This is an addendum to my blog on why education costs so much.
That blog was very short so it could be published by the newspaper. I will try to go into more detail here.
In general our society has abandoned republicanism for socialism. Republicanism is not about a party but about the concept of “do no harm” codified by law. It is a form of government designed to honor the rights and choices of every individual and group that “does no harm”. Socialism is about “the ends justifies the means” to create a utopian state which in reality most of the time is just a marketing gimmick to eventually concentrate all power into the state. It is about protecting the rights and power of a select class of citizen while the rest effectively become slaves to the state. Between a republican form of government and a socialist form of government is the transition form of democracy which protects the rights of the majority. Beyond socialism is communism which basically removes all rights from everyone.
Behind this transition is the idea of “fairness” and then “equality”.
Many school teacher’s I know will bring this up. “How is it fair that a school in a poor neighborhood gets less money and poorer teachers than one in a rich area?”
This is a core socialist concept that pushes society in general towards more concentration of power and loss of liberty. It is something our founders fraught hard to prevent from happening here by limiting the power of government by constitutions and actually defining the very purpose of government in the Declaration of Independence – to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and basically takes a “do no harm” stance. It is not governments job to “fix society” and thus also not its job to “educate society”.
This common idea of equality and fairness historically seems to have driven just about every society to the point of self-destruction eventually. America has been a huge exception for a long time but organized sources have finally pushed us to the point where the people will swallow just about anything and allow themselves to be imprisoned by “fairness” and “safety”.
We have actually migrated from the idea that a crime does harm to someone to the idea that disobeying the states will (misnamed a “law”) is the crime and that the state has the right to “modify or control behavior” in any way it sees fit. The veil of “democracy” is used to push this change.
Once these ideas become wide-spread the idea of collective theft becomes justified and eventually results in everyone robbing everyone instead of taking responsibility for their own prosperity and this leads to economic collapse and the excuse for the government to become a totalitarian state to cope with the “crisis”.
Your tax dollars typically go up to the state or even federal level and then comes back to your school in the form of funds all with strings attached. Curricula standards as well get centralized and then come down uniformly on all the schools within that jurisdiction. Even school boards are known to oppose the will of parents because the parents don’t directly fund the schools but go through this circuitous path the removes control of the local school from the parents.
In the Bible, God makes it the responsibility of the father to educate of his children. It doesn’t give this responsibility even to the church and certainly not to the state.
This doesn’t mean that God wants everyone home schooled, it just means that the family decides how much and what kind of education their children will receive.
When each family dictates the education we gain a massive diversity of quality and quantity and philosophies of education that promotes critical thinking, massive competition and a “well rounded” society with numerous points of view.
The only thing that must exist for this decentralized education to work is a common morality that keeps families from “doing harm”.
When education becomes centralized we get problems like the recent “Critical Race Theory” issue that can change the philosophy and viewpoint of an entire generation and if that collective opinion is wrong, the entire society can go into an error that could actually destroy the society itself.
Collectivized education actually enables a society to literally destroy itself within a few generations.
Collectivized education also destroys competition and generally drives quality down and cost up.
We now live in a time where a parent can home-school a child sufficiently to have them then learn for themselves with no need for any expense to have higher educational institutions.
The parents must only impart sufficient common sense, morality, self-control and critical thinking to guard their children from “fake news” and lies. Those desiring institutionalized education can do it privately where the funds for it are not taken at gunpoint by the government.
Because our collective educational system actually opposes critical thinking and morality/God, it sets up the next generation to be vulnerable to propaganda, peer pressure, and immorality. This is a natural byproduct of collective thinking. We are taught by grades which are generally tied to age which is an absolute false assumption. This concept was cemented in long ago with truancy laws.
A one-room school house that teaches all ages together removes the false impression that everyone is equal. Collective education creates the impression that everyone is equal and entitled to the same education and in a way that causes an entire state or nation to generally believe the same history and truths. This has the advantage of promoting unity of the state mind and conditions all to accept majority (or apparent majority) opinion as generally correct.
The only way to reduce education cost and increase its quality is to allow true competition between both schools and ideas and that will require local, even parental, control and voluntary local funding.
You cannot make a population of diverse talents, resources and attitudes into one without enslaving everyone.
