Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Economics:
Milton
Friedman's
Free
To Choose
#6: What's Wrong With Our Schools?
Friedman: These youngsters are beginning another day at one of America's public
schools, Hyde Park High School in Boston. What happens when they pass through those doors
is a vivid illustration of some of the problems facing America's schools.
They have to pass through metal detectors. They are faced by security guards
looking for hidden weapons. They are watched over by armed police. Isn't that awful. What
a way for kids to have to go to school, through metal detectors and to be searched. What
can they conceivably learn under such circumstances. Nobody is happy with this kind of
education. The taxpayers surely aren't. This isn't cheap education. After all, those
uniformed policemen, those metal detectors have to be paid for.
What about the broken windows, the torn school books, and the smashed school
equipment. The teachers who teach here don't like this kind of situation. The students
don't like to come here to go to school, and most of all, the parents __ they are the ones
who get the worst deal __ they pay taxes like the rest of us and they are just as
concerned about the kind of education that their kids get as the rest of us are. They know
their kids are getting a bad education but they feel trapped. Many of them can see no
alternative but to continue sending their kids to schools like this.
To go back to the beginning, it all started with the fine idea that every child
should have a chance to learn his three R's. Sometimes in June when it gets hot, the kids
come out in the yard to do their lessons, all 15 of them, ages 5 to 13, along with their
teacher. This is the last one-room schoolhouse still operating in the state of Vermont.
That is the way it used to be. Parental control, parents choosing the teacher, parents
monitoring the schooling, parents even getting together and chipping in to paint the
schoolhouse as they did here just a few weeks ago. Parental concern is still here as much
in the slums of the big cities as in Bucolic, Vermont. But control by parents over the
schooling of their children is today the exception, not the rule.
Increasingly, schools have come under the control of centralized administration,
professional educators deciding what shall be taught, who shall do the teaching, and even
what children shall go to what school. The people who lose most from this system are the
poor and the disadvantaged in the large cities. They are simply stuck. They have no
alternative.
Of course, if you are well off you do have a choice. You can send your child to a
private school or you can move to an area where the public schools are excellent, as the
parents of many of these students have done. These students are graduating from Weston
High School in one of Boston's wealthier suburbs. Their parents pay taxes instead of
tuition and they certainly get better value for their money than do the parents in Hyde
Park. That is partly because they have kept a good deal of control over the local schools,
and in the process, they have managed to retain many of the virtues of the one-room
schoolhouse.
Students here, like Barbara King, get the equivalent of a private education. They
have excellent recreational facilities. They have a teaching staff that is dedicated and
responsive to parents and students. There is an atmosphere which encourages learning, yet
the cost per pupil here is no higher than in many of our inner city schools. The
difference is that at Weston, it all goes for education that the parents still retain a
good deal of control.
Unfortunately, most parents have lost control over how their tax money in spent.
Avabelle goes to Hyde Park High. Her parents too want her to have a good education, but
many of the students here are not interested in schooling, and the teachers, however
dedicated, soon lose heart in an atmosphere like this. Avabelle's parents are certainly
not getting value for their tax money.
Caroline Bell, Parent: I think it is a shame, really, that parents are being
ripped off like we are. I am talking about parents like me that work every day, scuffle to
try to make ends meet. We send our kids to school hoping that they will receive something
that will benefit them in the future for when they go out here and compete in the job
market. Unfortunately, none of that is taking place at Hyde Park.
Friedman: Children like Ava are being shortchanged by a system that was designed
to help. But there are ways to help give parents more say over their children's schooling.
This is a fundraising evening for a school supported by a voluntary organization,
New York's Inner City Scholarship Fund. The prints that have brought people here have been
loaned by wealthy Japanese industrialist. Events like this have helped raise two million
dollars to finance Catholic parochial schools in New York. The people here are part of a
long American tradition. The results of their private voluntary activities have been
remarkable.
This is one of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City: the Bronx. Yet this
parochial school, supported by the fund, is a joy to visit. The youngsters here from poor
families are at Saint John Christians because their parents have picked this school and
their parents are paying some of the costs from their own pockets. The children are well
behaved, eager to learn, the teachers are dedicated. The cost per pupil here is far less
than in the public schools, yet on the average the children are two grades ahead. That is
because teachers and parents are free to choose how the children shall be taught. Private
money has replaced the tax money and so control has been taken away from the bureaucrats
and put back where it belongs.
This doesn't work just for younger children. In the 60's, Harlem was devastated by
riots. It was a hot bed of trouble. Many teenagers dropped out of school. Groups of
concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds
to take over empty stores and they set up what became known as store front schools. One of
the first and most successful was Harlem Prep. It was designed to cater to students for
whom conventional education had failed. Many of the teachers didn't have the right pieces
of paper to qualify for employment in public schools. That didn't stop them from doing a
good job here. A lot of the students had been misfits and dropouts. Here they found the
sort of teaching they wanted. After all, they had made a deliberate choice to come to
Harlem Prep. It was a very successful school. Many students went on to college and some to
leading colleges.
