Message To Billg Try Freedom In Education - Road to the Middle Class

BILLIONAIRE Bill Gates made a fortune in the software business, doing stuff without permission, exercising his God-given talents and revolutionizing business and society.

But when it comes to philanthropy, it’s same old, same old, according to Neal McCluskey from the Cato Institute. Gates’ strategy for education, partnered with Eli Broad of KBH Homes, is all about big government.

[A] forum sponsored by their $60 million Strong American Schools initiative last Wednesday made clear that when it comes to education, they’re backing a tired, big-government loser.

Oh dear. You’d think the new generation of philanthopists would have learned something from business. Unfortunately, it seems to be that you don’t mess with government or you’ll get your head handed to you.

How about freedom in education? At least Sen. John McCain seems to be taking some baby steps in that direction.

“[A] public education should be defined as one in which our public support for a child’s education follows that child into the school the parent chooses,” McCain’s education statement declares.

Maybe our education Pooh-bahs should learn from our economic competitors.

In education, the ascendant South Koreans consume more private schooling than the people of any other industrialized nation. Even parents in the world’s poorest slums know the score. Ongoing work by British researcher James Tooley in impoverished places like Ga, Ghana, and Hyderabad, India, find poor parents turning in droves to for-profit private schools in order to move their kids ahead.

You can read more about James Tooley here.

Could it be that we can actually trust parents to educate their children without the detailed day-to-day supervision of the state?

Probably we’ll have to, because in another generation the government education system will have run down some more, delivering less and less at a cost of more and more.

By then, educating your own children will not be just a choice, but a matter of survival.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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