Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
Economics:
Milton
Friedman's
Free
To Choose - 1990
#4: Failure of Socialism
I am David Friedman. A few days ago I found myself in a conversation with a
stranger, defending my father's views about getting the government out of education. The
man I was arguing with responded that education was too important to be left to the free
market. It seemed to me he had it exactly backwards. If I had my choice, I would like to
get the government out of both delivering the mail and running the schools, but if I had
to choose, I would leave them with the mail. After all, if the government is in charge of
delivering the mail, all that means is that some of our letters get lost. If governments
are in charge of running the schools, that means that some of our children never learn to
read.
Education is important. It is not the only important thing. Consider the same
argument applied to food. Surely food is a very important thing, so if important things
should be done by government, it seems to imply that the government ought to take over the
supermarkets and the farms. The experiment has been tried. In the 1930's in Russia, Stalin
collectivized agriculture, the government took over the schools, and several million
Ukrainians starved to death.
It reminds me of a conversation I had more than 20 years ago with a couple of
Czech students in Vienna. That was the summer that Czechoslovakia tried a little
prematurely to move away from communism and the Russians invaded them. The students I was
talking with had been caught outside of the country at the time of the invasion and were
in Vienna trying to decide whether or not they should go home. They were trying to explain
to me what the Czech reformers were trying to do. As they described it, they wanted the
best of capitalism and socialism. Part of that was that they wanted to have free market
prices for most goods, but have the government control the prices of a few essential
commodities such as bread and milk. My response, of course, was that if the free market
was really better for the other things, then it was even more important to use the free
market for essential commodities.
I may have misunderstood them at that point because I don't speak Czech and their
English wasn't very good, but I think they said yes, that is what our professors say too.
I figured at that point I knew why the Russians invaded. So, I guess what I am trying to
say is that I agree that education is important and it is far took important to be left to
the government.
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 move 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 its 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 move 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 the
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
be 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 higher education should be enabled 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
Welcome to Free to Choose. Joining Dr. Friedman tonight for a discussion on what
is wrong with our schools are Dr. Gordon Tullock who is professor of economics and
politics at the University of Arizona, and Dr. Henry Levin who is professor of economics
and education at Stanford University.
Dr. Levin, let's start with you. What is wrong with giving parents the choice
where to send their children to school?
Levin: I like the idea of giving parents the choice of where to send their
children to school within the public sector and schools that are concerned about the
social benefits of education that is creating a society where there is a common set of
knowledge, social cohesion, and so on. So that would be my goal.
Chavez: Dr. Friedman, what is wrong with public school choice?
Friedman: There is nothing wrong with public school choice. There is something
wrong with limiting choice to public schools. Public schools should not be in a monopoly
position. They should have to compete with private schools. If you want to know what is
wrong with public school choice, just look at the post office and see what is wrong with
giving the government a monopoly in delivering first class mail. Why should a parent be
restricted to using his tax money and the tax money that is assigned to them by others,
simply in those schools that are run by the government.
Tullock: In the first place, the last letter that Milton Friedman wrote to me took
five days to get from San Francisco to Tucson. This is a byproduct but nevertheless true.
Secondly, you've got to remember we let the parents make a lot of choices with respect to
education by voting in the school boards or people who elect the boards. We let the
parents decide whether we should have military forces in Iraq, this being a democracy. I
don't see why we shouldn't let them make the decisions by themselves instead of
indirectly.
Levin: My concerns here are the following __ by the way I should mention to you
that in Palo Alto where I am a member of the school board so I can be the bureaucrat here,
we have just voted in a policy that all graduates of Palo Alto high schools, we have two
of them, will be proficient in foreign languages. That will be a requirement for
graduation. There is no private school in the country, to our knowledge, we have made an
extensive search, that sets that kind of standard.
Friedman: Why should there be? Why should you be able to tell John and Jane that
they necessarily have to be proficient in a foreign language. Maybe they would rather be
proficient in music, mathematics, or in something else. I don't see that is anything for
you to boast about. It is just a demonstration of your willingness to replace their
judgment by yours.
