July

THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY FEATURES 476 480 488 494 497 501 504 507 510 513 520 Center 486 517 527 474 530 Restoring Parental Responsibility for Education by Marshall Fritz The case for separating school and state. How to Separate School and State: A Primer by Douglas Dewey A principled, practical guide to restoring parental sovereignty. The Spread of Education Before Compulsion: Britain and America in the Nineteenth Century by Edwin G. West A look at the historical record. Education: What About the Poor? by Chris Cardiff Freeing the market would expand educational opportunities for everyone especially lower-income families. Teachers Unions: Are the Schools Run for Them? by James Bovard Organized labor's increasing clout in the classroom and in the political arena. Government Licensing: The Enemy of Employment by Steven Yates Bureaucratic control stifles entrepreneurship and blocks employment opportunities.

When Entrepreneurs Become Victims by Patrick Groff The FTC versus "Hooked on Phonics." Liberty and Responsibility: Inseparable Ideals by Max More The virtues of purposeful self-direction. Rejecting Responsibility by Russell Madden Much of the political strife we face today would end if individuals stopped expecting others to take care of them. The Virtues of Competition by George C. Leef The vital connection between performance and revenue. Alexis de Tocqueville: How People Gain Liberty and Lose It by Jim Powell A gentleman-scholar-and one of the world's great prophets. COLUMNS NOTES from FEE-Jobs and Trade by Hans R Sennholz IDEAS and CONSEQUENCES-Mixing Public and Private by Lawrence W Reed POTOMAC PRINCIPLES-Private Prejudice, Private Remedy by Doug Bandow ECONOMICS on TRIAL-How Real Is the Asian Economic Miracle? by Mark Skousen DEPARTMENTS Perspective-Sheldon Richman, Guest Editor Book Reviews •The Lost City: Discovering the Forgotten Virtues of Community in the Chicago ofthe 1950s by Alan Ehrenhalt, reviewed by Stephen 1.K. Walters; Hazardous to Our Health? FDA Regulation of Health Care Products, edited by Robert Higgs, reviewed by Doug Bandow; A History ofthe Mont Pelerin Society by R. M. Hartwell, reviewed by William H. Peterson; An Endless Series of Hobgoblins: The Science and Politics ofEnvironmental Health Scares by Eric W Hagen and James 1. Worman, reviewed by Robert H. Nelson; Human Action by Ludwig von Mises, reviewed by Hans F.

Sennholz.

THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 Phone (914) 591-7230 FAX (914) 591-8910 E-mail: freeman@westnet.com President: Hans F. Sennholz Managing Editor: Beth A. Hoffman Guest Editor: Sheldon Richman Editor Emeritus Paul L. Poirot Lewisburg, Pennsylvania Book Review Editor Robert Batemarco Marymount College, Tarrytown, New York Associate Editor Gregory P. Pavlik Assistant Editor William J. Watkins, Jr. Editorial Assistant Mary Ann Murphy Columnists Doug Bandow Cato Institute, Washington, D.C. Lawrence W. Reed Mackinac Center for Public Policy Midland, Michigan Mark Skousen Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida Contributing Editors Charles W. Baird California State University, Hayward Doug Bandow Cato Institute, Washington, D.C. Peter J. Boettke New York University Clarence B. Carson American Textbook Committee Wadley, Alabama Thomas J. DiLorenzo Loyola College, Baltimore, Maryland Joseph S. Fulda New York, New York Bettina Bien Greaves Resident Scholar, FEE Robert Higgs The Independent Institute, Oakland, California John Hospers University of Southern California Tibor R. Machan Auburn University Ronald Nash Reformed Theological Seminary Edmund A. Opitz Chatham, Massachusetts James L. Payne Sandpoint, Idaho William H. Peterson Adjunct Scholar, Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C.

Jane S. Shaw PERC, Bozeman, Montana Richard H. Timberlake University of Georgia Lawrence H. White University of Georgia The Freeman is the monthly publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533. FEE, established in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a nonpolitical, educa tional champion of private property, the free market, and limited government. FEE is classified as a 26 USC 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. Copyright © 1996 by The Foundation for Economic Education. Permission is granted to reprint any article in this issue, except "Alexis de Tocqueville," provided credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to FEE. The costs of Foundation projects and services are met through donations, which are invited in any amount. Donors of $30.00or more receive a subscriptionto TheFreeman. Student subscriptions are $10.00 for the nine-month academic year; $5.00 per semester. Additional copies ofthis issue of The Freeman are $3.00each. For foreigndelivery, a donation of $45.00a year is suggested to cover mailingcosts.

