Today, the
UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown, has pledged in his pre-Budget statement to the House of Commons, even more tax payers’ money for the vortex of doom that is state education. Unlike politicians, libertarians have no faith in state funded, centrally planned and compulsory education. Instead, they believe in a genuine market for learning and a world of real choice. Forget Eaton and Harrow, for while they might have a place in the market, libertarians envisage a world of home education, the University of Life, private schools for profit, private schools for charity, schools belonging to high street brands, private universities, schools belonging to churches and a thousand other options. This would be a market with low barriers of entry – not driven by regulation but reputation. Ultimately, it would be a market driven by real consumers. One of the best libertarian writers on education was of course E. G. West who now has an excellent research and policy unit named after him at Newcastle University – directed by Professor James Tooley. The E. G. West Centre provides a great reading list.If you are interested in the history and political economy of British education then also have a look at the eleven Libertarian Alliance Educational Notes (numbers 15-25) written by David Botsford and linked to below. They make for excellent reading and should be downloaded by anyone who wants to know the tragic history that has become modern British state education:
Compulsion Versus
Liberty in Education, I: The Calvinist Roots
Compulsion Versus
Liberty in Education, II: The British Road From Freedom to Despotism
Compulsion Versus
Liberty in Education, V: The Psychology of Repression
Compulsion Versus
Liberty in Education, VI: The False Freedom of the British Public Schools
Compulsion Versus
Liberty in Education, VII: Violence in Schools
Compulsion Versus
Liberty in Education, VIII: The Third Wave
Compulsion Versus Liberty in Education, IX: TheSchool of
Barbiana
Compulsion Versus Liberty in Education, X: Home Education in
Britain
Compulsion Versus
Liberty in Education, XI: Stirner Versus Calvin
Entirely agree, Tim. (People should take note of the links also, very useful stuff.) For now, I feel that the most we can hope for, is this. That, given that whatever the Gumment appoints a ministry for, and spends money on, we get less of, we will at least get a state-funded child-minding service, in which a poor parody of some lessons, sometimes, in some subjects, is put on as a sort fo sideshow to keep the teachers occupied and comfortable in the pretence that they are doing something useful. but I would rewrite the (a) rules about bullying, and (b) the “curriculum”.