But after some years, the school ran short of cash. The board of education offered
Ed Carpenter, the head of the school and one of its founders, tax money, provided he would
conform to their regulations. After a long battle to preserve independence, he finally
gave in. The school was taken over by bureaucrats.
Ed Carpenter, Former Principal, Harlem Preparatory School: I felt that a school
like Harlem Prep would certainly die and not prosper under the rigid bureaucracy of a
board of education. We had to see what was going to happen. I didn't believe it was going
to be good. I am right. What has happened since we have come to the board of education is
not all good __ it is not all bad __ but it is more bad than good.
Friedman: The school may not look different yet, but 30 of the former teachers
have gone. Ed Carpenter has resigned. The school is being moved to a traditional school
building. No one, except maybe the bureaucrats, is very optimistic about its future.
Unfortunately, the strangling of successful experiments by bureaucrats is not
unusual. The same thing happened in California, at a place called Alum Rock. For three
years parents at this school could choose to send their children to any of several
specially created mini-schools, each with a different curriculum. The experiment was
designed to restore a choice to those who were most closely involved, the parents and the
teachers.
Don Ayers, Former Principal, Millard McCollam Elementary School: Probably the most
significant thing that happened was that the teachers, for the first time, had some power
and they were able to build the curriculum to fit the needs of the children as they saw
it. The state and local school board did not dictate the kind of curriculum that was used
in the McCollam School. The parents became more involved in this school. They attended
more meetings. They also had a power to pull their child out of that particular
mini-school if they chose another mini-school
Friedman: Giving parents greater choice had a dramatic effect on educational
quality. In terms of test scores, this school went from 13th to 2nd place among the
schools in its district, but the experiment is now over. When school resumed after the
summer vacation, this was just another public school, back in the hands of the
bureaucrats.
Giving parents a choice is a good idea, yet it always meets with opposition from
the educational establishment. This is Ashford, a town in the south of England. For four
years, there have been efforts here to introduce an experiment in greater parental choice.
Parents would be given vouchers covering the cost of schooling. They could use the voucher
to send their child to any school of their choice. I have long believed that children,
teachers, all of us, would benefit from a voucher system. But the head master here, who
happens also to be secretary of the local teacher's union, has very different views about
introducing vouchers.
Mr. Dennis Gee, Headmaster, Newtown Primary School: We see this as a barrier
between us and the parent. This sticky little piece of paper in their hand, coming in and
under due writ you will do this or else. We make our judgment because we believe it is in
the best interest of every Willy and every little Johnny that we have got, and not because
someone is going to say, if you don't do it, we will do that. It is this sort of
philosophy of the marketplace that we object to.
Friedman: In other words, Mr. Gee objects to giving the customer, in this case the
parent, anything to say about the kind of schooling his child gets. Instead, the
bureaucrats should decide.
Mr. Gee: We are answerable to parents and to our government bodies, through the
inspectorate of the county council and through her Majesty's inspectorate to the secretary
of state. These are professionals who are able to make professional judgments.
Friedman: But things look very different from the point of view of parents. Jason
Walton's parents had to fight the bureaucracy, the professionals, for a year before they
could get him into the school that they thought was best suited to his needs.
Maurice Walton, Parent: As the present system stands, I think virtually parents
have got no freedom of choice whatsoever. They are told what is good for them by the
teachers and are told that the teachers are doing a great job, and I just got no sign at
all. If the voucher system were introduced, I think it would bring teachers and parents
together, I think closer. A parent that is worried about his child would remove their
child from the school that wasn't giving a good service and take it to one that was. And
if a school is going to crumble because it's got nothing but vandalism, it is generally
slack on discipline, and the children aren't learning well, then it is a good thing from
my point of view.
Friedman: Even good schools like this would benefit from a voucher system. From
having to shape up or see parents take children elsewhere, but that is not how it looks to
the head master.
Gee: I am not sure that parents know what is best educationally for their
children. They know what is best for them to eat, they know the best environment they can
provide at home, but we've been trained to ascertain the problems of children, to detect
their weaknesses, and put light in things that need putting light, and we want to do this
freely, with the cooperation of parents, and not under any undue strains.
Walton: I can understand the teacher saying yes, it is a gun at my head, but they
have got the same gun at the parents' head at the moment. The parent goes up to the
teacher and says, well I am not satisfied with what you are doing, and the teacher can
say, well tough, you can't take him away, you can't remove him, you can't do what you like
so go away and stop bothering me. That can be the attitude of some teachers today __ it
often is. But now that the positions are being reversed and the roles are changed, I can
only say tough on the teachers __ let them pull their socks up and give us a better deal
and let us participate more.
Friedman: In America there is one part of education where the market has had
extensive scope, that is higher education. These students attend Dartmouth College, a
private school founded in 1769. The college is supported entirely by private donations,
income from endowment, and student fees. It has a high reputation and a fine record.
Ninety-five percent of the students who enroll here complete their undergraduate course
and get a degree.
The students here pay high fees, fees which cover most of the cost of the
schooling which they get. Most of them get the money from their parents, but some are on
scholarships provided either by Dartmouth or by outside sources. Still others take out
loans to pay the costs of schooling, loans which they will have to pay back years later.
