Government Schools

I have finally gotten around to reading John Stossel's book, "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity." The book can be found on amazon.com here.

First off, it is a terrific book and I highly recommend it. He addresses a number of issues which are near and dear to me. For instance, he has a chapter about the US government school system entitled, "Stupid Schools" (Chapter 5, pages 106 to 140). I have 2 young children and my kid's educations are a big concern. In his book, John Stossel skewers the government school system noting that the US is very close to the top in the world in money spent per pupil. If we spend near the top in the world per student, then why do we not have one of the highest ranked education systems in the world? And why do politicians want to throw more money at education?? Schools already have plenty of money, how about trying to SPEND MY HARD EARNED TAX MONEY MORE EFFICIENTLY!? Why don't our government and the government school system exercise some fiscal discipline? What would happen to you, the average American, if you handled money so poorly?

Stossel is in favor of school vouchers and in "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity" he details a number of instances where kids did much better when their parents received vouchers and exercised the choice to send their kids to a better school. He emphasizes, and rightly so, that vouchers would allow poor parents to send their kids to better schools instead of keeping the kids in a bad school.

One of the most amazing things in Stossel's book was the fact that many European countries have more school choice than we have here in America! One particular story stood out; he talks of a Belgian mother living in America who was astonished that in the US her son was assigned to a specific school. Wow, I always thought that America was about choice and opportunity. In America you can choose to have an abortion but you can't choose where your kids go to school?!?! Talk about lack of choice, in some places law abiding citizens can't choose to own guns (sorry, that's for another blog entry)!!??

Anyway, yes, we do have the choice to spend extra money, in addition to paying our property taxes, to send our kids to private schools. But what about parents who can't afford their ridiculously high taxes AND additional private school costs? Isn't Europe the "gold standard" for American liberals? Don't most liberals want the US to be more like socialist-leaning Europe? Then why are liberals and liberal teacher's unions not advocating for us to be more like Europe with respect to school choice?

Neal Boortz once said that teacher's unions were a worse threat to American than terrorists: "Those of you who are constant listeners know my feelings about government schools and teachers unions. I firmly believe that in the long-term this country has more to fear from teacher's unions than we do from Islamic terrorists. I fully believe that Islamic terrorists will once again strike this country, and they may well manage to kill ten thousand or more, but at this point I don't think they can kill the dream of our forefathers. We recognize (I hope) the terrorists for the enemies that they are. We don't recognize government education and teacher's unions for the enemies that they are. Because we are so unaware and asleep at the switch, the education establishment can bring us down, where the terrorists probably cannot."

I can't say that I disagree.

Now just wait until I finish reading the chapter in John Stossel's book entitled, "Monster Government." I'm sure that chapter will inspire a few angry blog entries.