Levin: But then you would have to tell me, what are your social concerns about
school because to justify public funding for elementary and secondary schools, surely
there are social benefits that are worth paying for. Otherwise, no one should expect the
governments to pay for schools.
Friedman: You have raised a very good question because in fact I have become
increasingly doubtful whether there is any case for government funding of schools, but the
argument has always been that you need people who can read, write and do arithmetic, who
have some knowledge of history and of the society in order to have an educated citizenry
which a democracy can operate. I think there is a great deal of sense to that.
Levin: Should we agree on ways of making decisions in the public sector? Should
people have some notion, that in fact we do have a system of government, that we do debate
issues, we ultimately take votes . . .
Friedman: Tell me how that is related to being proficient in a foreign language.
Levin: The foreign language is one concern. In other words, that is a concern that
I have . . .
Friedman: How is it justified? Excuse me. I agree with you that you need some
knowledge and I agree that in any system in which the government is going to provide money
for people to go to school, it is not inappropriate that they should specify certain
minimum requirements in spending that money. I would agree with you that one of those
minimum requirements would be some knowledge of the mechanisms of government, but it
certainly doesn't include proficiency in a foreign language. Yet, that is what you are
proud of.
Levin: Then would you say that we are in agreement on the principals that we
should specify certain criteria for schools, but on the other hand you are saying that
parents just have a choice of a school regardless of what it does? That is my
understanding of your presentation.
Friedman: No. I'm not saying that at all.
Tullock: In a later part of the 19th century, the schools were subsidized in
England where you could send the children anywhere you want, but the subsidy depended on
how many children passed certain specific examinations. If 90% passed, you got a high
subsidy; if 10% passed, you got a very low subsidy. Many of these were private schools.
You could have a very large degree of autonomy and a control of what is actually taught
just by this examination. It is a very simple procedure.
Chavez: Dr. Tullock, don't we have exactly the opposite of that now? We now fund
schools that have disadvantaged students who may, in fact, not be doing well get more
money?
Tullock: That would have been true in England too. The special problem of
disadvantaged students is a very real one and I don't think anybody feels that they should
be treated exactly like students who aren't. The question really is the technical way of
dealing with them and that is not an easy question. He is an educator, let him answer that
one.
Friedman: I want to go back to this other question. Government can provide money
without producing the product on which the money is spent. In fact, most of its money is
spent that way. The government gives people food stamps with the requirement that it be
used to buy only food. But the government doesn't run the grocery stores in which they buy
the food. There is no contradiction between saying we give a parent a voucher which may be
used only for buying education in schools which satisfy these minimum requirements. There
is no contradiction between that and saying that schools may be privately run. They may be
run by churches, they may be run by corporations for profit, they may be run by nonprofit
organizations of parents, or what else.
Levin: As long as you set the common standards and the question is this. If you
set the common standards high enough, you are going to get schools precisely like the
present ones, you won't even allow public choice among schools.
Tullock: Wait. You set the standards high enough, you get schools like our present
ones? I would say if you set them low enough, you would get schools like the present ones.
Levin: Not the specific criteria. What I am saying is that if you set them in
great enough detail.
Tullock: If you insist that they must be able to read, you have a different kind
of school.
Levin: For example, I hear you talking about perhaps a national examination, and
yet what we are hearing is that we ought to have a choice.
Friedman: I disagree very much with . . .
Levin: I get very confused by this because people like Bill Bennett and Ellen
Bloom and E.D. Hirsh talk about we need a common culture and we need to get greater
concomitant schools and they even talk about a national curriculum and national
examinations.
Friedman: But after all, Bill Bennett was Secretary of Education. I do not expect
a secretary of education to be in favor of private schools any more than I expect the
Postmaster General to be in favor of giving up the monopoly of distributing mail.
Levin: But yet he is. He is in favor of private schools and he is certainly in
favor of choice between the public and private sector.
Friedman: Yes he is in favor of choice between them, I agree. The problem is what
we mean by high standards. I believe that marketplace produces higher standards than
government does, in every area. I don't know any area that the marketplace produces higher
standards in delivering mail as we have found out from Federal Express and the other
private mail companies, than the government does. The marketplace, if left to itself, it
is not ended, it is not restricted too much, will produce higher standards in schools.