Still others work either during the school year or during the summer to pay the costs.
Many students work in the college's own hotel. This girl is helping to pay her own way
which is pretty good evidence that she is serious about getting an education.
Parents of perspective students come here on shopping expeditions to check out the
product before they buy.
What you have here is a private market in education and the college is selling
schooling. The students are buying schooling. And as in most such markets, both sides have
a strong incentive to serve one another.
For the college, it has a strong incentive to provide the kind of schooling that
its students want. If it doesn't, they can simply pick up and go elsewhere. For the
students, they want to get their money's worth. They are customers, and like every
customer everywhere, they want to get full value for the money they are paying. And so
much of the success here comes from the fact that students understand precisely the cost
involved and they are determined to get their money's worth.
Regina Barreca, Student:. . .they send you sheets saying how much everything costs
all the time, so that you know exactly, you can break it down per lecture. And when you
see each lectures costing $35, and you think of the other things you could be doing with
the $35, you're making very sure you're going to that lecture.
Friedman: Many of the buildings and facilities at Dartmouth have been donated by
private individuals and foundations. Like other private universities, Dartmouth has
combined the selling of monuments with the provision of education and the one activity
reinforces the other.
The students, in effect, earn part of their keep by helping to solicit alumni for
contributions, knowing full well that they will be solicited in their turn. It is another
way in which the real value of education is brought home. This may not be the usual idea
of an economic market, but it is nonetheless a marketplace where buyers can choose and
sellers must compete for customers.
What happens when the educational market is distorted? Look at state colleges and
universities. Their fees are generally very low, paying for only a small part of the cost
of schooling. They attract serious students just as interested in their education as the
students at Dartmouth or other private schools, but they also attract a great many others.
Students who come because fees are low, residential housing is good, food is good, and
above all there are lots of their peers, it's a pleasant interlude for them.
The University of California at Los Angeles __ for those students who are here as
a pleasant interlude, going to class is a price they pay to be here, not the product they
are buying. Darrell Dearmone,
Lecturer: We frequently wind up with people who cannot compete favorably with even
the average person here. There is a magnet here for everything. We have the best weather
practically speaking, in the country. Hollywood is here, Beverly Hills is here, the social
scene, the television industry in this country is centered here.
Friedman: The justification for using tax money to support institutions like this
is supposed to be so that every youngster, regardless of the income or wealth of his
parents, can go to college. A few youngsters from poor families are here, but not very
many. Most of these students are from middle and upper-income families, yet everybody,
whatever his income, pays taxes to help support these institutions. That is a disgraceful
situation. It is hardly what public education was all about. These students are being
subsidized by people who will never go to college. That means that on the average people
who will end up with higher income are being subsidized by people who will end up with
lower income. And in addition, the quality of undergraduate education is poor.
Undergraduate teaching is not what UCLA is famous for. Besides from its athletic team,
UCLA's reputation is for graduate work and research.
Faculty members have every incentive to do research, that's the way to advance in
their profession. They have much less to gain by good teaching.
Only about half of those who enroll in UCLA complete the undergraduate course.
Compare that with the 95% at Dartmouth who finish the work for their degrees. What a waste
of student time and what a waste of taxpayers' money.
What should we do about this disgraceful situation? We must not deny any young man
or woman whose desires formal education. Everyone who has the capacity and the desire to
have a higher education should be able to do so, provided they are willing to undertake
the obligation to pay the cost of their schooling either currently or in later years out
of the higher income that their education will make possible. We now have a governmental
program of loans which is supposedly directed to this objective but it's a loan program in
name only. The interest rate charged is well below the market rate. Many of these loans
are never paid back. We must have a system under which those who are not able or do not go
to college are not forced to pay for those who do.
As we have seen the market works in education. When people pay for what they get,
they value what they get. The market works in higher education. It can also work at the
level of primary and secondary education. Until we change the way we run our public
schools, far too many children will end up without being able to read, write, or do
arithmetic. That is not what any of us wants.
The system is not working and it is not working because it lacks a vital
ingredient. The experts mean well, but a centralized system cannot possibly have that
degree of personal concern for each individual child that we have as parents. The
centralization produces deadening uniformity, it destroys the experimentation that is the
fundamental source of progress. What we need to do is to enable parents, by vouchers or
other means, to have more say about the school which their child goes to, a public school
or a private school, whichever meets the need of the child best. That will inevitably give
them also more say about what their children are taught, and how they are taught. Market
competition is the surest way to improve the quality and promote innovation in education
as in every other field.
DISCUSSION
Participants: Robert McKenzie, Moderator; Milton Friedman; Albert Shanker,
President, American Federation of Teachers; Professor John Coons, Initiative for Family
Choice in Education, California; Thomas A. Shannon, Executive Director, National School
Boards Association; Gregory Anrig, Commissioner of Dept. of Education in Commonwealth of
Massachusetts
McKENZIE: The distinguished guests tonight are all intimately concerned with the
world of education; so lets find out how they react to Friedman's analysis.
SHANKER: I think it's very foolish to throw out something that you've got and that
has some shortcomings, but is very, very good in order to try out someone's pet ideas.
