Public Education: If We Can't Beat Rampant Ignorance, Let's Standardize It!

There is nothing original about ranting on the government's inefficiency and the fallacy of expecting any kind of quality service from a bureaucracy of any kind. Most of us have probably heard countless jokes and allusions to how the government can't deliver the mail on time, register our cars (a la the DMV), and fix the roads in our cities. However, in the minds of many, public education is placed on some kind of untouchable pedestal as a necessity that delivers some precious service without which we'd be stuck in the middle ages, and at best critics agree to very small reforms that boil down to flushing more and more resources down this insatiable toilet of inefficiency. How anyone can think that an entity that can't be trusted to deliver a letter or properly manage information regarding vehicle ownership is even remotely qualified to handle the education of our children, which most of these same people value very highly, is beyond me; but rather than make an ideological judgment based on a loose analogy, let's examine how public education really works.

As usual, I will not waste my time with moral discussions of whether or not education is a "right" and if so, what the morally correct means of ensuring equal access to it are, because as the premises mention, "rights" and "morality" are completely arbitrary concepts that vary from person to person, and have no place in any kind of scientific discussion. However, I will lay out my theory for why public education is perhaps the #1 roadblock in the US to anyone not employed by it achieving any modicum of maximum efficiency, as discussed in Premise 3. As you will remember from that premise, opportunity for material advancement and access to education as a part of this made it on the list that the grand majority of ideologies and people seem to agree they want, so from that perspective, this is an issue society is obligated to address to achieve compliance and efficiency. However, there are 2 colossal fallacies to the idea that public education addresses this issue in any sense in the US.

The first fallacy, one more recent and more destructive to our education system than the second, is our neoliberal obsession that access and opportunity are synonymous with compulsion to participate. It is true that most countries that can be remotely compared to the US in the sense of economic size have some sort of public education system in place, but the majority of their systems do not share this fallacy with ours to nearly the same intensity. For those of you who don't understand what I'm trying to say: education in the US is not only available to everyone, it is COMPULSORY. Children are required legally to complete at least 8 grades, and this is accomplished by severe legal penalties for parents who don't make every possible effort to comply with this, even with children who are difficult, rebellious, or incapable, up to and including abuse charges that can get the child taken away. I'm not suggesting that 6-y-os be offered the choice of whether or not they should go to school, as the grand majority of them would clearly opt out, not realizing the amount of damage to their own future. But, by the same token, is forcing a 13-y-o who refuses to go to school and/or has parents who don't care to force him or can't manage him really going to accomplish a quality education for said child? I can see punishing parents who prevent him if he wants to, but lack of capacity or desire to force a teenager does not equal outright standing in the way. Other countries may nominally have similar laws, but in actuality the considerable fraction of the population that does not receive any kind of primary education is quietly allowed to hold the kinds of jobs they are fit for without this being named a social catastrophy.

