As the state budgetary battle rages and cuts loom, higher education has formed a mutual defense pact with what has heretofore been referred to in Lansingspeak as “K-12” (i.e., kindergarten through 12th grade).
Creating a “K-16” coalition was an astute move by the universities, permitting them to join in chanting the sacred, “For the children…” mantra. Even those of us who constantly complain about government profligacy are expected to recoil before that holy invocation like Dracula from a crucifix.
Politicians from wingtip to wingtip across the old political spectrum are united in their commitment to this cause, tripping over one another to proclaim that “Education is our highest priority!”
In fact a bill was recently introduced to not only secure the $6700 per pupil per year we are currently spending on public education, but mandate annual increases of 5% or the rate of inflation (whichever is less) in perpetuity. Predictably, this proposal met with a chorus of “Hallelujahs.”
Thus it falls, yet again, to a lone, heretical libertarian to commit political blasphemy. So, here goes.
Education is NOT government’s highest priority. (Gasps from the multitudes.) Public safety is – police, courts, prisons, etc.
In fact education isn’t even second. That would be infrastructure – roads, bridges, etc.
Now, educrats will grudgingly concede that these other things are also important. But not more so. All are equally important. The problem with that position, of course, is that it’s nonsensical. By definition you cannot have more than one “highest priority.”
If this unpleasant reality is putting you into a state of cognitive dissonance, the teachers unions and their fellow travelers request that you take a brief time-out, stare off into space and repeat, “For the children… For the children…” until the feeling passes.
For those who were neither mesmerized nor reduced to a pile ashes, here’s some further sacrilege.
Education isn’t even the highest priority for children. Food, shelter, clothing and health care are all more vital. There is, after all, not much point in worrying about the educational opportunities of kids who are hungry, homeless, naked and ill.
Yet, unlike education, we don’t automatically provide any of these as an entitlement to all parents, regardless of need or circumstance. Indeed, some of us apostates might actually question why we are being required to subsidize other people’s decisions to reproduce at all.
The immediate answer is, of course, that the Michigan constitution mandates that every child in the state be provided a free, public education. So the best we can do is try to get the biggest bang for our sixty-seven hundred bucks.
In this regard we can find some sage advice in the ultimate guidebook – the Bible.
A few years ago our environmentalist friends promoted a little thought experiment: “What would Jesus drive?”
This was an exercise in futility since the internal combustion engine was so far beyond the ken a couple of millennia ago as to make the question unfathomable.
Not so when it comes to investing. Jesus actually answered this question quite unambiguously in a famous parable recounted in both Matthew and Luke.
This was the story of a landowner who entrusts different sums of money to three servants while he’s away. Upon his return, the two who held larger amounts showed a proportional return on the investment. The one given the smallest sum merely returned the principal. The master cursed the unproductive servant, took back what little he had, and gave it to the one who was the most wealthy and productive.
Now we obviously can’t follow this lesson literally and simply take all funding from miserably performing school districts and give it to the better ones. Kids in need of education live where they happen to live. But that doesn’t mean we are completely at the mercy of geographic monopolies. We could at least put the money into vouchers that travel as far as the student is willing.
Of course, if it were up to me I’d simply amend the constitution and abolish this subsidy to parents. Let them bear the full costs of rearing the children they create, instead of foisting a huge portion of it off on the rest of us.
There are, after all, some government services all citizens need and expect – like public safety and infrastructure. Education is NOT the government’s highest priority. (He said it again!)
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More on education:
- Breaking the education monopoly
- Still monkeying with the scope of high school biology
- Hobson’s proposal
- Civics lessons
- Chasing Pokemon
- School millage fatigue
