Book Reviews

This country had accepted "free" public education ever since the Eighteen Forties, and the idea seemed inextricably imbedded in our strangely mixed culture. I kept saying to myself that lots of good people had come out of the public high school and that was all right as long as there were a few private schools around to provide competi tion. In the course of writing my se ries I encountered Carl Hansen, head of the Washington, D.C., pub lic school system. He had a grand educational revolution - in reality, a counterrevolution - going. Children in his schools were getting their reading by phonics. Spanish was taught in the third grade. In structors could come into the Han sen system without taking the full complement of those ridiculous "methodology" courses that the teachers' colleges considered neces sary to "progressive" education. Hansen had one school-the Ami don School-that was a jewel. Any one, whether black or white, could enroll in it if transportation could be worked out and if he or she could keep grades up to snuff. Needless to say, Hansen believed in a "track"

system that would permit bright students to go ahead at their own swifter pace. Hansen convinced me at the time that a good man could do much to purge the public school system of the. "progressive" malaise. But Robert Love out in Wichita, Kan sas, knew better. At about the time I was seeing a savior in Carl Han315 THE FREEMAN May sen, Mr. Love was taking his three children, Randy, Robert, and Re becca, out of the public schools of Wichita. The kids, as he says, weren't learning anything, and Randy, the oldest, had become ter ribly confused when his fourth grade teacher made an example of him because he chose to exempt himself from a "voluntary" pro gram. Mr. Love and a few other disgusted parents had to pioneer their own private school, which is now known as the Wichita Colle giate School. Between 1967 and 1970 Wichita Collegiate graduated fifty students, forty-eight of whom were in college as of the Spring of 1971. Fifteen of those graduates were semi-finalists in the National Merit Scholarship competition, and three of them were finalists.

Meanwhile, Carl Hansen had long since departed from Washing ton. The "track" system had been abolished in D.C. schools, and medi ocrity had returned. The fault was not Carl Hansen's; he was and is a first-rate educator. The point is that running a counterrevolution in the public school system is bound to come to grief. The bureaucrats don't want it, and they are in con trol. The Story of Wichita Collegiate For the benefit of parents who are fed up with all the things that afflict public education, from busing to the "look-say" method of teaching reading, Mr. Love has put the story of Wichita Collegiate into a fascinating "do it yourself" book called How To Start Your Own School (Macmillan, $5.95). Wichita Collegiate has never receiyed a pen ny of public tax money, and it does not rely on fund-raising campaigns or special donations. Its philosophy is . "full cost," meaning that it charges enough in tuition to pay its bills. It doesn't believe in hiring a loL of "coordinators" and trouble shooters; the headmaster is the ad ministration, and if the parents don't like the instruction they com plain directly to the teachers. There is no tenure at Wichita Collegiate; if a teacher can't satisfy the stu dents, the parents, and the people who do the grading on the college boards, he either has to improve his record or go. Collegiate's idea is to hire fewer faculty members at higher salaries to do more work, which runs 180 degrees counter to Parkinson's Law. The teachers are not required to have "methodology"

certificates from schools of educa tion; as long as they know their own subjects, and have the ability to interest their students, they can command top salaries. To get the most out of its plant, Collegiate has gone over to the tri mester system. Some faculty mem bers work for the school year round, doing carpentry, painting, 1973 HOW TO START YOUR OWN SCHOOL 317 landscaping and repair work in July and August, in addition to teaching summer school. Full-Cost Athletics There is an athletic program at Collegiate, but the parents pay for it. It costs $30 to be on the football squad. The school shares its Olym pic swimming pool (it has an inex pensive plastic bubble top) with a local swim club. The father of a boy who Scores the winning basket in a close basketball game "has to buy the next set of bleachers." The baseball diamonds are used jointly with the Wichita YMCA. Collegiate has good teams, but, as Mr. Love puts it, "the parents who really want team sports will support the program and let the school get on with education."

In return for scholarship assist ance Collegiate expects students and "in some cases the parents" to do work around the school. Mothers drive the buses. Collegiate once had a professional librarian, but it discovered that mothers of children on scholarships could do a perfectly competent job of run ning the library. So the money the school once paid out as a librarian's salary now goes, indirectly, into scholarships. Mr. Love's book sticks mainly to the Collegiate story, and it is the better for that. But it offers some generalized advice to parents who may be thinking of starting private schools in other towns. Any two teachers, says Mr. Love, can set up a preschool and kindergarten. If the business goes well, and six more willing teachers and a secre tary can be found, it is not difficult to expand the school to one carry ing on through the sixth grade. The need for a headmaster does not arise until the school adds upper grades. As for finances, the parents will have to cover the costs in tui tion fees if they can't find bene factors. One way of raising capital for buildings is to sell shares to the parents, who can resell them after their children have graduated. In any case, the costs do not have to be exorbitant if the Collegiate tight-budget practices are followed.

