The wisdom of Slate.com
Here’s a new article in Slate by Allison Benedikt:
You are a bad person if you send your children to private school. Not bad like murderer bad””but bad like ruining-one-of-our-nation’s-most-essential-institutions-in-order-to-get-what’s-best-for-your-kid bad. So, pretty bad.
I am not an education policy wonk: I’m just judgmental. But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve.
That’s right. Turning an industry into a monopoly with zero competition has always been a good way to improve quality.
Ms. Benedikt continues:
This would not happen immediately. It could take generations. Your children and grandchildren might get mediocre educations in the meantime, but it will be worth it, for the eventual common good.
OK, I won’t hold my breath. And who says the young are impatient?
Ms. Benedikt continues:
(Yes, rich people might cluster. But rich people will always find a way to game the system: That shouldn’t be an argument against an all-in approach to public education any more than it is a case against single-payer health care.)
The logic here fails me. Isn’t the “single payer” approach exactly what the voucher types favor? Why doesn’t she advocate the Swedish voucher system? Indeed why not go further and have 100% private schools? Paid for with equal vouchers.
The normally brilliant Matt Yglesias weighs in:
My colleague Allison Benedikt has a worthy rant attempting to use moral suasion to persuade people not to send their children to private school. She’s absolutely right. She also very reasonably says that private school should not be made illegal. Freedom, after all, counts for something.
OK, she’s his colleague, and I suppose I wouldn’t be trashing her if she were my colleague. And in fairness Matt quickly moves on to the tax issue. But how does Yglesias treat conservative bloggers who display this sort of argumentation?
PS. I do agree that Matt Damon is not as bad as most murderers, just a tad hypocritical.
PPS. Yglesias also has an amusing post that points out that the IRS treats gay married couples better than straight married couples.
PPPS. This is a huge story, and should have been the focus of this post. Kudos to President Obama.
Tags:
29. August 2013 at 14:28
The witty James Taranto took a nice shot at Ms. Benedikt’s logical fallacies.
29. August 2013 at 15:35
“That’s right. Turning an industry into a monopoly with zero competition has always been a good way to improve quality.”
Hhhmmmm.
29. August 2013 at 15:35
“But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve.”
Does this logic apply to unions and government workers obtaining health insurance through Obamacare? Surely, it would improve Obamacare, right?
—
Regarding gay marriage:
How will we know when gay marriage is truly accepted in society?
When gay couples decide to ‘live in sin’ rather than pay the marriage tax penalty!
29. August 2013 at 15:42
All part of the bloody relentless push toward socialism in the US: all We’s and Our’s and Us’s. Whoever prefers the suasion of a gun should be first in line to receive it.
Oligarchy loves socialism, promotes socialism, and the burnt fool’s bandaged fingers goes wabbling back to the fire.
If labor wants to stabilize its wage share of NGDP, go back to gold — wages%ngdp were stable up until the point that gold de-linked, and wage-earners have been suffering in relative terms ever since.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?g=lUI
29. August 2013 at 16:35
Great post.
29. August 2013 at 16:35
“But it seems to me that if every single parent sent every single child to public school, public schools would improve.”
A really weird way of arguing. Is the goal to improve public schooling or for children to have a good education?
I always wondered what “child-centered learning” was supposed to be. What’s the opposite? Putting bright children into bad schools in order to improve those schools’ standards is as good a candidate for the opposite of child-centered learning as any.
29. August 2013 at 16:36
When I see public and private schools fighting each other, I am reminded of the days when some among both thought I wasn’t “good enough” for attempting to teach piano “outside the system”. Imagine free markets in services.
http://monetaryequivalence.blogspot.com/2013/08/imagine-free-markets-in-services.html
29. August 2013 at 18:49
“That’s right. Turning an industry into a monopoly with zero competition has always been a good way to improve quality.”
Cough….Central banking….Cough
Take off the blinders already.
29. August 2013 at 19:23
“PPPS. This is a huge story, and should have been the focus of this post. Kudos to President Obama.”