McKENZIE: Well, before we ask Milton to reply to that, lets get other views on the
same quotation, "Market competition is the surest way to improve the quality and
promote innovation in education." John Coons.
COONS: Well, of course, there's enormous evidence that that is exactly right and
we see it in the case in California that I observe every day of low income children whose
families are making great sacrifices to go to schools that operate at a third of the cost
of public education and are turning out kids who are performing and are learning and
achieving at very high levels. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to suggest that
unlimited competition is the answer to every problem. And, indeed, the whole definition of
competition is very ambiguous. It seems to me that if one is truly interested in liberty,
which I think is the ultimate value that Milton Friedman talks about, one has to be very
careful how he structures the kinds of subsidies that are proposed for education so that
you do not wind up with the poor in one kind of school and the rich all in the other, and
very little liberty for low-income people left over, which is what is what I think he has
in mind. That is, I don't think he has that result in mind. He has the hope in mind of
liberty, but that it's going to need a certain kind of tailoring before it works that way.
SHANKER: I think your remarks about free competition are very unfair for a very
simple reason. You cannot have free competition where one group of schools must accept
every single student who comes along, no matter what his physical or emotional handicaps
or other problems; whereas the very essence of a private school and your voucher school is
that they're going to be able to keep out the students and the finest schools that you saw
in that film were schools that deliberately kept out the most difficult students. Of
course you can have a wonderful school if you pick students whose parents __
(Several talking at once)
SHANKER: __ no, no. Whose parents are so highly motivated that they're willing to
spend more money and willing to go out of their way to do something like that. Now the
public schools have to take the handicapped, must provide bilingual education, must engage
in bussing or other programs in terms of integration, must do all of these things. Whereas
the private school can come along and say, well if your child has no problems, you know
what we can do? We can offer you a school where you don't have to sit next a child with
these other problems. We're gonna put you next to other children who are advantaged.
SHANNON: I think in the real world there is no competition between private schools
and public schools because private schools, especially parochial schools, do not have to
comply with Federal and State mandates and constitutional limitations and things of that
sort.
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig.
ANRIG: I think the part of the film that speaks to the greater parental
involvement, I agree with very enthusiastically. However, I think the solution is the
wrong solution for the problem that you identify. I think the role of public education in
a democracy is not akin to that of the marketplace. The purpose for the common school is
not the same as the purpose for the marketplace. We are trying in our public schools to
create a democracy, to create an educated electorate. If you're going to do that, you have
to have the common school.
McKENZIE: How far do you accept his analysis of the present condition of the
public education system? A pretty drastic analysis.
ANRIG: Well, I think he's established three straw men that I think have to be
challenged with all respect, Professor Friedman. The first is that there is a profession
of education out there which has run amuck. We have the most decentralized system in the
world in the American education. Sixteen thousand school districts that are governed not
by the profession, but by elected citizen representatives, most of whom are parents.
Secondly, you long, as I would, for the good old days of the one-room school in Vermont.
That school served a small proportion of the youngsters for a short period of time, and
those days will never come back. Third, you as an example of American education, a
troubled high school in an urban center.
McKENZIE: In your bailiwick.
ANRIG: In my bailiwick, which is not typical of where the American student goes to
school, first of all; and secondly is not typical of the City of Boston. And I do think
it's important to point out that that particular school, at the time that you took filming
there, or your production crew did, was in the middle of a desegregation process that was
not anywhere remarked about in the film. So it was not a typical example either of
education in America or of education in Boston.
McKENZIE: The one unsurprising thing about these comments is that all of the
opposition to allowing the market work comes from people who have a very strong vested
interest in the present public school system. I am not proposing, we are not proposing to
destroy the public school system. We are only asking that the public school system should
be free to compete, should be open to competition, if it is really as good as you people
make it out to be, it has nothing to worry about. Now, in terms of your comment, of course
there's a great deal of decentralization. We showed a very good school in this film as
well as a very bad school. There are many good schools, and the more decentralized the
control, in my opinion, the more satisfactory is the schooling. The real problem is
concentrated in those areas where decentralization is broken down. Where you have moved to
much greater centralization, much greater control, and the main trouble areas are in the
large cities. That's why we picked that school to show. In response to the question of the
excellence of the schooling that's coming, I think there is nobody who can question the
declining SAT scores, the declining scores on exams, the declining performance in the
schools, the fact that there is widespread dissatisfaction, that many schools, not all
schools, some schools, in urban areas are more accurately described as centers to keep
people off the street than as educational institutions.
SHANKER: When you have a free market, there are dangers that go along with that
market. Now, we know that there are people in our society who buy consumer's reports, and
there are people who do a great deal of research before they buy something, and there are
other people who are taken in by the Crest commercials and instant appeal to give them
some sort of a gimmick with a thing. And I think that the evidence is pretty clear that if
you take middle class and wealthier families they are gonna do a good deal of research.
They may very well be able to invest some additional money of their own to take some
inconvenience. And if you have an open system of this sort it may very well be that the
poorest parents are gonna have to take what is most convenient for them. What is going to
fit in with their own work schedules, what is not going to require additional sums of
money. And there is no doubt in my mind that you set up a system of free choice of this
sort, you're going to end up with the poor in one set of schools of their own on the basis
of a good deal of gimmicks that will be offered to them.
