Very True. This is actually good I think, because it allows the kids that are serious about going to school and learning to do so in the company of others like them. This would result in an eduacated and dedicated person who may eventually do something great. It would give the kids with aspirations a chance, and leave the apathetic kids to figure it out for themselves.
I sort of agree with you. I would imagine that they would not enter the workforce at 15, but begin to focus their studies on the area that they want to go into eventually. For example I am 17 and I want to be an engineer, but my school requires that I take global issues, english and an art class. This would not be the case under privatized education.
This is how educators think in the current system where the state only lets self-justifying education majors be educators. With this mindset, no amount of money is enough to educate children.
In the future, schools will be in parents’ homes. The instructor will be via video hook-up, or it’ll be a tutor meeting with the neighborhood kids in somebody’s living room. Specialized skills will be taught in working labs with companies offering the training as part of internships in order to compete for talent instead of offloading this expense on taxpayers, or parents.
The current system is wholly artificial, from pre-school thru doctoral studies. In terms of pure cost, the idea that it takes no less than $14K/yr to educate somebody is just preposterous.
That’s a shame. I imagined you with more imagination. [:)]
Look at the internet, and how it is has redefined commerce, education, organization, politics, news, relationships, communications, entertainment. And the internet is not static, it is constantly evolving, in what I like to call the freest market in the history of man.
A good example is the growth of libertarianism and Austrian economics on the web. That has certainly provided challenge to existing institutions like government, the FED, standing armies, bureaucracy etc. There is no reason to believe, that in panarchy, these monopolistic institutions would continue to exist in any form.
And without institutional forms, things will change and take new shapes and create new realities. The only way to suppress change, is to suppress creativity. A free market is unbridled creativity.
Believe it or not, engineering used to be OJT. I knew a very elderly British aerospace engineer who started–I am not making this up–on the factory floor. When Britain nationalized aerospace, he emigrated to the US. Again, the state has decided who can and can’t be an engineer and who can teach engineering. Business is happy, because it lets them offload their costs, and the education establishment is happy because it gets them jobs.
Mr. Anonymous, things could be different in a decentralized educational system, but they might not be. Some people think that it’s important that their children learn those things, even if they don’t see the point at the time.
Liberty student, first: Harumph. Second, I think that it might be a mistake to imagine that a decentralized system would fail to produce certain kinds of planned institutions like local schools (or even local public schools in more collectivized communities). A free market may be the best system we know of for fostering creativity (in the sense of “ingenuity” rather than “productivity”), but the profit motive disciplines producers to bring to market only those things that people will buy.
What’s the point of libertarianism then ?
Hee hee!
Oh, institutions would be created, but so many different models, some successful, some failures that it will be hard to have the sort of static, trapped, dumbed down monopoly institutionalism we see today. For sure, in the beginning we would similar style institutions, because radical new forms may spring from the forehead of man, but building, testing, proving and profiting from it will all take time.
But I wouldn’t be surprised to see schooling as we know it, change radically within a couple generations.
No, it’s going to be much better 
People today don’t have much choice. Formal education & licensing is required for many jobs so people are forced to go to schoo/colleges/graduate schools driving the costs higher and wasting time and money on useless stuff. Without all these restrictions education would be much more flexible, affordable and useful. Not that you wouldn’t be allowed to study Greek art just for fun if you wanted to
Actually, schools and universities in Europe started out as private affairs (they even had fights with the governments for their rights, just look at the history of the University of Paris). They the government realized the role of education in brainwashing its population, it took over, fully or partially. Without government, educational institutions won’t disappear but will evolve according to the market demands, not the big government’s desires.
It already is. Public schools have degenerated into day care for the working and poor classes, and the meritorious ones have figured it out and are homeschooling. Private schools whose educators, albeit privately paid, are cut from the same cloth and have that mindset I talked about above. They’d charge you $100K a year if they thought you’d pay it. College and university is a joke: a four-year degree in partying and being told how white males are to blame for everything, at no less than $15K a year, at the end of which you’re told you need to go to graduate school to get a skill that’s actually marketable. People are signing up for tech school or going to local Phoenix University campuses instead (see here: http://www.phoenix.edu/ ).
