Thursday, January 31, 2008

Curious Snippets from a Cynical Optimist

Ok, I'm dragging another British Libertarian site in here.

VindicoVindico, whose blog "Curious Snippets from a Cynical Optimist" is already available on the Libertarian sidebar list, has things to say about "Private Schools and Socialist Logic".
If you don't laugh out loud when Vin chastises a British politician who is making an "elephant in the living room" analogy, well.....I bet you're an elephant also.

My own take on private schools is that they're a good thing as long as they take anyone who can pay for them and they don't discriminate on the basis of race, hair color, etc etc etc. Small l libertarians (as opposed to large L) generally like private schools because they help end the public school monopoly.

Competition strengthens organizations that survive competition. If public schools don't have enough competitors, we'll be stuck with....well, we'd be stuck with what we have now. I had to help a functional illiterate (who has a public school diploma) fill out a job application a few weeks ago. The boy could write his name and phone number, but nothing else.

Very discouraging.

4 comments:

sandersonmom said...

Would it be fair to categorize the religious schools ie Catholic or Christian as Private Schools? And if so, did you ever see the movie "Saved"?
If those are our choices, I'll keep mine in public schools.

Jay@Soob said...

Great post by Vindico. By Bennet's logic super-unleaded gas, organic food and particularly large houses (which he likely owns) should also be illegal. Education is a commodity. He (and we) are fortunate enough to live in countries that are organized and stable enough to utilize a portion of tax dollars to provide a base model of that commodity to any (even those families that haven't tossed their lot into the tax pool) child.

But it "feels good" and "looks great" to be the selfless wizeman, waxing eloquent about the unfairness of the very system that's made his career.

sandersonmom said...

We should learn from the Internationally renowned Jewish-German-American social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and humanistic philosopher, Erich Fromm, "Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age?"

The Whited Sepulchre said...

Mother of All Sandersons:
r.e. your first comment....the link emphasized having a choice. If anyone still wants to send their kids to a parochial or church school, I think they should be allowed to do so. (That's where The Daughter of The Whited Sepulchre went through 6th grade. She's about to graduate from a public school.)
Yes, I did see "Saved". I went to a Private Academy, grades 3-12, but it was one of the segregationist outfits that got started when southerners saw that integration really was going to happen in the public schools. It's since morphed into a semi "Christian Academy".

Subdude,
I'm reading Vindico more and more.
Somewhere on Samizdata, a commenter described the Bennets of the world as having a "Pull Up The Ladder, I've Made It" mentality. Once they're succesful, they want to change the rules that made them succesful. Usually in the name of fairness.

SandersonMama,
I agree. After this week, I'm ready for the government to send me back to school so I can get a Masters in anything but Logistics.