Over the years, I have been writing about misconceptions regarding the schooling process. The purpose of these posts is to explain why I disagree with various comments that I have heard people make about schooling. These are meant as personal thoughts rather than conclusive proof, and I will admit that I'm not always the best at explaining my thoughts. Regardless, I have decided that I should be willing to share these posts when I encounter someone online who makes an argument that I have already discussed.
Have you heard that evil Republicans are trying to privatize education? Isn't that the scariest thing you have ever heard? How can we keep this from happening?
Before I go any further, what do they mean by privatization? In short, they are talking about a shift from the public sector to the private sector. In other words, instead of the government controlling education, schools would be run independently.
Is privatization inherently evil? Only if you are a socialist. In reality, we should compare the benefits of the government controlling schools versus the benefits of privately run schools.
Let's start by taking a look at the government-controlled model. A well-educated society can be a threat to the government's power. The government has a big incentive to prevent over-education. In fact, preventing over-education has actually been cited as one of the goals of this model. Going further back, our schooling model was designed to promote obedience to the government. If you look at how these schools currently function, they are training children from a young age to show obedience to authoritarian figures. The public model is built entirely around government control.
How about the private sector? They have something that doesn't exist in the public sector. They are being held accountable by the families that they are supposed to serve. If a school does a lousy job, the family will remove their child, and the funding will go with them. If a private school performs as poorly as the government-controlled model, it will cease to exist. In the private sector, there is actually incentive to at least try to meet the educational needs of students.
Admittedly, most private schools have serious problems. Among them is that they are typically modelled after government-controlled schools. This can become even more problematic if they are forced to rely on testing developed specifically for government-controlled schools. If the government can control the private sector, it defeats the purpose of the private sector.
Whether or not we should support the privatization of education comes down to a simple question. Which sector is better suited for education, the public sector or the private sector? Considering the public sector benefits from hindering education and the private sector has stronger accountability standards, I don't think there's any question. Privatization would be beneficial.
Yes, I openly support the privatization of education. We need to bring an end to government control, especially when you see their motives. We can do better. We need to do better. I'm not going to allow the use of a word that isn't really negative to change my mind. I value future generations more than I value the connotation. I would rather have children attending schools that have to prove to be of value to families than schools that only have to prove to be of value to our corrupt government.
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