I agree. It is a big deal.
And would like to add that though everyone Blames Obama for the 2011 “crackdown” of dispensaries here in California his administration did not initiate it. His justice department came up with the new rules because our state and local governments were demanding them…
It was So Stupid. In some localities nothing changed at all. Here in San Diego they closed all the brick and mortar dispensaries… But allow delivery to your door !
29. August 2013 at 19:24
Shoot me. I ‘fess up.
Yes, I believe in good public libraries and schools. Neighborhood institutions with pillars and granite and statues and brass plaques and storied athletic teams and the whole works.
I believe we have an obligation to make the best free primary education we can, and excellent libraries too.
If after that, someone does not “get ahead” then I feel they had a good shot.
If private schools become the way, the better-off will create their own systems, and underfund the public system.
I try to be a good libertarian, but I have some weaknesses…national parks…pristine shorelines…good public schools…excellent libraries…health care vexes me….
However, it may be time to privatize police in Los Angeles. Now there is a bloated and self-serving organization in the LAPD….
29. August 2013 at 19:36
I figured even though Matt was nice to her, Slate’s Regular readers would not be so kind to her.
I went to look… Over 5000 comments, the regulars were buried…but the comments section is full of derision from all angles.
29. August 2013 at 20:02
“Guaranteed Free Compulsory Education” : the rare quadruple oxymoron.
http://idiosyncraticwhisk.blogspot.com/2013/07/ensure-free-compulsory-education.html
29. August 2013 at 20:14
I went and read the actual article. It is truly awful…
I think it was supposed to be funny, It was not.
I think she was trying to make a point, but she did so incoherently.
But HEY <b<over 5000 comments. So I guess, from a publishing economics point of view, this is what works. This is the good stuff !
It is amazing how often markets reward flash over substance, taste over nutrition and feel good lies over truth.
If we went to vouchers they would end up being spent the same way. A lot of people would end up sending their kids to places that hand out easy A’s and make Bobby and Betty feel good. Others would get scammed into sending their kids to places that teach nonsense over truth. ( This already happens a lot in private education. God forbid we hold private schools to the same standards as public1st amendment issues ya know )
My point is… a lot of people make dumb decisions; all markets have winners and losers and when it comes to the education of our children we don’t want that dynamic. Do we ?
29. August 2013 at 20:17
Are we sure that the Allison Benedikt piece is not satire. In the 5th paragraph from the end, she describes how bad her public education was and how she never recovered from that bad education, even after attending college. She concludes, “I’m saying that I survived [this bad education], and so will your child, who must endure having no AP calculus so that in 25 years there will be AP calculus for all.” That seems like reductio ad absurdum, although she seems serious in other places.
29. August 2013 at 20:32
Benjamin — re: [national parks… pristine shorelines… good public schools… excellent libraries… good health care…]
These are all products of economic enterprise and individual efforts that has generated huge wealth in Europe and the US, and now Asia.
None of these things are due to give-me-cash-and-do-as-I-say-or-you-rot-in-jail govvies.
Our existing libraries, schools, parks, shorelines exist not because of the threat of collective force, but because of the generations of efforts by everyday people who have tried to make life better.
29. August 2013 at 21:04
“And would like to add that though everyone Blames Obama for the 2011 “crackdown” of dispensaries here in California his administration did not initiate it.”
His AUSAs prosecuted it, under his Department of Justice. The 2011 crackdown was preceded by a similar memo saying the Assistant US Attorneys would not go after clinics not violating US law, but did not appear to actually restrain them.
Given the prior memo has been basically ignored by the AUSAs, I am afraid that this one will be too. I’d love for there to be no prosecutions, though.
29. August 2013 at 21:07
Yglesias might as well endorse the idea that people from poor countries shouldn’t be allowed to immigrate, since they should be building the societies that they’re from. People actually do make that “brain drain” argument.
