United Liberty

A lot of people roll their eyes whenever someone makes a comment about liberal college professors indoctrinating our young people.  I understand it even, because I’ve known a lot people who were liberal in college but who change their positions once they get out into the great, wide world.

Unfortunately, professors like this give a lot of ammunition to those that think American colleges seem to be dedicated to indoctrinate rather educate.  From the Daily Caller:

If students want to pass John Banzhaf’s law class, they’ll have to fight for increased government regulation in the food and beverages industry.

Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University, will require his students to lobby state and local governments to ban sugary beverages, according to a press release. The release was put out by Banzhaf himself, who summarized the objective as “Undergrads Required to Lobby for Obama Policy.”

“Some 200 undergrads will be asked to contact legislators in their home cities, counties, or states asking them to adopt legislation similar to that already adopted in New York City … banning restaurants, delis, movie theaters and many other businesses from selling high-sugar drinks in cups or containers larger than 16 ounces,” said the press release.

To appease students who may not wish to advocate the specific policy in place in New York City, Banzhaf supplied a list of substitute activities, which include:

In just over a week, voters will go to the polls to decide the fate of the Charter School Amendment, which has suddenly become quite controversial. What few people realize is that Georgia had charter schools, successful charter schools, for quite a few years until the Gwinnett County school system sued to have the charter schools ruled unconstitutional. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled, in a split decision, in favor of Gwinnett, and charter schools suddenly became unconstitutional. As pointed out in a blistering dissent by Justice David Nahmias, this was accomplished by the Supreme Court making a very creative interpretation of the Georgia Constitution. Unfortunately, once that ruling was made, it became the law of the land, which is why we are at this point now. The only way to reverse the effect of the court’s ruling is to pass a constitutional amendment to get us back to where we can do what we had already been doing.

There has been an enormous misinformation campaign waged by opponents of this amendment, who see this, correctly, as a danger to the monopoly stranglehold they hold on education in Georgia; or rather, on the BILLIONS of education dollars that the public school system controls. One of the most curious attacks on this amendment is the claim, uttered with vague but ominous undertones, that the campaign in favor of the amendment is being funded with money that comes, in part, from out of state sources. In fact, I was told this week by someone opposing the amendment that this was “sin money”, and that we couldn’t trust the motives of those contributing money from out of state.

There’s a huge debate around the issue of choice in education. The conversation on school choice has a number of talking points ranging from letting public funds follow students to shutting down all public schools and completely privatizing education. And there are some who don’t fall into the “pro” column on choice at all. (I don’t understand them, but they’re out there.)

My libertarian approach to education is pretty straightforward: it’s my (and my wife’s) responsibility to see that our children are properly trained for their future, and at no point does the federal government (or the state government) have any impact whatsoever on our role as parents.

I had this conversation with then-Congressman Nathan Deal while he was on the campaign trail running to be Georgia’s next Governor. My wife and I are fortunate enough to be able to send our children to private school, and the conversation with Deal was about my taxes actually paying for my children’s education. He was making the argument that Georgia had to make sure private schools were reaching certain standards before education funds could follow students to private schools.

While I understand his concern, his stance on that issue takes parental responsibility completely out of the equation. My wife and I have chosen a specific school to help us teach our children. That school answers to us. If the product it provides is not found to be satisfactory, we will have the option of (and responsibility for) finding another school that will meet our standards.

I don’t want to be airing dirty laundry in a public forum, so I’m not going to get into much detail with the personal information on this issue, but this year my wife and I have had frustrations with the school our children attend. After considering our options, we have decided to partner with another school for their education next school year.

The public school system is a disaster.  More and more money is being spent, and for what?  The results just aren’t warranting the expense.  However, there are alternate approaches out there.  One that seems to be gaining steam more and more as the years go by is the idea of charter schools.

At Townhall.com, John Stossel who hosts the show Stossel on Fox Business writes a bit about charter schools.

I was surprised to meet kids who said they like school. What? I found school boring. How can it be that these fourth-graders tell me that they look forward to going to school and that math is “rockin’ awesome”?

Those kids attend one of those new charter schools. Charters let them escape the bureaucracy of regular schools, including, often, teachers union rules. These schools compete for kids because parents can always choose another school. That makes them better.

Not every charter school is good, but the beauty of competition is that bad ones go out of business, while good ones expand. Then good schools teach more kids. Choice and competition produce quality. Anyone surprised?

For the record, many teachers unions oppose charter schools.  Because of their nature, they introduce some instability into a teacher’s life.  Charter schools can be shut down easier, and charter schools are often formed in such a way to get rid of bad teachers quickly.  The result?  Kids who want to learn and do it better.

When you can’t defend your own ideology, characterize your opponent’s ideology as something that it isn’t, a la David Sirota:

On one side are self-interested teachers unions who supposedly oppose fundamental changes to schools, not because they care about students, but because they fear for their own job security and wages, irrespective of kids. In this mythology, they are pitted against an alliance of extraordinarily wealthy corporate elites who, unlike the allegedly greedy unions, are said to act solely out of the goodness of their hearts. We are told that this “reform” alliance of everyone from Rupert Murdoch to the Walton family to leading hedge funders spends huge amounts of money pushing for radical changes to public schools because they suddenly decided that they care about destitute children, and now want to see all kids get a great education.

Here Sirota creates a straw man by claiming that proponents of privatization of education and other like-minded reformers believe that “wealthy corporate elites…act solely out of the goodness of their hearts.” Quite contrarily, I expect private businesses, of which private schools are in specie, to provide a good service out of their own best interest. I expect them to cater to my desires out of fear for their own survival and financial well being – the profit motive. Adam Smith noted the power of this phenomenon centuries ago:

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.

It is an inescapable axiom that education is a service not unlike that of any other industry. The reasons that we must treat it so differently are lost on me.