The second fallacy of public education has grown rampantly as a result of the first, but is actually far older in its nature. This fallacy is standardization. History has proven to us time and time again, from the USSR's Central Planning to multiple examples of failure in private economic entities that central planning is the trademark of inefficiency. Large corporations such as oil companies, fast food joints, grocery stores, and a variety of others trust their distributors, franchisees and local managers with respect to setting prices and stocking requirements suitable for their region based on a variety of demographics because they understand that the amount of red tape required for such things to be decided top-down, even if based on consumer reports and real market information, would complicate and slow things so terribly that anyone who trusts local subordinates with the autonomy to make the decisions will out-compete them instantly. For example, if Shell Oil allows distributors and corporate gas station managers to set prices, and Chevron does not, then Shell Oil can immediately drop prices by 15c/gallon when the market allows this, and attract a lot of customers who may have otherwise chosen the Chevron station across the street that must wait 2-3 days for the CEO's consent. Similarly, when the prices of oil increase, if Chevron does not raise its prices in a timely fashion, they may attract more customers but also take a loss because the price does not reflect the cost at which the oil is bought. This model isn't any sort of ideological capitalistic rhetoric, it is a simple evolutionary response to market conditions of supply and demand that predates the word "capitalism" by 1000s of years, that entrepreneurs engage in to stay in business. However, the public education system claims to somehow be immune to these basic laws of economics, as if the skills and knowledge it gives our children are meant for some sort of spiritual fulfillment rather than to make them competitive in the job market and self-reliant adults. G.W. Bush's "No Child Left Behind" was only the latest example of the Federal Government meddling in decisions it cannot possibly make in an efficient manner, but the trend is as old as public education itself. Even if nominally controlled by the state and local governments, almost all public education relies largely on federal money to function, which opens the door to federal politicians and bureaucrats setting conditions for how to run the operation to receive this funding. Moreover, state governments in large states like CA, and even local governments in large cities with diverse demographics, have a very difficult time efficiently setting global standards. The results of this inherent inefficiency surround us. How many skills did YOU personally learn in school that you have NEVER used in your job? If you are some sort of educated professional who does use quite a few of your skills, think of all the various professions that many people have and MUST have in response to economic demand that do not require 80% of what is required to graduate high school, or even middle school. Moreover, standards do not end with what is taught in schools, as in an infinite race to the bottom of trying to get everyone to participate, the government is notorious for mandating HOW it is taught as well. This refers to teaching methods, classroom arrangements, scheduling, and every possible application that can be thought of, under the pretense of it being optional (for government schools that can somehow operate without government money). And if that's not enough, schools are coerced with funding to enforce federally mandated codes of conduct, attendance, dress, and so on by the same method. This standardization, at least in the eyes of voters who support it, is usually well-intentioned. But the result is that what is useful for the largest group of students, which can be as little as 30-40% if multiple options are concerned, being applied in compulsory fashion to every student. The problem isn't so much the restriction of student liberties, but simply that this process is wasteful. All students are taught the same skills and basics, although most of them will not use even close to half of them in their professional lives, are subjected to the same teaching methods which often aren't effective for a majority of them, and are subjected to an increasingly authoritarian disciplinary system that schools are forced to implement to receive funding under the excuse that this teaches them social and workplace skills necessary in the adult world, although in reality only a small fraction of said skills are necessary for most jobs, and they vary greatly from job to job. No market entity operates in this way. No private company trains its employees to be able to do the job of every position they have. No distributor or other business that deals with consumers directly limits their stock to one or two products that are the most bought and eliminates everything else. They don't do this for the same reason that they allow local managers to make these decisions - they are decisions that are very sensitive to intricate and rapidly changing local conditions and it is impossible to stay in business unless they are made by people who respond to said conditions directly and instantly. The last defense of standardized education, and a very laughable one, that people often come up with is that even if kids learn skills they will not use in their work, they have a right to learn if they want to and the knowledge benefits them and their having it benefits society as a whole. To these people I say - look around and tell me if its working? Despite this neoliberal fantasy, we are the most illiterate and politically ignorant developed nation in the world by every statistical measure available, and the right to learn is not synonymous with compulsion, especially when that compulsion is made at someone else's expense. The first fallacy plays into standardization with respect to this last concession, as compulsory education and specific standards for it have become an experiment in recent decades in a drive to give troubled children an alternative to self-destructive and criminal behavior. To some extent and according to some statistics, this HAS had some of the desired effect. But, in political science, the emotional appeal of "if it changes one life, its worthwhile" has very little weight, because no policy impacts only one life, or only the lives of those it BENEFITS. To understand the profound failure of the public education experiment as a whole, its effects must be examined in their entirety, not just in terms of loose correlations with crime and teen angst.