29. August 2013 at 21:36
Benjamin Cole:
“Yes, I believe in good public libraries and schools. Neighborhood institutions with pillars and granite and statues and brass plaques and storied athletic teams and the whole works.”
You don’t believe in them. You only SAY you believe in them to make yourself appear as certain way to others. In terms of how you live your life, what you do every day, since you aren’t going around threatening people with kidnapping if they don’t pay you, since you don’t finance what you want to build via such coercive confiscation of other people’s property, you don’t actually practise “public goods” activity.
No, you want OTHERS to go out and behave in the way you suggest is socially moral.
“I believe we have an obligation to make the best free primary education we can, and excellent libraries too.”
There is no such thing as “free” education. It requires resources and labor, i.e. costs.
“If private schools become the way, the better-off will create their own systems, and underfund the public system.”
If public schools become the way, the less well off will create their own systems, and underfund the private system.
OK, so how to we solve this? Your way of coercion and violence, or my way of using peaceful persuasion and voluntary interaction?
“I try to be a good libertarian, but I have some weaknesses…national parks…pristine shorelines…good public schools…excellent libraries…health care vexes me….”
Your “weakness” is actually your inability, or refusal, to speak consistently with the way you act, because you’re afraid of how others will treat you and speak of you. You act as a libertarian, because you respect other people’s property rights, and you refrain from initiating violence, but you sort of hope that nobody notices that enough to call it out and make it known. So you SAY that you are “an advocate”, or “a supporter”, or “in favor”, of various “public” activities, like schools and libraries, so that others will view you as someone who doesn’t hate the poor, or the infirm.
You don’t actually want to help the poor as much as you want the poor to be helped. You want others to help them at the point of a gun.
29. August 2013 at 23:24
Geoff:
Read a little Edmund Burke.
There is a place for neighborhood institutions that have the gravitas and traditions and authority and skills to make a local community a better place.
Yes, I believe in taxing people to make such institutions, and if nobody likes me for saying that, so what.
BTW, as a local taxpayer, I seem to get something back for my money. Streetlights, paved roads, fire and police, schools, libraries, etc. Maybe 50 cents on the dollar, but something back.
When I pay FICA taxes, if I live long enough, will get something back. Again, many shortcomings, but something back.
When I pay the largest tax in most years—the federal income tax—I get nothing back. It just goes into the maw of DC, eaten by parasites. Federal agency spending—USDA, Commerce, Labor, HUD, Defense, Homeland “Security,” the VA. Waste, waste, waste, waste. And subsidizing the pink-red rural states.
Sheesh, from what I see, local communities are underfunded as parasite-land DC hogs all the money.
And who said i wanted to help the poor? I said I wanted everyone to have a crack at making it, and if they had that crack, and didn’t make it, then too bad….
.
30. August 2013 at 02:10
Public and private schools: an area where I can speak with experience as I teach in many of both. (I am part-owner of a business that puts on ancient and medieval days for schools: yes, my avatar is me in work gear. So I teach in rich and poor private and public schools. And yes, there are rich public schools.)
The claim is that eliminating “choice” (private schools) will make “voice” (rich folk advocating for public schools) more effective. The claim is crap. They will simply advocate more effectively for schools in rich areas and pay for more private tutors for their kids. The notion that public schooling equalises educational opportunities is nonsense on stilts. What advocates of abolishing private schools are really after is monopoly control over the inputs of belief.
Folk point to Finland’s excellent school performance. It is a small, ethno-linguistically homogeneous country with low levels of income inequality. Of course it can deliver high grade public schools if it wants to. US public schools do quite well if you make equivalent exclusions from them.
Many parents hate vouchers precisely because they do not want the state allowing ghetto kids into their socio-economically differentiated schools. Controlling who sits next to your child is the biggest single issue in schooling. In Melbourne, certain public school catchment areas have a housing premium. Instead of the extra money being spent on education, it is capitalised into house prices.
Choice of school is much more powerful than voice.
30. August 2013 at 04:01
Just laugh a little (while crying) at the #slatepitch and move on.
