Education in America is in a state of crisis. Violence is prevalent in public schools and illiteracy is on the rise. Meanwhile, elementary schools are filled with mind-destroying subjects like "creative spelling."
Although politicians like to talk about increased spending on public schools, Internet access in every classroom, accountability for schools and teachers and school vouchers, none of these will provide the dramatic turnaround American education so desperately needs.
The solution to the education crisis is to get rid of public schools altogether.
By their nature, public schools cannot be good for any length of time. Because they are taxpayer-funded, they have no incentive to keep costs low or to provide a good product. In fact, when they provide a bad product, they get more funding-as is the case with many supposedly "underfunded" inner city schools.
The politicians in charge care only about the appearance of positive steps, not schools' long-term success. This is why schools waste money on fancy renovations and new computers while many of their students cannot read.
The best way to eliminate public schools is to phase them out through educational tax credits. In such a system, parents would have the cost of their child's tuition subtracted from their taxes.
This system is far better than the voucher system many Republicans endorse. Vouchers are a direct transfer of wealth, taking one person's money by force and giving it to another. They are completely unjust, just like a public school system that forces everybody to pay for the education of certain parents' children.
The ultimate goal of a tax credit system would be to have only private, competing schools.
If all schools were private, there would be many more of them, with schools of all different price ranges. Accountability for results is not a problem with private schools, since parents are free to take their money elsewhere if they are dissatisfied with their children's schools.
A totally private system would make the problems of public schools (like mind-crippling teaching techniques and lack of order) non-issues, because paying parent customers who control a school's financial success would not stand for them.
The politician's response to any threat to get rid of public schools is usually a teary-eyed, "What about the children left behind? Won't somebody please think about the children?"
Children are the responsibility of their parents. It is the parent's obligation to raise a child who is educated properly-and no one else's. As babies and children are not capable of independent survival, the choice to have children brings with it the obligation to turn them into rational individuals capable of living on their own.
When parents do not meet this obligation, it is they who are to blame for shirking their responsibility. All the political bemoaning about the fate of "the children" in America is based on the premise that every child is the responsibility of all Americans when, in fact, every child is the responsibility of his/her parents, the people who made the choice to bring him/her into the world.
Parents who cannot afford to educate children in a totally privatized school system (this would be very rare in a laissez-faire capitalist society) should not have children in the first place.
Parents who have acted irrationally and had children they can't afford to raise must be dependent on private charity for their children's education, which is quite abundant. There are many Americans who can afford to give large amounts of money to charity and consider the education of children a worthy cause.
However, if the generosity of others is not sufficient for parents to meet the educational needs of their children, they should lose custody of them, in the same way parents lose custody if they are physically abusive to their children. The failure of some individuals as parents does not give them the right to enslave the whole of society to finance their children's education.
America's public school system is an educational disaster that violates the rights of taxpayers. Phasing out public schools through private school tax credits will usher in a new era of parental responsibility and affordable, quality education provided in a dynamic, competitive free market of schools.
Alex Epstein is a Trinity sophomore and is the associate publisher of The Duke Review.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.