That is why I want them, that is why I am in favor of the marketplace.
Levin: Let me ask you a question then, in a recent period, 34% of the babies born
in San Francisco General Hospital, which as you know is the largest public hospital in San
Francisco, were crack addicted babies. Tell me about their parents and how they will make
educational choices for their children and in the interests of their children.
Tullock: I ask that they make educational choices by voting for the school board,
wouldn't it be just as bad?
Levin: Well, my concern right now is I do have an alternative. If you go to the
Daniel Webster School right here in the city, and you'll find a school in the public
sector with decentralized control and accountability with the largest gains in test scores
this past year in the city of San Francisco. So, I would maintain that reform is possible
within the public sector. You need vast decentralization and the only issue is whether it
is possible politically and I suspect we could discuss that.
Tullock: With these mothers of these children that you are talking about, would
they go to Daniel Webster?
Levin: That is very important because Daniel Webster is in the area where the
public housing project of Protrero Hills, that housing project, and it is precisely those
neighborhoods that produce these crack addicted babies.
Tullock: You are concerned about the crack addicted mother producing crack, not
being able to choose a private school. Why can she choose a public school?
Levin: In this particular case, I think they are fortunate to be in that
neighborhood where we have tried to start this decentralized approach.
Chavez: Aren't you really saying that the choice has been made for them and that
you are therefore confident of that?
Levin: None has been made for them but I think it is a very good choice that has
been made for them because these particular families are under tremendous stress and
simply do not seem to place a high priority on educational decisions.
Friedman: But I think the great defect in the kind of talk we are hearing from you
is the attempt to treat 100% of the people one way because 5% of the people have to be
treated differently. There are disadvantaged children like the crack babies and as Gordon
was saying before, they cannot be treated like everybody else. I quite agree. No question.
But I would like to have a system in which 90% of the parents, that 90% which will make
sense and which we do trust in every other way to be responsible for their children, that
90% has the greatest opportunity to provide their children with the kind of schooling that
they think will benefit their children the most. We have special treatment for the 10%
falling out. Now you take your public school or government school in San Francisco, of
course there are exceptions in the public school system, there always have been. We showed
one in the film of a school outside Boston which was a very good school for a different
reason. The problem is they don't last. The problem is that they cannot become general
because there is no mechanism for getting rid of the bad schools. There is no effective
accountability and the only effective accountability you can have is the right of the
customer to say I won't buy or I will buy.
Chavez: Let me ask another question Dr. Friedman. What about the schools, will
they be required to take all children once the parents have made the choice?
Friedman: No, not at all, any more than restaurants are required to admit all
customers.
Chavez: Well they are required to admit all customers on the basis of race.
Friedman: I would, in that case, again I am saying that the use of the voucher can
be contingent on certain requirements, and I think it is generally agreed that
nondiscrimination with respect to race would be one of them. Now it is an interesting
thing, in fact, that in the private religious schools, the Catholic religious schools,
they tend on the whole to have a larger mixture of minorities than most so-called public
schools. The reason is very simple: the minority parents get such bad schooling in the
areas where they are that even though many non-Catholics, for example, the proportion of
blacks in Catholic primary schools is very high, but they get a better schooling there.
They feel they have better discipline there and they are willing to pay for it.
Levin: But if that is true, it is interesting that the Coleman results show that
although the private schools outperform the public schools academically, it is by a very
small amount that is the private schools adjusting for race and social class are about the
52nd percentile, relative to the public schools being at the 50th percentile. What is of
interest to me is why is it that 48% of private school children are performing below the
average for public school children.
Friedman: The answer to that is that you have only a very limited degree of
competition in the private schools. The Catholic schools and the parochial schools in
general, have a comparative advantage over strictly private schools. Here you have
somebody down the street who is giving something away for free and you are going to try to
sell it. It is kind of difficult to do. The Catholics or the Christians, the other forms
of Christian or Jewish schools, any of the parochial schools, are part of an institution
which is willing to subsidize that process and therefore there is only a very small area
of strictly private property, market-oriented schools. If you had that, I think the
performance would go up enormously. If you look at certain areas where you do have private
schools, like in training television technicians, they perform extremely well.
