Book Reviews

There are, to be sure, some miti gating factors-the "monopoly" al luded to in the Everhart title must currently conte~d with the strug gles between th¢ "federalizers" and the proponents i of local state and community control; and there are some 5 million ~hildren in private schools, many of which are church affiliated. As always, opportunities for freedom lurk in the interstices of a diversified system. But in our in flationary age the money for educa tion tends to be sopped up by the public educators. :Private schools can hope for vouchers or tax credits or outright state grants (as in British Columbia), but the price that must be paid for such ~elp includes a cer tain conformity to quota system thinking about sex and minorities. Some of Everhart's contributors eome close to say~ng that the public school must alw!ays be an instru Inent of control in the hands of a rul i.ng class. If what:.these contributors are trying to tell us is that the schools, in any given period, will re574 THE FREEMAN September flect a prevailing ethos, they are ob viously right. Historically, this has not made for any oppressive unifor mity in American schooling-the "ruling class" in nineteenth-and early twentieth-century society be lieved in Horatio Alger individual ism, and our teachers took it for granted that what the Constitution guaranteed was freedom of opportu nity, not a God-given right to level ing "entitlements."

Rule by Professionals When the ethos changed with the rise of the "regulative" state, the schools changed with it. Curiously, this did not put "political content" into the schools. One of Everhart's contributors, Joel Spring, complains that the popular belief in profes sional "experts" breeds an apolitical citizenry that is willing to "let George do it." This has "stripped the schools of meaningful political content and directed their purposes toward the production of apolitical citizens who would accept a managed political and social system." What Joel Spring is saying is par adoxical. Ideology has been ban ished from the public schools in or der to facilitate the rule of professionals in our society. This amounts to a triumph for the tech nocratic ideologist. "A free society," says Mr. Spring, "cannot afford to let schooling be come an instrument of power." His pitch for an expanded private school system is implicit in his statement that "it is now important for society to consider whether or not it wants to continue with government-oper ated schools which are used to jus tify the power of those who control the schools."

Some of the Everhart contributors hope that the current revolt against over-regulation will encourage di versification by way of tuition tax credits, vouchers and tax codes. But Michael Apple, who is something of a leftist ideologist in his thinking, fears that the use of vouchers may "fragment" specific "progressive" movements. If "pluralism" is what we are after in an educational sys tem, what is the objection to "frag mentation?" Do we want cookie-cut ter schools? Vouchers and Tax Credits The most interesting essays in the Everhart book are those written by E. G. West ("The Prospect for Edu cation Vouchers"), Donald Erickson ("Disturbing Evidence About the 'One Best System' "), and Roger Freeman ("Education Tax Credits"). Mr. West has high hopes that the $500 grant scheme as established in British Columbia will enable us to test predictions about whether par ents can exercise the responsibility of free choice in their children's ed ucation once they are allowed the resources to do so. Mr. Erickson has 1982 THE PUBLIC SCHOOL MONOPOLY 575 his doubts about the "one best sys tem" of the public schools, but he is not too sure that the British Colum bia use of government grants to pri vate schools will prove helpful to private education in the long run.

Teachers with "two masters," the province and the parent, may be torn in different directions. They may be come less committed to parents and eventually to students. Erickson fears the growth of teacher "union mentality." And parents, "sensing more and more that their contribu tions and involvement are not only unneeded, but resented, may with draw to the sidelines ... Students, treated more like patients under treatment than members of a func tioning community, may perform ever more inauthentically ... Even tually, private schools could lose all the social climate characteristics that once distinguished them from public schools." What Erickson wishes to retain are the things that "money cannot buy, such as commitment, a consensus, community, accomplishment, and exceptionality." He hopes that "Canada's experiments will provide clues for the improvement of all schools," but wishes that British Co lumbia had chosen to help private schools by tax credits going to par ents instead of by direct government grants to the schools.

Partisans of public education fear that any help to private schools will tend to impoveri$h the public school system. If privat~ education were to become univers<jll, this would ob viously be true. i But if it is just a question of enalMing some private schools to survive in an inflationary epoch in which parents can't afford to pay twice for education, the granting of $450 ~o $500 in tax cred its per private ~chool pupil would actually be of fin~ncial benefit to the public schools. Roger Freemarfs arithmetic shows why this is true., It takes $2,200 of taxpayer money, to support a child in public schooL, A $500 grant en abling a student to shift to a private school would leave the public school system $1,700 ex~ra to spend on the students who s~ick to state-run schools. With mo~e money to be spent on fewer pupils,' the public school could supply better teaching and smaller classes. Mr. Freeman t~ckles the question of the constitutionality of vouchers and tax credits tp Catholic parents head on. Since ithe First Amend ment guarantees ifreedom of religion as well as freed~m of speech, how can the courts a$sert the unconsti tutionality of help to Catholic par ents in retainingi, some of their own lnoney for churc~-supported educa tion? People nowiget tax credits for donations to churches without being accused of helpiq.g the government to "establish" a state religion. Where is the courts' consistency? , 576 THE FREEMAN PRIVATE GOLD COINS AND PATTERNS OF THE UNITED STATES by Donald H. Kagin (Area Publishing, 219 Park Avenue South, New York, N.V 10003), 1981 432 pages - $29.95 Reviewed by Brian Summers THE MARKET is a great problem sol ver. Where there is a need, and peo ple are free to fill that need, solu tions soon appear.

One such problem is the need for a stable, reliable medium of ex change. When the government has failed to provide such currency, and private minters were free to fill the void, the mintmasters performed admirably well. But, until now, the story of the private minters has received little attention. They aren't mentioned in books on money and banking, even though in the years 1830 to 1862 they minted an estimated $75,000,000 in $1 to $50 denominations. Coin books contain only a few paragraphs, while numismatic magazines run an occa sional article. Now, however, Donald H. Kagin, the first American to earn a Ph.D. in Numismatics, has written a de finitive study on the private minters and their coins. The result is a fas cinating history of rugged individu als, frontier towns, and feisty com petition. Private minters coined gold in Georgia, North Carolina, Califor nia, Utah, Oregon, and Colorado.