COONS: They can't learn, right? They're __
FRIEDMAN: Excuse me, Mr. Shanker. I want to ask you one question: How do you
explain the fact that there is no area of the free market, no area of the private market,
in which the poor people who live in the ghettos of our major cities are as disadvantaged
as they are with respect to the kind of schooling they can get. I want you to name me any
aspect in the kind of supermarkets they can go to. They're not as disadvantaged even in
the kind of housing they can occupy as they are in respect of the kind of schooling their
children can go to. How does __
SHANKER: What's your evidence for that? I don't think you have any evidence for
that.
COONS: But, they're trying to get out.
FRIEDMAN: They're trying desperately to get out. Families with very low incomes
are trying to get into the parochial schools that you're talking about.
SHANKER: Exactly. And they're trying to get out of the slums, and they're trying
to get into different neighborhoods __
FRIEDMAN: They are trying to, sure.
SHANKER: __ they're trying to do all sorts of things.
FRIEDMAN: They're doing better on that. They're doing better on that. And instead,
in a free choice system you would have more heterogeneous schools in my opinion, far less
segregation by social and economic class than you now have. Because __
(Several talking at once.)
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig.
ANRIG: It just doesn't hold up by the very examples he's used.
FRIEDMAN: Excuse me. It so happens that right now, the parochial schools are the
only alternative really available to low-income people.
SHANKER: Do they take all the children who want to get in?
FRIEDMAN: And the reason for that is that it's very hard to sell something when
other people are giving it away. Anybody who wants to send his child to a nonpublic school
has to pay twice for it. Once in the form of taxes and once in the form of tuition. Under
the kind of voucher scheme that Jack Coons and I would support, that difficulty would be
eliminated. You would now have a situation in which the low-income people would have the
kind of bargaining power, the kind of possibility of choice, that those of us who are in
the upper-income groups have had all along. (Several talking at once.)
McKENZIE: I want to move __ Jack Coons. Jack Coons, I want you to come in now. I
know you're in principle advocating the voucher system. Could you give us the case as you
see it. I know you've got your differences with Milton on it, but let's have the case.
COONS: What we are doing in California is establishing a form of change, possible
change, proposing a change, in which lower-income people will get information along with
the opportunity to go to any school of their choice and transportation to get there. Of
course they need information. Anybody needs information in a market. And they need
information from independent sources, not from the schools themselves, and that's the way
the initiative is designed, to come from independent sources. Now, we believe that
ordinary people can make the best judgments for their children about where they should go,
if they're given good professional advice. And it also helps teachers because they can,
for the first time, be professionals. They can act like real professionals, because they
don't have a captive audience. They don't dominate their client, they respect their
client, and they deal with them on the basis of a contract. What could be better for
teachers than for the first time to become people who are dealing in a democratic and
respectful way with clientele instead of with captives.
SHANNON: I am concerned that a voucher system will lead towards havens for white
flight, will lead towards a duel school system in the sense that you have one school
system operating under one set of rules, the other school system, public school system,
operating under carefully articulated educational policy in any given state. And that's
why I think it's __
COONS: Exactly, in Los Angeles County the movement to private schools last year
was less, a smaller percentage than in the statewide pattern.
SHANKER: You may have five or ten percent of the students __
FRIEDMAN: Right, right.
SHANKER: __ you have very severe problems and come from families with very severe
problems, and those students take up 95 percent of the time of the teachers and the
administrators and the other children aren't getting an education. Now, you're gonna set
up your voucher school. Are your voucher schools going to accept these tough children?
COONS: You bet they are. (Several talking at once.)
COONS: May I answer the question?
SHANKER: If they accept those children, I'll tell you what's gonna happen.
COONS: Okay, you tell me and then I'll tell you.
SHANKER: What's gonna happen is that the parents of all the other children are
gonna move right out and go to another school, because ultimately you're going to have to
deal with hardcore problems__
McKENZIE: John Coons.
SHANKER: __ whether it's in a private school or whether it's in a public school.
COONS: In other words, that kid isn't tough in the school that he's in because
he's stuck there, he's just a rotten, tough kid.
SHANKER: He may be a kid with a lot of problems, not rotten, a kid with a lot of
problems.
COONS: And it will never __ you can't imagine a situation where if he were given
choice, and allowed to go to a school that he liked, and to which he would connect
emotionally that he would no longer be a troublemaker, but that he would like to stay in a
place where he has chosen and would therefore do what is necessary to stay there and to
learn.
SHANKER: You know, I don't think you've been near schools or classrooms for a heck
of a long time.
COONS: Thanks a lot.
(Laughter and applause.)
COONS: I happen to have five kids who've done a lot of time in public and private
schools both.
SHANKER: We're not talking about the problems of your children, though.
McKENZIE: Let's get around the table, I want to __
FRIEDMAN: No, no. I have to get to this point, because I think it's a very crucial
one. I don't think Mr. Shanker is saying that you should never use a doctor if you have
cancer who hasn't himself had cancer.