Bound volumes of The Freeman are available from The Foundation for calendar years 1972to date. The Freeman is available in microform from University Microfilms, 300 N. Zeeb Rd., Ann Arbor, MI48106. PERSPECTIVE It's No Manufactured Crisis A recently published book claims that the growing discontent about public, or govern ment, schools is the result of a "manufac tured crisis." The authors of the book by that name, David C. Berliner and Bruce J. Biddle, maintain that there is no evidence that the schools have declined since the golden era of the 1950s or earlier decades. That being the case, they say, radical reform of education is unwarranted. They go on, perhaps inconsistently, to call for their own reforms, including more money for the pub lic schools, but leave that aside. Let's ac cept their dubious thesis purely for the sake of argument. What's wrong with it? It's a non sequitur. It implies that the only reason to consider radically changing the schools is the quality of the education. But that is not the only reason, and it is arbitrary to assume so. In other words, even if-and this is an oversized if-we could expect no improvement in education from radical re structuring, there would still be an incon trovertible case for it. We advocates of total privatization of education must make that clear.

There is only one path that radical re structuring can take. As we all know, the word radical refers to root. What is at the root of so-called public education? Simply this: someone other than parents makes all the big decisions about children's educa tion. Think about it: government officials determine where a child goes to school, how many hours a day, how many days a week, how many weeks a year, and how many years. Those officials determine what the child will study and when. (On what grounds are all those elements decreed to be the same for all children?) Sure, some minor variation has been allowed here and there as complaints against the schools have mounted. But at its core the system has not changed since the 1840s when Horace Mann's first Prussianized common schools came into being in Massachusetts. School officials never tire of saying they need the support of parents. They mean that 474 parents must make sure their children do their homework and listen to the teacher and the principal. In other words, the schools want the parents to be cheerleaders. Cheer leaders of course stand on the sidelines. Oh, yes, parents also get to vote for the school board in democratic elections. Democracy is that system of political governance in which the ayes have it and the nays get it.

Why do we tolerate a system in which parents. are shoved aside in one of the most important matters affecting their children? Partly because people have been persuaded that education is too complicated for lay parents. Experts are required. That is non sense, of course, but the school lobby has effectively propagandized the American people for about 150 years. Thus, radical restructuring would strike at the root: forced parental irresponsibility. It would restore responsibility by putting the decisions back into the hands of parents. With respect to their children's education, they would trade their cheerleader's pom poms for the coach's whistle. That's as it should be. Sue Blevins,·a medical writer, has sug gested a valuable distinction that fully ap plies to education. She says that true reform would establish not choice but freedom. At first that may sound like a distinction with out a difference. It's not. Choice has become the brand name for political contrivances under which people are permitted to choose from a menu of options drawn up by bu reaucrats. By definition, a menu is limited.

You can't have what's not on the menu. Choice is arbitrarily constricted. It is an illusion of freedom. The problem is that the authors of the menu act as if they and only they know enough to decide what goes on the menu and what does not. In contrast to choice, freedom is open ended. It enables people to engage in what Israel Kirzner calls entrepreneurial discov ery. How do we know that some unlikely entrepreneur won't offer an educational ser vice that is precisely what a particular child needs and his parents want? We don't. PERSPECTIVE Choice precludes that option. Freedom does not. The current system, in which parents are on the sidelines, also makes possible those grand experiments involving the latest pseu doscientific theories being ground out of the schools of education and departments of sociology. Last year the state of California confessed that its decade-long experiment with the whole-language method of reading instruction was a failure. It was, the super intendent of public instruction said, an hon est mistake, and she was sorry. Can you imagine an error afflicting millions of chil dren over ten years in the context of free dom-based education? Impossible, pre cisely because decisions would be made at the family level, where the number of chil dren is small and the feedback is fast and accurate.

Enforced parental irresponsibility and fit ful experimentation on children-those are the hallmarks of the government school system. To put it bluntly, public education treats parents like children and children like guinea pigs. No wonder there is every reason to be lieve that parent-child-driven education is superior to a government-driven education. No wonder homeschoolers do so well. But even if that were not so, it would in no way upset the argument that parents have a right to make the education decisions for their children. They have a right to freedom even if it could be demonstrated that government schools were better! The upshot is that parents not only have the right to choose a better education for the children; they also have the right to define the words "better education" for their chil dren. Conversely, the opponents offreedom don't merely demand the authority to guar antee all children an education; they also demand a monopoly on defining the word.

The two must always go together. That's what's wrong with the system. -SHELDON RICHMAN Guest Editor 475 THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY RestoringParental Responsibilityfor Education by Marshall Fritz I would like all children to enjoy the ben efits of schools chosen by their parents. If we learn a lesson from our own history it could be possible in very short time. In America we don't use the government to run the churches, and considering our diversity, we have admirable religious harmony. I am a religious man, but I think this "hands off" policy is America's greatest gift to the hu man race. Now, in the mid-1990s, I believe the miserable condition of our "public" schools has us poised to consider another great gift to ourselves and the entire human race: the separation of school and state. To show why separation is necessary, I'd like to tease some insights from the origin, meaning, or misuse of several words.