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I doubt there is much need for me for me to argue that our public education system is fundamentally broken. Still I thought I should devote at least one post in this series to show how little return we are seeing for the investment we are making in the students of America. Now I could dump a bunch of statistics on you, but I have always been much more of a visual learner so I thought I would share some simple charts that are available at the Heritage Foundation.
To set the stage lets look at the rate of increase in federal spending on education from 1965 to 2002:
Total Federal K-12 Education Spending 1965 Through 2002
Here we see that spending has dramatically increased of this period. Now if standard market principles were to apply we would expect that with the increase of funding would come a increase in education quality. Let’s see if this is the case:
And here is another:
As you can see the dramatic increase in spending has had almost no effect on the results. If a business or any other market based entity showed these results from that level of investment it would have had to drastically change or shut down decades ago. However, since the federal government enjoys a monopoly over much of education, they have no need to show financial accountability. In fact the typical government response (Republican and Democrat) is to throw more money at the problem.
As a nation we have to come to a place where we realize that free market principles can also apply to K-12 education, and that universal school choice will raise the standards and quality of all schools , rather than the current socialist-type education system that only increases the quality gap from school to school.
In the next few posts I hope to discuss what universal school choice could look like when applied and help explain how it benefits everyone.
How important is your child’s education to you? Who should manage it? Who should pay for it? Who should determine what is taught and how it’s taught? These are all important questions that many of us do not even consider. Below is a great introduction to this discussion from Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe. I will be posting my own thoughts over the weekend. The full article is here.
Big Brother at school
“FREEDOM of education, being an essential of civil and religious liberty . . . must not be interfered with under any pretext whatever,” the party’s national platform declared. “We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental . . . doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government.”
That ringing endorsement of parental supremacy in education was adopted by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1892, which just goes to show what was possible before the Democratic Party was taken hostage by the teachers unions. (Wondrous to relate, the platform also warned that “the tendency to centralize all power at the federal capital has become a menace,” blasted barriers to free trade as “robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few,” and pledged “relentless opposition to the Republican policy of profligate expenditure.”)
Today, on education as on so much else, the Democrats sing from a different hymnal. When the party’s presidential candidates debated at Dartmouth College recently, they were asked about a controversial incident in Lexington, Mass., where a second-grade teacher, to the dismay of several parents, had read her young students a story celebrating same-sex marriage. Were the candidates “comfortable” with that?
“Yes, absolutely,” former senator John Edwards promptly replied. “I want my children . . . to be exposed to all the information . . . even in second grade . . . because I don’t want to impose my view. Nobody made me God. I don’t get to decide on behalf of my family or my children. . . . I don’t get to impose on them what it is that I believe is right.” None of the other candidates disagreed, even though most of them say they oppose same-sex marriage.
Thus in a little over 100 years, the Democratic Party – and much of the Republican Party – has been transformed from a champion of “parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children” to a party whose leaders believe that parents “don’t get to impose” their views and values on what their kids are taught in school. Do American parents see anything wrong with that? Apparently not: The majority of them dutifully enroll their children in government-operated schools, where the only views and values permitted are the ones prescribed by the state.
But controversies like the one in Lexington are reminders that Big Brother’s ideas about what and how children should be taught are not always those of mom and dad.
Americans differ on same-sex marriage and evolution, on the importance of sports and the value of phonics, on the right to bear arms and the reverence due the Confederate flag. Some parents are committed secularists; others are devout believers. Some place great emphasis on math and science; others stress history and foreign languages. Americans hold disparate opinions on everything from the truth of the Bible to the meaning of the First Amendment, from the usefulness of rote memorization to the significance of music and art. With parents so often in loud disagreement, why should children be locked into a one-size-fits-all, government-knows-best model of education?
Nobody would want the government to run 90 percent of the nation’s entertainment industry. Nobody thinks that 90 percent of all housing should be owned by the state. Yet the government’s control of 90 percent of the nation’s schools leaves most Americans strangely unconcerned.
But we should be concerned. Not just because the quality of government schooling is so often poor or its costs so high. Not just because public schools are constantly roiled by political storms. Not just because schools backed by the power of the state are not accountable to parents and can ride roughshod over their concerns. And not just because the public-school monopoly, like most monopolies, resists change, innovation, and excellence.
All of that is true, but a more fundamental truth is this: In a society founded on political and economic liberty, government schools have no place. Free men and women do not entrust to the state the molding of their children’s minds and character. As we wouldn’t trust the state to feed our kids, or to clothe them, or to get them to bed on time, neither should we trust the state to teach them.
What 19th-century Democrats understood, 21st-century Americans need to relearn: Education is too important to be left to the government.
A phenomenal message was preached in chapel today by Dr. Thomas White, Vice President for Student Services here at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. His sermon on Titus 2:1-10 was powerful and convicting. This is defiantly one you should set aside the time for. Here is the link: SWBTS Chapel 10/18/2007
I would like to dedicate this video to all those youth ministers out there who love a good youth conference hotel room. Thanks to Adam Groza for telling me about this video.
13 But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. 14 To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 15 So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace, 17 comfort your hearts and establish them in every good work and word. II Thessalonians 2:13-17 (ESV)
I have been studying these verses for the last few days in preparation for a sermon in my Intro to Exegetical Preaching class. I don’t believe I had ever seriously read this text until I began my sermon preparation. Its theological depth and richness has been a blessing to me these last few days so I wanted so share some of my thoughts on this passage.
These verses come directly after a short treatise on the nature of the Anti-Christ and how it is purely within God’s will that he will be set loose upon the world. But in verses 15-17, Paul assures the reader that not only is this tribulation by God’s design, but so is our salvation and it is in that salvation that we can find rest in our darkest days.
We are called from eternity (firstfruits) by the Father, sanctified by the Spirit and brought into the glory of the Son. Here we see a true picture of salvation, as an activity instigated and accomplished by the triune God. From the security of our salvation we are to “stand firm and hold to” the doctrine of scripture. It is these truths and the assurance of our salvation that carries us through the dark days ahead and gives us “eternal comfort” and “good hope.” This comfort and hope comes to us by the grace given to us by God, through no action of our own, but rather for His own glory (Romans 9). From this comfort thankfulness and joy should erupt in us and manifest itself in human actions of good works and words, particularly spreading His gospel (II Thessalonians. 3:1).
I pray that when the children of God are in the dark places of their lives and it seems that they will never see the light again, they will remember the grace and ultimate victory that has been given to them by God our Father. Amen.
Simply Hilarious