30. August 2013 at 06:47
Lots of good points, I mostly agree.
Bill, You said:
If we went to vouchers they would end up being spent the same way. A lot of people would end up sending their kids to places that hand out easy A’s and make Bobby and Betty feel good. Others would get scammed into sending their kids to places that teach nonsense over truth. ( This already happens a lot in private education. God forbid we hold private schools to the same standards as public1st amendment issues ya know )”
This already happens in a lot of public schools (easy As and false teaching.)
Ben, You must be the only person who favors public schools and private police. 🙂
30. August 2013 at 06:58
This idea should henceforth be known as, ‘Drinking the Cinzano’. In honor of its roots; Everything within the state, nothing without the state, nothing against the state.
30. August 2013 at 07:35
Has anyone noted that financing/pupil in public schools would get worse with this proposal? The great thing about private school from the perspective of the rest of us is that people pay for private school on their own, but still pay the taxes that support public schools. This is pretty awesome.
30. August 2013 at 08:27
Benedikt basic premise is just flat out wrong. Private schooling options do not lower the quality of public schools. They improve them.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100997699
30. August 2013 at 09:09
Abolishing private schools would likely enhance the effects of residential segregation on schooling. You can see some of this in a piece written a while back about the divide between the tech elite and everyone else in California, which included a bit about how the public schools in rich neighborhoods there benefit heavily from educational funds set up by rich parents to help the public schools their children go to.
So, instead of sending your kid to a private school, you’d be trying to get into the best neighborhoods with the best schools instead.
I can understand the sentiment that the author’s getting at, though. You see something similar with Canadian opposition to potentially creating a “two-tiered health care system”.
30. August 2013 at 11:32
Ashok Rao just wrote this and I think it’s awesome:
http://ashokarao.com/2013/08/30/what-would-a-wonks-perfect-policy-platform-look-like
Get rid of the Department of Education and allocate every child into school by a random lottery. Public education is a bit (but not really) like the individual mandate. It works well if everyone uses it without segregation. There are big externalities in moving a rich kid from his bubble of a rich school to a poorer school because support from his parents will make everyone in the poorer school better of. For free! If you think about “parental positive influence” as a scarce good concentrated in the top 20% of the population, there is huge, huge inefficiency in having many rich kids go to the same school. In this case, redundancy is bad.
http://ashokarao.com/2013/07/22/radically-centrist-education-a-thought-experiment
30. August 2013 at 11:59
As long as we are at it, why not also pass a law forcing everyone to live in certain government-alloted neighborhoods with acceptable societal mixes?!
Come to think of it, why don’t we also break up families? Why should some kids have all the luck?! Assign government-sponsored parents by lottery as well!
Externalities everywhere. Silly individuals.
31. August 2013 at 06:26
Lots of good points, just what I expected from my commenters.
31. August 2013 at 10:52
TravisV,
The issue Ashok fails on is the rule of hegemony.
A real wonk doesn’t pretend his preferred policies are societies goals, INSTEAD he carefully documents societies goals, takes their order, as if at a diner, and then comes back with the best possible way of delivering EXACTLY WHAT THEY WANT.
Note that entrepreneurs do this all day every day.
What society wants is not for every child to have an equal opportunity by lottery.
What society wants is for the winners to get to give their kids advantages other kids don’t have.
How do we know this? Because that is what the winners want. And what is winning? Power control authority decision making of the world around us.
This is not to say that the winners are cold heartless people, they want to make sure that kids of societies losers have AT LEAST some kind of chance to climb up the ladder…
So Ashok’s job if to figure out how to deliver what society wants…. take their order.
Scott of course already perfectly prepared the order, his solution is exactly right.
Privatize all schools, and backpack each kid in any given state with $X, and then let parents choose which private school to send their kids.
2. September 2013 at 12:27
She really must like battles over teaching evolution and sex ed.
2. September 2013 at 16:03
BTW the evidence that poor students will do better in “good” schools and that good students will do bad in “bad” schools is very weak.