I’m a little pressed for time today ? but only today, naturally ? so I fear that I can’t respond at length to Roy’s post from yesterday about government funding of private education or to Karen’s and George’s responses.
But in general, I disagree. As did Hayek, who appeared to favor some sort of government financing mechanism for education even as he criticized government monopolizing the provision of education services. As I understand it, some version of this position was also shared by Friedman, Smith, even Locke, so I don’t feel like a free-market apostate on this.
There are both philosophical and practical aspects of the argument. The philosophical one is probably best reflected in the American political discourse by Jefferson’s notion of public education as a necessary element of a self-governing polity. That is, he argued that it is in the taxpayers’ interest to be involved in some way in financing, if not providing, education to the young in order to ensure that they would grow up to be good citizens and voters. He didn’t make this point explicitly, but I think in modern economic terms you might argue that while there are adequate incentives for parents, students, prospective employers, etc. to invest sufficiently in preparing young people for the world of work via education and training, the market does not capture the non-vocational benefits of an educated population. In other words, an informed citizenry who makes good decisions in their public life is an externality, given that there is no test of knowledge, ability, or property in voting and in other aspects of citizenship.
The practical arguments are many. For one thing, local governments two centuries, and states for a century or longer, have been deeply involved in the provision of education. It is a public expectation unlikely to be changed. As such, the goal of free-marketeers should be to introduce as much choice, competition, and private initiative as possible into a system too dominated by monopoly. To let the (in some minds) perfect be an enemy of the good is unacceptable to me.
Second, given the form of government we will inevitably have (no perfectly rational, perfectly libertarian robotic dictator), taxpayer funding of education is actually necessary if we are to succeed in resisting demands for a larger and more intrusive welfare state. If we weren’t funding schools, critics of capitalism would be somewhat strengthened in their argument for handouts, government regulations on wages and business practices, social insurance, and other interventions, arguing that differences in educational preparation unfairly “bias” the labor market. Sure, this appears to be a non-unique argument, since the existence of public education has not prevented the growth of the welfare state. But we do not have an alternative reality to which we can compare. The political dynamics favoring the growth of government over time, even within a constitutional system, are obvious and difficult to resist. I think it is demonstrable in the political discourse of history and today that emphasizing the public investment in education is is a useful rhetorical tool in arguing against more expansive and expensive welfare and regulatory programs.
Third, while the vast majority of parents are responsible and would satisfy their children’s education needs as best they could in the absence of state involvement, some parents would not be responsible. In a free society, I do believe that the state does have the right and duty to intervene in extreme cases of parental neglect of children. I don’t believe, in other words, that such failures should be purely the business of charitable action. A failure to provide a sound, basic education would be one of those triggers for me, justifying state involvement in at least financing schools for those children. At that point you still face the issue of whether to provide or finance.
In general, I am impatient with arguments to the effect that at one point, we had a purely free-market system for education that was working great for everyone, and our goal now should be to return to that era. If it was generating higher rates of literacy than we see today, why was there such a political constituency for public education? The notion that it was a nativist reaction to the influx of Catholic immigrants has some validity, based on documentary evidence, and some bearing on why New England and Mid-Atlantic states expanded their own, previously existed tax-funded schools, but it has no relevance to the push for public education in states like North Carolina, where Catholic immigrants were virtually invisible. The push came from regional voting blocs upset with the political dominance of an Eastern elite in Raleigh, and from agricultural regions where farmers were worried about declining employment and the futures of their children.
As to the dangers of vouchers, I think they exist but do not rise to the level of a decisive argument against the policy. They prove the need for care in drafting legislation and designing school-choice mechanisms. Moreover, having surveyed private-school educators and talked to many over the years, I believe that those who would be so afraid of government encroachment that they would refuse to participate is a minority of the total. Most favor vouchers, or at least tax credits of some kind, and I’m inclined to trust their judgment.
Simply put, I think that North Carolina has and will continue to have a constitutional role in public education (the federal role is much more questionable), so the question for us is how best to carry out this function.
See, I told you I wasn’t going to post a lengthy response. . .