Seeing as the job market does not require everyone HAVING an education to start with, and most certainly does not require everyone to have the same skills or all the skills taught to them in school, and seeing as taking the decisions of how to instill the skills and knowledge out of the hands of educators who interact with students directly is often contrary to them learning the skills they do need efficiently, forcing everyone to learn everything the federal government wants them to, by the method they dictate and under conditions they set is a COLOSSAL waste of resources. Even if a few people do benefit from this system, as they undoubtedly do, the endlessly growing amount of resources being flushed down this pipe could be more beneficial to society as a whole in immeasurable ways if subjected to market regulations. Think about it - every kid that refuses to go to school, that is unable to learn because of standardized teaching methods, that has an obstacle to a quality education in ridiculous disciplinary codes, and finally that is forced to learn a plethora of skills he does not need and may not even want - costs the taxpayer the same amount of money for basic education operation as the kid that goes to school, benefits from the methods, and wants/needs the skills learned; BUT THERE IS NO RETURN ON THIS INVESTMENT, EVER. When the amount of such down-the-drain investments is tallied up, the net benefit is negligible in comparison. An efficient education system allows kids to learn what they want, how they want, and as much as they want - with guidance from their parents and local educators, of course, but NOT from central planners who have never met them. The "options" of homeschooling or private schools are in no way a solution to this issue either, as those who choose them are still required to make the same investment on top of any additional price they pay for a quality alternative, and many such options are riddled with regulations that force them into significant inefficient operation, even if it is not comparable to that of the public sector. Things like school vouchers - under which a parent would be allowed to use the amount of money used for their child's public education toward a private education - are a TINY step in the right direction, seeing as this leaves the poorest and most disadvantaged who cannot afford private education even with this option (vouchers usually don't cover the entire cost of a private school) with no choice but the public education system, a choice which, contrary to popular belief, the majority of them WOULD likely have if the resources freed-up by the elimination of this establishment as a whole were used in a more efficient manner.

It is wishful thinking to believe that government, at least in its current form, can be trusted to instill significant reform to reverse this trend of compulsion and standardization to an efficient degree. It has not been known to do so in any other domain, and moreover, the people issuing money usually end up with the means of control of how that money is used. In a private business, this power is held by consumers seeing as ultimately they buy the product or don't at their whim, and executives are forced to accommodate them with efficiency or end up in the red. Central Planning bureaucrats, on the other hand, have a budget that is extracted from their very consumers by force, and are allowed FAR greater leeway in terms of inefficiency before the dissatisfaction of these consumers can affect their jobs. Even when it does, the best we can usually hope for is to have them replaced with someone equally favorable rather than turn to a competitor.

Public education is a hand-out that we have become so dependent on that we cannot fathom a society without it, and the instant eradication of it would admittedly likely lead to disastrous results, although these would probably be very short-lived. However, we must remember that the modern economy is incomparable to that of the late 1800s in which this bureaucracy has its roots, and the demand for educated minds to our daily living is SO intense that a vacuum in supply would result in an almost instant reply by the market to correct it, in a much more efficient way than the public education system addresses it. To put it simply, various entrepreneurs who employ educated people would face skyrocketing costs as so few of them are available, and be prompted to use the money they save from paying immense education taxes to provide themselves a supply, which can be done in the forms of grants, opening up of profession-specific schools, and so on. Sure, this education option would be done on the entrepreneurs' terms and hence the average student would not learn much more than is necessary for the job the entrepreneur wants to offer. However, the trade-off is FAR reduced education costs to society by elimination of waste, a competitive model in which a sought-after mind CAN acquire unlimited amounts of education because different entrepreneurs want to promote the student or he finds that their education option does not suit him and seeks out the competition, and so on. As always, this option is NOT perfect and riddled with potential for inequality and oligarchic abuse, but anyone who believes the public option has any LESS potential for these, or that the costs associated with them come even close to the costs of public education wastefulness, is simply not looking at it from a scientific perspective.

One final thing to keep in mind is that various oligarchs who are often blamed for opposing public education in a greedy quest to avoid paying for it often benefit from it more than anyone else. Megacorporations, military contractors, scientific and academia magnates - large private and quasi-public job providers who employ many of the most educated people in the country - are notorious for what most people consider unfair tax exemptions, loopholes, downright fraud, and in some cases a variety of funding by taxes. This is on top of the fact that the sheer volume of educated people employed by them would not make it efficient for them to pay for their educations. Hence, these people SAVE colossal amounts of money because they do not pay their legally prescribed share of the costs of public education, but get to employ people who have received it to enhance their revenue. Them having to pay for the colossal amounts of education necessary for their exploits in true proportion would horrendously erode their profits. This is a very common, but not well-known, trend by which large businesses SUPPORT socialism as it drives their middle class competition out of business. Again, it is wishful thinking that these oligarchs, with the resources at their disposal with which to bribe the government and manipulate public opinion, can be legally forced to pay their fair share of public education costs. History does not show a single example of this occurring.

To paraphrase an old cliche in a different context - standardize quantitative measurements, NOT children.