I encourage everyone to go check out this site The separation of School and State. Even if you have a soft spot for public education or just think that eradicating public schools would simply cause too much unfairness and hardships for lower income students, check it out, read some articles and get a little more informed about the issue.
One of the most impressive facts was that about the cost of subsidizing the poor. Our government today spends $316 billion, yes, that's billion, on public education. The average private school costs around $2,750 per year (amazingly lower than I ever thought.) 16 million children, roughly one third, would need financial aid to attend. As most scholarships today pay for about half of tuition, if we take those numbers we need only $24 billion to ensure every student can attend.
Given that private donors already supply $37.3 billion in scholarships for higher education, is it really far fetched to believe we could raise the $24 billion? Especially when the American people will have just received $316 billion in taxes back into their pockets, it doesn't seem far-fetched at all.
It's the hall mark of the market, better products at cheaper prices. Why, for all this time, have people believed that, while the market is the far better option for pretty much everything, from toothpaste to automobiles, the government was somehow the better option when it came to indoctrinating our children.
Some corollary benefits of an all private education system:
- No problems arising from teaching religion.
- No problems regarding segregation.
- No more one-size-fits-all education policy.
- Schools no longer political battle ground.
- No more unaccountable teachers.
If I can urge you to do anything, it would be to not be so attached to tradition. Just because public education is what we have all grown up with, what we are all so used to, doesn't mean it has to continue to be that way. Public education is a sad legacy from a prior generation. I don't want it to be a legacy of mine. Let's shape our world, not in the molds of the past, but in our own image of what we think good.
Fly Higher,
Icarus Goodman