SHANKER Oh, I didn't say that.
FRIEDMAN: Let's get rid of the idea that the only people who are competent to
judge about whether a school is good or bad is a parent who at the moment has children in
that school. The plain fact is that children are not born troublemakers. They do not
emerge from the womb __ some of them do, of course, but most of them do not. Most of the
cases of the tough kids in the schools you're talking about are tough kids because they're
lousy schools. Because the schools do not evoke their interest. Because the school does
not __
SHANKER: You're dead wrong. You're dead __
(Several talking at once.)
McKENZIE: Now wait a minute now, Greg Anrig on this one. Milton, let __
ANRIG: It's not often I have a chance to tell a professor he's wrong. With all
respect, Professor, the problems that you see in the urban schools of this country are not
problems of the schools, they are problems of poverty. And they are problems of what do
you do when for demographic and sociological and economic reasons, in a country like ours,
you begin to concentrate those people who are poor in the inner and older parts of the
cities of our country. That's when the problem comes, and it's not just a problem with
schools. It's a problem of housing, of jobs, of medical care, of social services, and the
same problems crop up, and to say that the answer to that is take one part of that element
and say, just set up a competitive marketplace, is not dealing with the problem. The
problem is the problem of poverty.
FRIEDMAN: We've dealt with the problem __
SHANNON: I am struck the anomaly. The anomaly that rises out of this discussion of
the voucher system. The facts are that government support __ call it subventions, call it
direct aid, call it grants in aid, call it vouchers, call it anything, will lead
ultimately to government control of the private schools, thus undercutting the alternative
nature of private schooling and hurting it at its very source.
VOICE OFF SCREEN: Well, then you ought to look at our initiative.
FRIEDMAN: We've had long experience with that on the higher education level. You
have the whole GI Bill. Did the GI Bill really lead, fundamentally, to control of all the
schools. There's a fundamental difference between government giving money to an
institution, to a school, that does lead to control directly, and government giving money
to people to use, the food stamps don't determine what people buy with their food stamps.
They may be a good or a bad program, that's not my point. My point is that don't
underestimate the crucial difference between making money available to parents to spend as
they choose to exercise their judgment, and making money available to institutions like
schools, which they spend subject to all the conflicts which they have with school
teachers and others.
ANRIG: You use Dartmouth as an example, and I think the concerns that I have about
the voucher systems, the various ones proposed, is not with the one applicant that can get
accepted to Dartmouth, but with the eight applicants that don't get accepted to Dartmouth.
What's going to happen to those __ or that group of youngsters. You can have a situation
in the free marketplace where everybody takes the cream, but what about the youngster that
doesn't measure up? What about the youngster that's a risk? It seems to me that some of
the greatest leaders of this country were people that would have been rejected by
Dartmouth, and most of the Ivy League schools.
McKENZIE: Let's get other views on this, then we'll come back to you, Milton.
FRIEDMAN: No, no. I just want to comment, because I have to comment on two points,
the one he made earlier about poverty and this one. But on this one. Dartmouth is one of
the best examples of the private schools. UCLA is one of the best examples of the state
schools. That's why we chose it. There are many other private schools which are not as
selective and do not __ are not available to people who can't make the Dartmouth cut.
There are many other public schools, state schools, that are less advanced than UCLA and
the California system. There are all sorts of grades of schools. But the difference
between the two is the same at lower levels. Now I do want to make one comment going back
to your poverty thing; and that is that, first of all, other programs in this series deal
with the issues you've raised. But, second, do not underestimate the role which bad
schooling, provided by our present governmental mechanism has played in creating poverty.
It's been a major source, particularly among black and white teenagers coming up in the
slums, it's been a major source of their difficulties of getting out of the trap of
poverty. So it's not a one-way relation between poverty and the schools, the schools
themselves bear a great deal of responsibility.
SHANKER: Well, the reason the schools bear it, and it isn't the schools directly,
it's that we don't put enough resources in for children who need special and additional
help because they are not getting it in their homes or they're not getting the same sort
of support in home and community as middle class kids do, and then we wait until the child
is 16 or 17 and drops out, and then we provide a youth employment program for them where
we spend between five and ten thousand dollars to try to undo what could have been undone
in the first, second and third grade if we had a decent investment in the public schools.
FRIEDMAN: I have never yet known anybody who was trying to defend a government
program who didn't say all it's evils came from the fact that it wasn't big enough. Now
the facts are __
SHANKER: Would you think the children with problems need the same amount of
education __
FRIEDMAN: No, no.
SHANKER: __ the same amount as children who don't have special problems?
FRIEDMAN: No, but I just want to tell you some facts. The number of students in
schools has been going down. The total expenditures on schools, allowance being made for
inflation, after allowing for inflation has been going up. The number of pupils has been
going down, the number of teachers have been going up, and by all accounts the quality has
been going down.
SHANKER: But I have to explain __
(Several talking at once)
McKENZIE: Milton, just a minute. I want to hold you __ Mr. Shanker, Mr. Shanker.