Levin: No. We have to talk about that sector because that is a very interesting
sector. The guaranteed federal loans, as you know, apply to the post-secondary proprietary
schools as well as colleges and universities. A whole sector has risen to serve the poor .
. .
Friedman: Those guaranteed loans have become a scandal.
Levin: That is absolutely right. They have become a scandal mostly in this
post-secondary sector of proprietary institutions that serve the poor. They get them to
sign these forms and their 70_80% loan defaults that all of us at this table are paying
for, of course are very small relative to the savings and loan debacle, but in fact there
is a market and people are making choices. . .
Friedman: As you know, I am not in favor of that system, as I said before. I am
not in favor of a government subsidizing the people who are going into higher education.
That is a very different question.
Levin: It does show how a market would work when people are given the power of a
voucher to purchase education.
Friedman: Yes, but the point is they are not spending their own money. They are
not spending the money that is being provided to them. Let's take a very different case. .
.
Tullock: Credit, if you don't __ people who are permitted to borrow money and not
pay it back will do badly in any place. I think we can agree there is a government
function which is making people who borrow money repay their debts, whether the debts are
borrowed for that purpose or to buy a car.
Chavez: What is the distinction between higher education and elementary and
secondary education?
Friedman: Very simple. Elementary and secondary education is compulsory.
Chavez: And you would favor that?
Friedman: No, I don't. At one point I did favor it, but the more I have studied
it, the more I believe that the extent of schooling that would be voluntarily attained
would be large enough so that there would be no additional advantage in compelling the
small number who were left. If without compulsion only 50% of children would go to school,
then I would have to say compulsion can be justified because of the importance of having a
school population. But I have become persuaded that if there were no compulsion, 90% of
the kids would go to schools. Therefore, I no longer see the necessity of compulsory . . .
Tullock: This in fact was true in England before they introduced the public school
system. I think it is higher than 90 __ I think it is 95% or 97% . . . but he also looked
at the United States and it is very hard to get this in the United States because
different states are different.
Levin: The schooling of children occurs at the intersection of two basic rights:
one is the right for me to bring up, and I have five children and a grandchild, but the
right for me to bring up my children the way that I see fit. The other right is the right
of a nation to school its children or to meet the deuce values and attitudes and knowledge
that help to sustain the particular things, including respect for these various
amendments, that the nation stands on. It would be wonderful if there were no conflict
between the two, but the fact of the matter is that we know historically there has been
conflict between the two. The question is how are we going to resolve that conflict.
Friedman: At the moment, I think the conflict is produced by the public school
system. I think it is disgraceful, as I understand it, the first generation in American
history that is going to be more poorly schooled than its parents. I see no way that you
can defend and say that somehow this conflict that you have described can justify the kind
of school system we have, and you don't.
Levin: I am trying to look for your insights into how we solve this because we
agreed on the problem. The question is the solution. Now, American children apparently
watch 19.5 hours of television a week, according to one of the Gallop poles that I saw.
Japanese children watch about 2.5 hours. I think we agree that commercial children
television is not what we would like it to be educationally.
Chavez: Are you talking about more control rather than less control?
Levin: The question I have is this: the same parents now who simply derogate
responsibilities for most of the education of their children outside of the school to a TV
set that is showing inane kinds of experiences, are the same parents who are very
sensitive and concerned. I think we have to help them become better parents. I think we
have to work with them. I don't think . . . I think that all educational professionals are
responsible for theirs and for children . . .
Tullock: The educational professionals who are going to make any decisions of this
sort are those who have either directly or indirectly been selected by the parents. You
have to remember this is a democracy. We vote for these things.
Chavez: We all agree on the critical importance of education. I hope you have
enjoyed our discussion and that it will continue to provoke your thoughts on who should
choose our children's school. Next week on Free to Choose we will be discussing an issue
of critical importance to the founding of this nation __ equality and the rights of the
individual.
Much of the moral fervor behind the drive for equality comes from the widespread
belief that it is not fair that some children should have a great advantage over others
simply because they happen to have wealthy parents. Of course it is not fair, but is there
any distinction between the inheritance of property and the inheritance of what at first
sight looks very different.
|