, he practices dentistry, gynecology, podiatry, and radiology. He also spends part of [...]

1Jun1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

New Schools for a New Century: The Redesign of Urban Education edited by Diane Ravitch and Joseph Viteritti

Yale University Press • 1997 • 320 pages • $30.00 Socialism cannot work, Ludwig von Mises argued from the 1920s until his death, because of a central flaw—the lack of market prices. Socialists argued back that they could simulate market prices, but Mises countered that pretending to have a market could never come close to [...]

1Feb1999 | | 0 comments | Continued

No Credit Due

The pundits are bewildered over the public’s contradictory response to President Clinton during his recent troubles. Most Americans have a low opinion of his character. Yet at least 60 percent of those polled think he’s doing a terrific job and should not resign. How can this be? Assuming the polling results are accurate, it may [...]

1Dec1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Service Without a Smile

Stop the presses! Here’s a news flash that will send shock waves through the country: school-based compulsory community service doesn’t engender the spirit of giving. Imagine that! When students are forced to be compassionate volunteers, they rebel and find ways to get around the system. Who’d have believed it? In a recent article in the [...]

1Nov1998 | | 2 comments | Continued

Whose Kids Are They?

David Boaz is executive vice president of the Cato Institute and author of Libertarianism: A Primer (Free Press). This article is adapted from his foreword to the new edition of The Twelve-Year Sentence: Radical Views of Compulsory Schooling edited by William F. Rickenbacker (Fox and Wilkes). Rereading The Twelve-Year Sentence a quarter-century after it was [...]

1Oct1998 | | 1 comment | Continued

Lessons from Homeschooling

The June 28, 1998, New York Times reported that 56 percent of Massachusetts’ up-and-coming teachers failed their basic test in reading and writing. This result means that well over half of Massachusetts’ freshly minted college graduates with degrees in education cannot competently read and write. Can you guess the response of the Massachusetts State School [...]

1Sep1998 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Twenty-First Century City

Books by politicians. Seldom worth reading and rarely even worthy of the appellation “book,” they are usually tedious pastiches of campaign blather, clichés, flattering photos, and anything else designed to help enhance election prospects. Don’t waste your time. But every now and then a politician writes a book that is not a waste of time, [...]

1Jul1998 | | 1 comment | Continued

The Seduction of Homeschooling Families

Do the public school authorities feel threatened by homeschooling? Judging by their efforts to lure homeschooling families into dependence on local school districts, the answer is apparently yes. For the last several years, homeschooling has been the fastest growing educational alternative in the country. Estimates of its growth rate typically range from 15 to 25 [...]

1Mar1998 | | 24 comments | Continued

Freedom 101

Where is someone likely to come into first contact with the freedom philosophy? In school? Considering that almost 90 percent of American children attend schools run by the government, that’s not likely. There may be exceptions, but how often will a teacher in a coercive institution tell his charges that each individual should be free [...]

1Feb1998 | | 0 comments | Continued

Classical Libertarian Compromises on State Education

Dr. West is emeritus professor of economics at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, and author of Education and the State (Liberty Press). There seems to be a consensus that the typical intellectual today is more comfortable than most with the government supply of education. But what of the intellectuals who were also advocates of laissez [...]

1Oct1996 | | 0 comments | Continued

How to Separate School and State: A Primer

Mr. Dewey is president of the National Scholarship Center, in Washington, D.C., a research and information clearinghouse on privately funded voucher programs. The views expressed here are his own. A forceful case for eliminating the role of government in education has been stated in the previous article. This essay will provide an introductory answer to [...]

1Jul1996 | | 2 comments | Continued

Teachers Unions: Are the Schools Run for Them?

Public education is the most expensive “gift” that most Americans will ever receive. Government school systems are increasingly coercive and abusive both of parents and students. Government schools in hundreds of cities, towns, and counties have been effectively taken over by unions, and children are increasingly exploited, thwarted, and stymied for the benefit of organized [...]

1Jul1996 | | 3 comments | Continued

How Much Do You Know About Liberty? (a quiz)

Try your hand at answering the following questions: 1. What method of resolving disputes did trial by jury replace? 2. Which great American patriot was called the “Prince of Smugglers”? 3. What bulwark of American liberty do we owe to the Antifederalists? 4. How many slaves were liberated by Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation? 5. After the [...]

1Jun1996 | | 0 comments | Continued

Knowledge, Ignorance, and Government Schools

The president of the American Federation of Teachers, Albert Shanker, put it well: “It’s time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody’s role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It’s no surprise that our school system doesn’t improve: [...]

1Jun1995 | | 0 comments | Continued

Vouchers: Politically Correct Money

Copyright © 1995. Dr. North is president of The Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas. The standard argument in favor of school vouchers is that vouchers will restore lost parental authority over their children’s education. This argument reveals a failure to understand the crucial relationship between moral authority, legal authority, and economic authority. It [...]

1Jun1995 | | 0 comments | Continued

Bilingual by Choice

Mr. McCaffery resides in New Orleans and is considered a great guide to Mardi Gras. In the summer of 1992, I was a guest lecturer in comparative law at a large private law school in Latin America. One morning before class, I read in a local newspaper that the newly appointed minister of education had [...]

1May1995 | | 0 comments | Continued
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