New Private Schools Samuel L. Blumenfeld's How To Start Your Own Private School And Why You Need One (Arling ton, $9.95) offers a wide-ranging corroboration of everything Mr. Love has to say. Mr. Blumenfeld makes the point that Horace Mann, who saddled the U.S. with "free" compulsory public education, got his. idea from the schools of Prus sia. Horace Mann considered State run schools to be "democratic." He also believed in phrenology. He didn't live long enough to see what Prussian "democracy" did to Eur ope in World War I (the Kaiser's 318 THE FREEMAN May war) and World War II (Hitler's holocaust) . Much of Mr. Blumenfeld's book is devoted to a survey of the new private schools that are springing up in the South. Despite the wide spread feeling in the North that such schools as Prince Edward Academy in Farmville, Virginia, and Montgomery Academy in Montgomery, Alabama, are "segre gation schools," these new private ventures are, in Mr. Blumenfeld's opinion, legitimate efforts on the part of southern parents to save their children from getting inferior educations. Busing, says Mr. Blu menfeld, may turn out to be a great blessing; it has rehabilitated the idea of a free market in education as nothing else could.

w WHAT YOU CAN DO by Lemuel R. Boulware (San Diego, Calif. 92109, Box 9622: Loeffler & Co., Inc., 1973) 192 pp., single copies $1.35. (Discounts on quantities.) Reviewed by Henry Hazlitt THE FULL TITLE of this book is What You Can Do About Infla tion, Unemployment, Productivity, Profit, and Collective Bargaining. It lives up to that title. It is a clarion call to action. It reminds the reader that he is not merely someone with a seat in the spec tator stands; that what is being done daily by officeholders in Washington and in the labor unions vitally affects his interests; that in some respects economic conditions· in this country are get ting worse almost daily; that one of the chief reasons for this is that most of us do not realize that it is our ox that is being gored; that the majority of business leaders have themselves to blame for either not understanding :what is going on, or for lacking the init iative or courage to speak out in their own defense.

Mr. Boulware begins by point ing out that all 200 million of us, whether we realize it or not, have a direct or an indirect stake in the continuous prosperity. of Ameri can business. First, he estimates, even allowing for duplication there must be at least 50,000,000 of us who are direct or indirect owners of our 1,500,000 businesses. There are 31,000,000 known owners of stock in corporations,listed on the exchanges, and obviously more than 10,000,000 owners of our 10,000,000 unincorporated busi nesses. There are 25,000,000 sav ings accounts, millions more de positors in checking accounts, 28,000,000 participants in private pension funds~ 130,000,000 insur ance policy holders, and so on, all 1973 OTHER BOOKS 319 of which are at least indirect in vestors in American business. Finally, of course, there are some 87,000,000 men and women in the civilian labor force, whose pay and continued employment are directly dependent on the contin ued prosperity and profits of busi ness.

Yet here we (come to an incredi ble paradox. While the whole econ omy depends on the continuance of profit, while profits are the driving force to production and creation, politically "profit" has become a dirty word. Sometimes the necessity of profit is reluctantly conceded. But only of an undefined· "fair" profit. And from the daily denunciations of politicians and labor leaders we are left to gather that profits are chronically not fair but "excess ive" and "exorbitant." The public is appallingly ignor ant of the facts. A survey con ducted by McGraw-HilI's Opinion Research Corporation found that the median guess of the American people is that even after taxes manufacturing companies make 28 cents on every dollar of sales. This is seven times the actual figure. In 1970, American companies made an average after-tax profit of just 4 cents on every dollar· of sales. The thinness of this margin is illustrated in another way. Of the amount available for distribution as between the employees of the corporations and the owners, the workers, year in and year out, get about ~even-eighths and the owners only one-eighth. In 1970, the employees of the corporations got nine-tenths and the owners one-tenth. This is just the oppo site of what most Americans be lieve the average distribution to be. Moreover, about half this profit is not paid out in dividends but is reinvested in the business to in crease productivity, employment, and real wage-rates.

The greater part of Mr. Boul ware's book is devoted to educat ing the average citizen in the economic facts of today's world. He points out that our chronic infla tion is caused solely by the gov ernment's own policy in printing more paper money faster than matching goods and values can be produced. He shows that unem ployment is created whenever union-pressure forces wage-rates above what productivity· can justi fy or the market can support. This in turn brings more pressure on the government to print more money to raise prices to make the higher wage-rates payable. As the former vice-president in charge of labor relations for Gen eral Electric, Mr. Boulware writes, of course, with special authority on so-called collective bargaining. This he finds today to have become 320 THE FREEMAN May "not free, not collective and, in fact, too one-sided to be any real bargaining at all." Why do all these destructive practices and policies prevail? Be cause they are politically the most acceptable. Mr. Boulware uses the word "political" throughout his book in the narrow sense of "what is bad for, but will look good to, the constituents involved." Bad policies look good to them because they are ignorant and confused.

It is Mr. Boulware's driving pas sion to remove this ignorance and confusion, and to give those busi nessmen and economists who do know better the courage to speak out. This is a what-to and a how-to handbook. I know of no more use ful. or necessary pamphlet in our present political and economic crisis. ~ HANDSOME BLUE LEATHERLEX FREEMAN BINDERS $2.50 each ORDER FROM: THE FOUNDATION FOR ECONOMIC EDUCATION IRVINGTON-ON-HUDSON, NEW YORK 10533 tt1e Freeman VOL. 23, NO.6. JUNE 1973 Liberty and Public Opinion Perry E. Gresham 323 How to stem the modern tide of interest-group interventionism and recover the liberty and virtue of the capitalist public philosophy that characterized the flowering of America. Free Enterprise:a Definition Earl Zarbin 334 Not what the government obliges us to do, but what happens if government is properly limited-and man is free. Can We Keep Free Enterprise? Henry Hallitt 339 An expert on the nature and practice of freedom outlines the most important challenge of our lives.