Reason TV: We Don't Need No (Public) Education - Sheldon Richman on the Separation of School and State

Who likes the sound of a school bell? Sheldon Richman certainly doesn't.

"Schools, by their structure, are preparing kids for some sort of authoritarian lifestyle," he says.

Richman is critical of the school choice movement, saying that even in charter schools, money is still being provided by the state.

He edits The Freeman and TheFreemanOnline.org, publications from the Foundation for Economic Education. Richman also is the author of Separating School and State and is a contributor to The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics.

Topics include: Unschooling; critiquing charter schools; for-profit private schools; and home schooling.

Shot by Zach Weissmueller and Hawk Jensen. Edited by Weissmueller, Jensen and Paul Detrick

Approximately 5:40 minutes.

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Comments

[Mango Punch]

What if Grocery Stores Were Run Like Public Schools? via ZeroHedge.

[Fiscal Meth]

Full separation of school and state is far more important to the future of this country than anything else, in my opinion. I like this guy's resolve.

[shrike]

We've got to keep kids in school, so they can learn that relativism is the truth. Where are they going to learn tolerance and respect for diversity if they're being taught by a bunch of stupid fundie teabaggers who won't let their kids use condoms and don't understand that all cultures and sexual practices are equal?

[Dylan]

"...relativism is THE truth."

You're an idiot.

[o?x?y?moron]

+1

[MoreFreedom]

I don't know if you write this as irony, or you really mean it.

Dylan is right as "relativism is the truth" is a contradictory statement.

And you make some interesting assumptions about what is taught in school.

Finally, "... all cultures and sexual practices are equal" is quite a leap. I suppose you believe that living in Stalin's USSR, Fidel's Cuba, Il Jung's North Korea, or Pol Pot's Cambodia is equal to living in the US.

If you meant to be ironic, you've failed IMHO.

[Jame J. B.]

School - the great children's prison. One of my boys starts school in the fall. No real alternative for school.

So here are some things I dread:
1. Parent teacher conferences with the below average types that are most teachers, all of whom think that they are Freud with advanced degrees in psychology.
2. Coaches. I plan on doing my level best to make sure my boys have activites outside of the school - hopefully martial arts or weightlifting w/ dad (if they enjoy those)
3. All the nonsensical rules;
4. The nightly deprogramming - I plan to talk to them nightly and discuss what happened in their day...Bad ideas have to be destroyed.

[TheZeitgeist]

Public schools administered funded by the State suck at the most base theoretical level.

But I'll tell you what, I've met too many people - parents and children - who just don't give a shit about basic things like learning to read or count. And that is just a staggering deficit to overcome later in life. Perhaps there should be no schools telling people what to read, but some very basic compulsory education to ensure - even as a test or check - that people coming up in the next generation can read at all is important even at the level of individual interest of a typical libertarian.

[cynical]

But the primary reason that schools aren't making progress with students is that too many parents and children don't give a shit (or at least, this is the excuse trotted out when questions of accountability and merit arise). So, the one thing that might make schools necessary is the one thing they fail at.

[MoreFreedom]

Education is important - studies show that college graduates earn more than high school graduates. But it's not everything, and one can have enormous success with limited formal education (take Bill Gates or Steve Jobs - neither completed college, but they did educate themselves on computer technology).

For those that don't care (in general this applies mostly to kids, less so parents as they do have experience in the real world) learning by experience (that they won't earn much)is one way to learn. Said in another way, they'll get mugged by reality.

[Federal Dog]

Call them what they are: Government training centers.

They have nothing to do with education, and the the government -- not the public -- controls them.

[MoreFreedom]

I prefer to call them, government teacher and administrator monopoly employment institutions. They exist more for, and cater to, the government employees than the students and parents.

[MoreFreedom]

I prefer to call them, government teacher and administrator monopoly employment institutions. They exist more for, and cater to, the government employees than the students and parents.

[Barry Loberfeld]

Perfect for "liberals" ? compare School-State separation with Church-State separation.

[KM8392]

I don't see how anyone can say that our current school system isn't broken. Children and America's future suffer from the assembly line mentality of it.

http://www.intellectualtakeout.....eschooling

[The Derider]

"Richman is critical of the school choice movement, saying that even in charter schools, money is still being provided by the state."

Asked how the poor would pay for private tuition and/or tutoring, Richman replied "Fuck the poor"

[K.P.]

Source?

[Tim Cavanaugh]

Richman addresses this question. (I did the interview, though I didn't make the final cut.) Too bad Derider didn't watch before slandering Richman. But then I guess that's why s/he is called Derider.

[DADIODADDY]

Wait, can we still fuck the poor?

[MoreFreedom]

Derider, Richman didn't say "*** the poor", he said private charity would help. What he didn't say, is that in a free market, we'd be paying a small fraction of what goes to government school employees, and the students would learn a lot more. So even poor parents could afford a reasonable education for their kids. I suspect it would actually be less than the taxes they pay that go to government schools now. Even if they don't pay an income tax, they likely pay property tax (or their landlord pays it out of the rental income) for it.

[The Derider]

Yes, he makes those crazy assertions.
No, he does not provide evidence for them.
No, I do not believe him.

[chaussures air max]

poor~

[full body costume]

Richman is critical of the school choice movement, saying that even in charter schools, money is still being provided by the state.

[Barry Loberfeld]

Education: What About the Poor?

[The Derider]

"There is no evidence that poor children were denied an education in the nonslave states before the government takeover of the schools in the mid-1800s."

He continues on with similarly laughable assertions for a couple of pages. This guy is a complete moron.

[MoreFreedom]

You say his assertions are laughable. What is your source - something you heard from a government teacher?

[The Derider]

LOL, the conspiracy theory is complete.

Any knowledge imparted in public schools cannot be trusted because it came from public schools.

The assertion "there is no evidence that poor children were denied an education" needs support. The author provides none. There is a wealth of evidence that he is wrong. He's also utterly disingenuous by asserting that schools before the 1850's were not government run. Massachusetts had a system of publicly funded schooling in the 1600's.

Here is my assertion: "there is absolutely no evidence that private charity would provide adequate funding to educate all students without the means to afford private tuition"

[The Derider]

LOL read the only comment posted on that article, from 2009.

"Do you help with education to poor children in africa, i am a mother of two children from Tanzania-Africa who is really in need of educating her children and because of poverty here in the country most of african women cannot manage to do that, pleas if you can help with this may you help me.

Thank you in advance,

Lilian"

She is so lucky the government isn't indoctrinating her children!

[Jeffy]

There are some things I laud Reason magazine for... This is not one of them. First of all, the theoretical nature of the whole thing is absurd. there are some things that can never be successfully dismantled. Public education is one of them. Society's near-universal belief in it is too strong.

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