Juan, I’m not arguing for libertarianism here. I’m arguing for decentralization of educational planning. And the point is largely captured in Natalie’s post; while many people are probably happy with a system which doesn’t force them to make complicated decisions, and so would likely prefer a more collectivized solution even in a decentralized system, people who wanted to opt out would be able to without being forced to support other people’s choices. People could create solutions corresponding to their own beliefs about an ideal education, and be judged on others’ perceptions of the merits of their approach for their children. Plus, even collectivized school systems could be governed by their customers, rather than distant bureaucrats, which would likely produce better results than the current system.
Liberty student and Natalie, I share your optimism, and agree that the current system certainly stifles innovation. My point about institutional entrenchment was aimed at the idea that a free market would bring about an educational system that didn’t reflect what people actually want.
NO YOU DO NOT! [6]
I don’t think you understood me. When set free, I don’t think you or I can say with any degree of certainty what people actually want. And their wants may change from moment to moment, and it might change when not confined to existing forms.
Remember how the calculation argument undoes socialism? The calculation argument also undoes any attempt by us to predict what the future will look like in a free market 2 generations from now. The principle is the same.
Can I infer that you’re arguing for decentralized and coercive educational planning then ? If that’s the case, then you’re probably correct. Decentralized coercion will bring about roughly the same results as centralized coercion does.
Are you assuming that ‘collectivized solutions’ can exist when taxpayers are not forced to subsidize those schemes ?
One more thing Donny with an A, nothing libertarian is opt out except life (via suicide).
Everything in a free market is opt in. [;)]
Btw, I’m only giving you the business on this because I know it is a topic you are interested in, and thought you might gain something from a different perspective. Not that I don’t believe what I write, because I most certainly do.
I do find it very interesting that left-libertarians seem to be more inclined to think in terms of collective solutions and decentralization as localized control of existing institutions. Sometimes I think Hoppeans or right libertarians are the more creative thinkers (who woulda thunk that?)
Just gonna throw a few random points out:
First, the number of homeschooling parents would increase. Necessity is the mother of invention, don’t they say? Networks of parents would be concerned about educating their children - that is if they focus their energy on being productive and inspired rather than jealous and demanding.
I have tutored children in several basic subjects. I enjoy it, and I think a LOT of people enjoy it. Why do you think so many go into teaching? I’m not so synical to think they all go into teaching for the union and govt benefits and pension at first. I know a few teachers who would rather and do work in a “Charter” school than the basic public school, even though the pay is less.
The city of Buffalo, I read, spends as much per pupil as it would cost to send that pupil to private school (marginal cost :P)
How about income for seniors? grandparents? You think if education wasn’t free, parents might spend more time with their children? Families might be stronger? Overall morality and respect would be in greater supply? Instead the education system supercedes head of household - think that might undermind household respect? “Mom’s dumb. She doesn’t even know what the square root of 81 is.”
The Internet has a wealth of information, for instance there’s the media link at mises.org - you may have heard of it. great history lectures, in my green opinion. There are already teacher networks of curriculums and lesson plans available online.
Books aren’t expensive, and the amount of public domain stuff out there is HUGE. The ease of finding the stuff would only increase - right now the demand for locating public domain ebooks and such, I believe, is the cause of there being so few resources portals. Computers aren’t expensive unless you’re into gaming. Computers for Children - a private charity - takes business donations, refurbs them, and gives them to needy families. The internet isn’t expensive.
The free market would explode with opportunities to educate your child. Coffee shops would start to collect books, book stores would carry guides or maybe hire consultants…
What’s in the way is quite simply the unimaginative and the fearful. Argument from incredulity, anyone? Same with the gold standard and the public assumption that inflation is inevitable in all systems. “Gee, never really thought about that.”