We got onto higher education and I don't want to leave it without getting the rest of
Milton's thoughts on it. In particular, you seem to be coming to say at the end of the
film that the right answer is a system of realistic loans where people, therefore, know
what it's costing, rather than trying to hold down college fees and that kind of thing.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
McKENZIE: Yeah. And__
FRIEDMAN: I think that the higher education is the most disgraceful example on the
record. I know of no governmental program that seem to me is so unfair and disgraceful in
imposing costs on low income people to benefit high-income people. We in the upper and
middle income classes have conned the poor in this country to supporting our children in
going through college and university and we don't __ and we scream to the treetops about
how disinterested and how public-spirited we are. We ought to have a system under which
everybody who wants to go to college can go there. He has to pay his own way, either now
or later on, and the schemes I have in mind, if we developed them more fully, and as I
have in other contexts in other areas, are along the line of the educational opportunity
bank, that Professor Zacharias of MIT and a commission appointed by President Johnson came
up with as a way of enabling students to finance their own higher education without facing
the problem you raised of ending up with a large dollar debt.
ANRIG: I do think __
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig.
ANRIG: With some trepidation, Professor, I raise a question of taxation. That is
that I agree that we need better loan systems than we have, but as I understand the
American tax system in general, as a generality, it is a graduated system.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
ANRIG: It is an equalizing system.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
ANRIG: And to reach the conclusion that the __
FRIEDMAN: No, no, it is not. It's on paper, but you've got to look at the facts.
McKENZIE: Let him make his point, yes.
ANRIG: Well, I'm trying to __ it is a system which the wealthier get __ or the
middle class get taxed more than somebody who's making a lesser salary. To say then that
the poor are funding __
FRIEDMAN: That's true.
ANRIG: __ public higher education, where middle class youngsters and by the way a
lot of poor youngsters go as well, it doesn't fit with my understanding at least of the
tax system. Now I'm not an economist, I admit it.
FRIEDMAN: Well, it turns out that there have been some very careful studies made
of exactly what you're describing. There's one particularly careful one for California.
There's one for Florida. These show __ it's not a minor item, that if you take the total
receipts from expenditures on higher education going to the lower classes, and the total
taxes they pay that are used for higher education, the lower classes are paying more than
they're getting, and the higher classes are getting more than they are paying for.
(Several talking at once.)
FRIEDMAN: Now I myself am a beneficiary of this subsidy. I'm one of the worst
cases on record. I went to a state school, Rutgers University. I went on a state
scholarship. The poor suckers in the State of New Jersey paid for my going to college. I
personally think that was a good thing, there are many people who have different opinions
about that. (Laughing)
FRIEDMAN: But I personally think it's a good thing. But I don't see that any
reason whatsoever why I shouldn't have been required to pay back that money. Individuals
pursuing their separate individual interests also provide public benefits. Of course I
think that the public benefited from my getting an education, but the primary beneficiary
was me. I was the one who got the benefit from it. I was the one who had the higher
income.
COONS: We know you benefited from it.
FRIEDMAN: I know I benefited, I don't know about the public.
McKENZIE: I'd like others of you to react to the idea of moving from state
education at the higher level, which is based upon low fees in state universities, in
favor of a loan system. This has been hotly debated in many other countries, too. What's
your own feeling about that?
COONS: Being a tenured professor at a state university I suppose you've really put
me on the spot. I hope none of my friends are listening. But I tend to agree in general
with Milton Friedman that we ought to find a way to open up to all classes, all income
classes the kinds of opportunities that the middle class have at my university. And I
cannot give you __ we don't have time to go through all of the kinds of ways in which we
would do it, but I would just personally, it seems to me we ought to let people come free
at the beginning and pay it back out of their income over their life span, so if they make
a lot of money, they pay back a lot of money. Perhaps we can run the whole university in
the future on their success, to which we contributed with our teaching. And if they don't
make any money, they don't pay anything back, and that's okay too.
FRIEDMAN: And you ought to share in the losses if they don't.
SHANNON: I can't think of anything __
COONS: Exactly.
SHANNON: I can't think of anything that would frighten poor people more than the
thought at the end of the four years or six or seven or eight years of higher education,
they have this albatross around their neck __
COONS: Only if they're rich. Only if they become rich.
FRIEDMAN: There's no albatross __ would you say the same thing about people in
this country who start private businesses every year. Many of them lose money. Many of
them make money. Would you say that nobody is gonna start a business because he might end
up with an albatross? You ought to let people decide that for themselves. What I really
want to know is a very different thing. How do you justify taxing the people in Watts, to
send the children from Beverly Hills to college? That's a demagogic statement, but it
happens to be empirically a correct statement. How do you justify it?
SHANKER: Well I don't know how we justify taxing all the people of this country to
send the GI's under the GI Bill, but I'm very grateful that we did it. I don't know what
this country would have done in a postwar period without a huge number of educated people
in a whole bunch of fields that opened up after that. I doubt very much that the GI's
would have come back at the age that they were and everything else, and would have decided
that now they're gonna take out loans in order to go to college.
VOICE OFF SCREEN: And a lot of them were poor.
