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From: act@pur-phy.UUCP (Alex C. Tselis)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: education
Message-ID: <1540@pur-phy.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 3-Dec-84 01:53:09 EST
Article-I.D.: pur-phy.1540
Posted: Mon Dec  3 01:53:09 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 4-Dec-84 07:48:11 EST
References: <733@oliven.UUCP> <837@flairvax.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue Univ. Physics Dept., IN
Lines: 46

> >	Are there really people out there who DON'T think that free
> >enterprise , CAN teach our kids , faster , better , and for about
> >1/3 the price the bureaucrats charge ?
> 
> There was once a consensus in this society that *everyone* benefits
> from universal education. Free public education has been one of the
> great wellsprings of economic opportunity and social mobility in this 
> country.  If public funding for education is ceased, it seems almost
> certain that the children of the poor will remain ignorant and poor,
> and the childern of the rich will be groomed to take Daddy's place
> at the top of the neofeudalist heap.  Is that the kind of world in 
> which we want to live?

The point is that there is such a concensus now, and even the Reagan 
Administration couldn't get rid of the Department of Education even though
it was one of their avowed aims.  As for fully "free" free enterprise, there
was such a thing once.  It was called "feudalism" and it occurred during
the period known as "The Dark Ages".  Free enterprise DOES have a place
in our society for certain types of things, but certainly not all.  It is not
a panacea, however good it is at certain things.  Education is one of the
things that it is not good at, in the sense that ALL are allowed to be
educated, regardless of race, religion, sex, national origin and whatever
other things have been invoked to justify discrimination.    

My own parents were quite poor.  Were free enterprise to take care of 
education, I would be out there digging ditches and sweeping floors for
a living.  Granted that these sorts of jobs are perfectly honorable and
very necessary, I would have been a disaster at them.  As it happens,
I have been able to go to school, study hard, and get myself a fairly good
education (I have a PhD in physics).  I would never have been able to do
this if I had to pay the sort of money that "private" schooling requires.
In the public schools I went to, the teachers were dedicated and affectionate
towards their charges, and they encouraged us to learn and learn.  I benefited
from that encouragement (and so did many others; many of the people who I
went to graduate school did also).  I certainly intend to send my kids to
public school. I know many examples of how public education was a force
contributing to opportunity, as stated in the second quote above, and to
think that private education would have had the same effect is a total
fantasy so far as I can see.  Did the first writer above ever get out of
his ivory tower to see what life was really like for scum like me?

Things like free public education are what make this country so great.  
In many places in the world, where they don't care about public education
(i.e. leave it to free enterprise), the literacy rates among the rich
are not very far from 100%, while among the poor, it's more like 10-30%.
Leaving something like education to free enterprise would be a disaster.