Overview

There is no constitutional authority for the federal government to be involved in education in any way whatsoever. The growing amounts of money and control coming from Washington have been matched by lower SAT scores, declining standards, more dangerous schools, and generations of Americans who have no basic education in history, geography, the Constitution, mathematics, science, or literature.

Democratic and Republican politicians want to use federal aid to education as a way to implement their social agendas.

I believe there is no federal educational program that will ever work. I want to get the federal government out of education completely and immediately. The most effective way we can improve education is to repeal the income tax, so that you can afford to educate your child as you deem best -- in a private school that offers the curriculum you want, in a religious school that teaches your values, or through home-schooling conducted your way.

The Quotable Harry Browne: on Education

"The best thing we can do for education is to repeal the income tax. Then you'll have the resources to put your child in any school you want -- private or religious -- or teach your child yourself. You can choose for yourself whether you want prayer in your school or no prayer, traditional or progressive education, sex education or no sex education. No more fighting with your neighbors, the school board, Congress, or the Supreme Court."

"Vouchers are an excellent way for the government to increase control over private schools."

"Democratic politicians want to solve the crisis of poor education by taking more of your money and using it to reduce classroom sizes in the government schools. Republican politicians want to solve the crisis by taking more of your money to provide vouchers to a handful of the poorest students in each area, paying for a part of the tuition expense at private schools. But before long this 'reform' would make those private schools indistinguishable from the government schools. I want to repeal the federal income tax -- so you can afford to choose any school, private or religious, that matches your educational and moral standards -- with no strings attached and no one to beg to."

"Isn't your children's education too important to let politicians and bureaucrats control it?"

Improving Education

From the end of World War II, federal aid to education increased gradually until the mid-1960s. Then it rose sharply. Since the late 1970s, its growth has slowed to about the rate of inflation.

As with every other area they touch, politicians become alarmed when federal education money isn't spent in the way they want. So the federal government has attached rules to its subsidies -- even though only about 6% of the money spent on education comes from the federal government.

Have federal money and federal control helped American students learn more? Hardly. Learning, as measured by Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores, steadily declined throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

The federal government's heavy hand has transformed the schools. Yesterday's schools focused on reading, writing, arithmetic and social studies. Today's schools spend much more time teaching children:

• To be citizens of the world,

• To be sensitive to people who are different from themselves,

• To pester their parents to recycle cans and bottles,

• To understand how western civilization destroyed a peaceful North America

• To report their parents if they catch them using drugs, and

• To practice safe sex.

Send Money

No matter how much the federal government appropriates for education, no matter how many bond issues your school district approves, you hear over and over that there isn't enough money for schools.

But education has declined as the money spent on it has increased dramatically. Between 1950 and 1995:

• The average annual expenditure per student rose 307% -- even after allowing for inflation.

• Class size was cut virtually in half, with the average ratio of students to teachers falling from 27 to 14.

• The average teacher's salary doubled, after allowing for inflation, which is roughly the same gain as for the labor force in general.

• Spending for school construction and other capital projects increased by 281%, after allowing for inflation.

• The amount of education money making a round trip to Washington and back to your local school district rose, after allowing for inflation, by 1,783%.

Obviously, lack of money isn't the problem.

Why Hasn't Education Improved?

Many explanations are offered for the decline in education. But by focusing on the decline, we may have the issue upside-down. The correct question should be: Why hasn't education improved?

Look at the tremendous progress made in computers, audio equipment, TV sets, telephones, fax machines, and many other tools of communication. Such things are ten to twenty times more efficient today than they were 40 years ago. Computers are thousands of times more powerful than they were in the 1950s.

With the advancements made in communication technology, children should be learning much more than their parents and grandparents did. Literacy levels should be much higher than they were, and so should SAT scores. Why has schooling deteriorated when the ability to communicate has improved so much?

The reason isn't hard to discover. Private companies provide communication technology but government dominates education. As long as that's the case, no significant improvement is possible.

But why must the government run schools? Is it because education is so important? If so, all the more reason to keep it away from government.

If Only Government Would Feed Us

If government must handle important things, why doesn't government provide free food for everyone -- as it provides free schooling for every child? One could live without knowing how to read but no one can live without food. So why doesn't government operate the supermarkets?

Imagine it. The food stores would become what the schools have become.

Political battles would decide which foods are available. If you didn't like the choices, you'd have to attend "food board" meetings and lobby state legislators.

Food would become more and more expensive, even as the quality deteriorated. Wilted vegetables, stale bread, and inferior meat would be the norm. So would vandalism and gangs. And don't get caught praying in the supermarket.

A Better Dream

Now let's reverse the picture. Imagine instead that schools were operated like today's supermarkets. Most school systems would offer a variety of approaches to any one subject -- just as a supermarket offers a variety of brands for any one-food item. And if you didn't like what one school offered, or if you didn't like the way you or your child were treated, you could patronize another school.

If you wanted prayer in the school, you wouldn't have to pray to Congress to get it. You'd just take your child to a school that encouraged it.

You'd be able to choose between science or social engineering, calculus or condom use. If you wanted, you might even find a school that would teach your children to nag you about recycling, or that had other special programs to undermine parental authority and encourage moral smugness.

If there were violence or drugs at your child's school, you wouldn't have to complain endlessly and in vain. You'd simply move the child to a school where such things don't happen. With competition, any school that tolerated such problems would probably close.

Choices

The success of private schools -- even private schools on skimpy budgets -- has inspired the idea of "school choice" or "vouchers." This plan has the government giving the parents of each child a voucher to be spent at a school of the parents' choosing -- government or private.

I understand the attraction of this approach. But it's dangerous to pretend that government control over education -- in any form -- can somehow work well. A voucher program allows politicians to decide which schools are "qualified" to accept the vouchers. Voucher advocates claim this will make government schools competitive the way private schools are, but just the opposite will happen: private schools will become more like government schools. No politician is going to hand out your money without attaching strings to it.

It is especially dangerous to have the federal government administer such a program. The Feds are too far removed from local school issues to have any competence.
It is far better to lower the tax burden so that parents are financially able to buy the education they want. Then each family could use its own money to send its children to a government school, a church school, or a non-religious private school -- or even teach them at home. When there's no subsidy from the government, there are no government strings attached.

Would all parents make the best choices for their children? We don't live in a perfect world. But we should live in a free country -- one in which each of us is free to make his own choices. And those parents who are capable of making good choices shouldn't have their children held hostage in government schools just because other parents are less competent.

What Must Be Done

Two reforms are needed:

• The federal government must get completely out of education. It has made a bad situation much worse. Plus, it has no constitutional authority to meddle in education.

• Federal taxes must be lowered dramatically so that most parents have the ability to finance their children's education directly, without having to depend on bureaucrats.

Once we make these reforms, it will be up to the people in each state to decide what educational system is best. I would hope that in some states the citizens would choose to disband the government school system and repeal the property taxes that support it. Poor children would be cared for just as they are now -- through school scholarships and private voucher systems. Getting the government completely out of education would make the schools truly "public" -- responsive to the choices of their customers, the parents. They would necessarily be economical, yet effective, places of learning.

And you would never have to endure a school that was bent on indoctrinating your child in an alien philosophy.