The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

4 responses to “No-one should have anything better than mine”

1. 

   Suboptimal Planet

   October 29, 2011

   Shocking indeed. Toby Young’s post on the subject, with the full text of his speech, is here:
   http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100114147/should-private-schools-be-abolished/
   I don’t know whether it was just a rhetorical calculation on his part (the scary thing is that his side only won by 2-1), but I felt he conceded too much, and said so in the comments on his site:
   “””
   I find it disturbing that you accept their premise that there should be fewer children in private schools.
   The less influence the state has in education, the better.
   If we must subsidise education, let’s at least allow full and unrestricted competition. Free schools should be truly free: to choose their curriculum, their entrance policies, and their fees. If they want to make a profit, and they can, good for them — it shows they’re meeting market demands efficiently.
   Ideally there would be no subsidy at all. The whole system should be voluntary.
   As for charities, I suggest we abolish them, along with corporation tax. Too many of them are fake anyway, paid by governments to astroturf.
   “””
   http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100114147/should-private-schools-be-abolished/#comment-348120653
   Despite what I wrote, I actually have mixed feelings about how much say the government should have in taxpayer-funded schools (I don’t want my money spent on creationism or madrassas).
   Most likely, it would be a price worth paying, but I can think of a couple of alternatives that might mitigate the impact:
   1) Push education funding and oversight down to the local level. People in a community are more likely to agree about what should be taught than people across the entire country. Unfortunately, the socialists would kick up a stink about deprived areas, and the policy risks further balkanizing our country into Muslim and non-Muslim areas.
   2) Give tax rebates to parents who put their children in private education (equivalent to the cost of state education), so they don’t have to pay twice, and leave those private schools completely free to teach as they choose. State schools could remain pretty much as they are today. The policy would still distort the market by introducing a price floor, and non-parents would still be effectively subsidising parents, but it seems like an improvement on the status quo — only those reliant on the state should have to accept education on the state’s terms.
   Of course, what the world really needs is a newly-discovered, mostly-unpopulated continent, where we can set up a libertarian society on an opt-in basis …

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2. 

   Moggsy

   October 31, 2011

   Schools should be free to teach facts that can be proved… and not to brainwash or ferment division, violence and predudice.
   I guess you would need government inspectors to make sure of that

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3. 

   Tom Paine

   October 31, 2011

   …or you could just leave it to the courts (without any statue law to define ‘provable facts’). Courts are good at determining facts and we often seem to forget that an independent judiciary is a key element of a libertarian state. In fact many are confused enough to see the judiciary as a branch of the government (a confusion fostered by Labour’s packing the benches with its own during its time in office and issuing way too many ideological laws that judges now have to interpret). That said, you are right. Schools should be free to teach absolute rubbish, as long as parents are free to choose the schools.

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4. 

   Moggsy

   November 1, 2011

   Schooling can be difficult to make rules about.
   Evolution? or so called “Intelligent design”? I do worry about what else schools teach, apart from actual facts and skills.
   I think you have to be careful how you legislate education. It is a difficult line to make sure kids get a fair chance and don’t get fed lies, abused and programmed and still allow freedom and avoid taking it.

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