Didn’t she know that he had said this 50 years earlier? She should have.
In a lead piece posted on her liberal outlet, the Huffington Post of September 3, Arianna Huffington had this to say about public education:
Health care is rightly dominating the national debate, but with children all across the country heading back to school, education, currently seated in the back row of the national classroom, is raising its hand and asking to be called on….
It’s time to acknowledge that over 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education we are witnessing a de facto resegregation of our schools, with blacks and Hispanics more separate from white students than at any time since the civil rights movement….
It’s time we start looking at education reform in bold and different ways, to stop protecting little parcels of partisan turf and start thinking outside the box. To consider the possibilities. To look past our own political backyards at what might lie on the other side of the mountain.
What I see on the other side of the mountain is a single-payer education system.
In a single-payer health care plan, the federal government provides coverage for all U.S. citizens and legal residents. Patients don’t go to a government doctor — they just have the government pay the bill.
And that’s how it would work with education. In a single-payer education plan, the federal government, in conjunction with the states, would provide an education allotment for every parent of a K-12 child. Parents would then be free to enroll their child in the school of their choice….
It’s simple, sensible and, above all, just. And maybe instead of calling for an exorcist any time the words “competition,” “choice” or “freedom” are used in connection to education, we can start singing hosannas for an idea that preserves what is truly public in public education — the government, i.e. the public, paying for it — while allowing creativity, innovation and parental empowerment to flourish….
And when it comes to saving out children, there is not a moment to waste.
Bravo, Arianna. We’re with you. But didn’t you know that Milton Friedman had made the same proposal over 50 years ago? Here is what Friedman, in his book the Role of Government in Education, had to say:
“Government, preferably local governmental units, would give each child, through his parents, a specified sum to be used solely in paying for his general education; the parents would be free to spend this sum at a school of their own choice, provided it met certain minimum standards laid down by the appropriate governmental unit. Such schools would be conducted under a variety of auspices: by private enterprises operated for profit, nonprofit institutions established by private endowment, religious bodies, and some even by governmental units.”