JAB
Yes, but currently my parents have no say in what classes I take. I think under free market system parents would encourage their kids to have an understanding of the basic subjects then focus their studies on courses that will be relevant to their career. I mean, right now, if my parents could choose, they would encourage me to not take social studies or art, and instead take another math course. Under privatized education, I dont think parents would choose to pay for their children to take advanced courses that are irrelevant to their career.
However, I must agree with Liberty Student in that we don’t know exactly what would happen under private education, but it would unlock the man’s potential that is currently being held back by the public education system. I think it would release this potential by non-intentionally setting a standard that kids should focus their studies at a younger age as to become more knowledgeable in that area before they enter the workforce. This standard would be set because the children that did not focus their studies will have trouble being successful in one specific field because it will be filled with people who did focus on that area.
Liberty student, I agree that we can’t know exactly what’ll happen, but I do think that it’ll take some time for many people to move away from the “single local school” paradigm of education. Surely some people would switch immediately, and some would immediately establish new institutions. But there are significant transaction costs to moving away from the status quo, and I would expect that to result in some entrenchment of the current establishment.
When I talk about “opting out,” rather than “opting in,” what I have in mind is that short of a revolution, the way we’ll likely see a more open educational system come about is through the gradual decentralization of planning, and the allowance of competition and opting out of public programs. Once public programs are only being administered by the people who still want to use them, I would expect that they would basically amount to communally owned cooperatives, or else they would wither away from lack of support – either way is fine with me, and I think both are reasonably consistent with a voluntaristic paradigm of an ideal society. I suppose you might consider that to be a lack of imagination, but I guess I’m more concerned with trying to figure out a way that these changes could come about without fundamentally disrupting the way that people currently live their lives. I think that a freer and more pluralistic society is desirable, but not at any cost; it’s not like I’d want to move to Somalia. The system we have now works really well, and I don’t think people would want to tear it all down and start over. So in searching for more respectful and effective alternatives, I think we shouldn’t lose sight of the feasibility of our goals.
Juan, as an educational system moves towards radical decentralization, it would likely continue to be coercive for at least part of the transition. As I said to Liberty student, though, as policies became amenable to competition and opting out, many of the objectionable features of the current coercive system would disappear, and public institutions would likely end up looking very much like voluntary ones.
As for whether collectivized solutions would exist in the absence of government interference, I’d point out that many voluntary organizations have collectivized governance, particularly where customers want to have an active role in the decision-making process about what gets produced, or where people are particularly concerned with the profit motive as the only factor affecting the actions of the firm. For example, we already see homeowners’ associations and agricultural cooperatives in today’s society. In a radically decentralized educational system, groups of people may well want to get together and form cooperative ventures to educate their children, rather than simply purchasing a seat in a private school with its own separate system of corporate governance. That’s not to say that all communities would want things like this, but surely some would.
Saiphes, I definitely agree that the one-size-fits-all view of education is fundamentally flawed, and the current system based on it is broken. You might be interested in checking out the article I linked above.
Mr. Anonymous, I definitely agree that a more decentralized educational system would likely allow parents to have a much greater say in how their children are educated. I argued as much in the article I linked above; you might be interested in checking it out.
You may be right that a more diverse system would produce more narrowly focused students, but I think that if I were a parent, I would put a pretty significant premium on my kid being given a broad liberal education. A narrow focus can stunt a child’s ability to truly enjoy life, and even if it might result in better financial success, it could fail to prepare her to lead a rich and fulfilling life. What you might see is a gradual feeling-out of an equilibrium, though, were the potential for financial success was weighed against the breadth of knowledge an institution would grant to a child. I’d also point out that in a great many fields, a narrow focus is not helpful, and can actually hurt the quality of one’s work. So while some fields might come to be dominated by narrow-minded specialists (engineering, for example, seems like a good candidate), fields like journalism, child education, public relations, marketing, philosophy, product development, and customer service might remain open to people who have a broader base of knowledge.
I guess I had not thought of it that way. My engineering bias is peaking through.
S’ok, I lived with a Chem-E in college, and so hung out with a bunch of his engineering friends pretty regularly; great people, those ones. They do love their math, though.