SHANKER: Yes, they were poor, and they went because they had government support to
go, and because basically there were a lot of state-supported low-tuition schools, and if
you didn't have the state schools, and if you didn't have the government support we
wouldn't __ we would have been without those people, and I don't know what would have
happened either to our strength or to our economy.
FRIEDMAN: The history of this country goes back a little bit before 1945. It goes
back 200 years. The state schools, universities, were a minor part of the total higher
educational system for a long time. That educational system did generate a great many
educated and schooled people, a great many people who made great contribution to this
country.
SHANKER: What percentage of people went to college before World War II in this
country?
FRIEDMAN: The percentage that was going to college was going up and rising. You
know __ let me tell you one __ another statistic __ I hate to introduce statistics. But
let me tell you one more. Do you know that the percentage of the students at private
universities who come from low-income classes is higher than the percentage of students at
state universities, at government universities that come from the lowest income families.
SHANKER: Because they are there with government assistance.
FRIEDMAN: Most cases they are there with __
SHANKER: They are there with government assistance which in many cases favors the
private as against the public schools.
FRIEDMAN: In most cases they are there with private scholarships that have been
contributed by people __
SHANKER: Some of them, some of them, yes.
FRIEDMAN: __ which is all to the good.
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig on this.
ANRIG: We come back to the point that I tried to make earlier with Dartmouth, the
reason the public higher education system developed, the reason that you have the UCLA's
and others is not simple that government went amuck or bureaucrats went that way; but
because eight of those students were not getting into Dartmouth, and there was not a place
for them. And it was public higher education that opened up its doors to those students.
Those are the youngsters that now have an opportunity they wouldn't have had before. I
think on the issue of loans that it's as with all complex human tasks, it's not an
either/or situation. You need a mix of strategies on the issue of alternatives for
youngsters in schools. I think you can have, as indeed you do have, alternatives within
public school systems. I think you can have alternatives within schools. I think you can
have competition through open enrollment kinds of arrangements. I am fearful, however,
always for those eight youngsters than can't get in to something which is basically
selective and exclusive. If you can assure us __
FRIEDMAN: Well, let's go back __
ANRIG: __ that those eight youngsters all will be provided with equal attention,
equal opportunity and equal rights. Then I would begin to be more interested in the
alternative.
FRIEDMAN: But I want to suggest to you that we're not proposing, neither Jack
Coons nor I, to dismantle anything. We're only saying, put up or shut up. Either show that
you can produce the kind of education people are willing to go and get, or reduce your
size, go out of business. We are only proposing that there be a wider range of
alternatives. Now, it is not true __ let me put a different point to you. There are a
small minority of people who are problems. Is it desirable to impose a straightjacket on a
hundred percent of the people, or ninety percent of the people, in order to provide
special assistance or special help to four or five or ten percent of the people? Not at
all. I think that there's a big difference between two kinds of systems. One kind of
system in which the great bulk of parents have effective freedom to choose the kind of
schools their children go to, whether it's the lower or the higher level. And there are
programs and provisions for a small minority. That's one kind of a system. That isn't what
we have now. What people in the public school system, people like yourselves do, they do
not want to give up the monopoly of the public school system any more than the Post Office
want to give up the monopoly of delivering mail.
ANRIG: I think you attribute the monopoly desire to the bureaucrat. And I don't
think that's right. The concern of the public school is for being sure that every
youngster in this country gets access to a public education.
FRIEDMAN: Excuse me. You have had an attempt to introduce voucher experiments
around the country. Every one of those attempts, as at Alamrock (phonics) and elsewhere,
has been prevented by the opposition of the educational bureaucracy.
ANRIG: Oh, but, no, no, you can't __ that's a glittering generality.
FRIEDMAN: That was true in New Hampshire, it was true in Connecticut.
SHANKER: It was not true in Alamrock (phonics) because Alamrock was not what you
might call a voucher system, it was a kind of a system of free choice within public
schools.
FRIEDMAN: I agree, I agree.
SHANKER: And whether one school did better in its scores, others did worse, and
when you measured the whole system when it was all over, the scores were exactly the same
as they were before, except that some students had moved to other schools and the grades
were better in one school as against another. We do very strongly oppose a voucher system
which will end up with public schools being abandoned and thereby destroyed. largely. They
will become the schools for those who can't get in anywhere else, or who are expelled
elsewhere.
VOICE OFF SCREEN: So if you had a voucher system __
SHANKER: Because if you compel public schools to educate all children, including
the most difficult, and if you have other schools, that have _
FRIEDMAN: It isn't compelling public schools, it's compelling parents _
SHANKER: No, no, it's public schools. The public school cannot say to a parent,
"Your child is very difficult. Your child throws things. Your child screams &
yells. Your child takes all the attention of the teacher, therefore, get out and go find a
private school." On the other hand, you have hundreds of private schools in this
country where when they get a very disturbed child, out that child goes. And where does
that child go? The public schools must take him.
FRIEDMAN: But look at __
SHANKER: And that's what we have. We have one system of schools which cream, and
which throw out the most difficult __ you know, it would be like the hospital throwing out
all the sick patients and keeping the healthy ones.
McKENZIE: Well, there we leave this week's discussion. We hope you'll join us for
the next episode of Free to Choose.
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