Mr. Spangler is a 1977 graduate from
The entire process of growing older, emerging, and developing oneself is education.
[Man] is learning all the time… He learns and forms ideas about the world and the natural laws that govern it. He gains understanding of other people, their desires, how they achieve them, as well as his own desires and how they are to be achieved. He formulates ideas on the nature of man and what his own and others’ ends should be in light of this nature. This is a continual process…¹
Very simply then, living and becoming educated happen simultaneously.
In a free society an individual is, of course, free to exercise his will and creativity. He is at liberty to combine his energy and resources to enhance his well-being, with one restriction: the use of coercion and fraud to achieve one’s ends is forbidden. The state is supposed to protect a person’s life and property from the violence of others. The social order is a system of voluntary association and exchange.
Where does the notion of formal education fit into this scheme? Education would be one of many services provided through the market. Usually, to learn more advanced and systematic disciplines requires the aid of instructors. Also, some parents may believe a formal school is more appropriate than home instruction for children to learn even basic subjects.
So, where the demand for formal education exists, an entrepreneur will bring together capital, land, and personnel to form an institution of learning. This is no different from publishing houses marketing books and magazines to meet the consumer demand for reading material and self-education. A person’s buying the services of an instructor at a local school would be the same as buying a book or magazine at the local newsstand.
A great diversity exists among individuals. While individuals may share interests, each person has particular characteristics and aptitudes. If and as a civilization progresses beyond the point of minimum subsistence, this human diversity and lack of uniformity becomes more and more apparent. “Since each person is a unique individual, the best type of formal instruction for him is that which suits his own particular individuality.”2
Just as a myriad of books and magazines exists in the market place to meet diverse tastes, an inconceivable variety of schools would appear to meet individual needs in education. Some schools would operate year round, others part time. The traditionally structured classroom or a “progressive,” open classroom may be offered. Perhaps a student would choose several courses or just one at a time. A host of trade, intellectual, scientific, athletic, and religious schools would exist. The types and combinations go on and on; but, in short, a person will go to the school for which he is best suited.
Public schooling suppresses the diversity among individuals. A public school is a bureaucracy and must necessarily operate under a set of strict, detailed rules and regulations. Change in a public school comes only after public meetings, school board meetings, and voting procedures, and this must be done for each issue.
In addition, public schools prescribe standards of instruction which apply to all students. A uniform code is imposed on all students, and this represses diversity and ignores individual needs. Students of all types are placed in the same classroom. True, the high schools offer several curriculums, such as vocation, business, or academic; but within each of these areas, uniform standards are still imposed on the students. Individual needs are comparatively ignored under public schooling.
In an unhampered market economy, firms must continually adjust to the demands of buyers. To stay in business, private schools would have to quickly adjust to the buyers of educational services. Private schools would compete to fulfill individual educational needs.
Who in society—the parent or the state—is in a better position to know the educational needs of a child? Naturally, parents know their children best and should be able to decide what type of schooling is suited for the children. Yet, public schooling virtually deprives parents of this right. School authorities tax away parents’ income and operate the school system as they see fit. The public school can even become a machine to shape the child, as John Stuart Mill wrote:
A general state education is a mere contrivance for molding people to be exactly like one another; and the mold in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government…
This leads to a “battle” for power over the school authority. Concerned parents will want to see their ideas on education implemented in the school system. But no matter whose methods are put into action, other parents will be victimized by public schooling, because they will be stripped of educating their children as they see best. An environment of conflict is created.
Private schools competing for the consumers’ dollars would eliminate such a situation. The present political school board battles over controversies such as sex education in the schools would be totally foreign to schooling methods under a free economy. Parents would decide if and when their child would have formal schooling in sex education and then simply pick an appropriate school.
Perhaps what is most disheartening and revolting about popular public schooling are the compulsory attendance laws. Parents must send their children to school, either to a private school or to the one state school designated in the district.
And private schools today are no real escape because they must meet state standards and regulations, and parents must first pay for public schooling. Such coercion is no teaching device. “No one can be made to learn. Only those who wish to learn can or ever will do so. “3
One only needs to return to the example of books and magazines to realize the alarming condition of public education. Who would not be shocked if a government authority decided to provide magazines and books, outlawed all other literature that did not meet government standards, and furthermore required persons to read them. What a blatant denial of individual liberty! Yet, this is exactly the case in public schooling, and it is a far cry from the education to be expected in a truly free society.
If a free society is to survive, private property as the means of producing goods and services must survive. And this applies particularly in matters of education—the process of growing and living. Any need for formal education is provided through free markets—without coercion—adjusting to the demands of parents and children. In a free society, a student is free to choose his educators.
1Murray N. Rothbard, Education, Free and Compulsory,
2Ibid, p. 6.
3Leonard E. Read, Comes The Dawn, Irvington-on-Hudson,
