1994

Imagine a World...

Imagine a world where we buy our groceries in government stores. We can only shop at the store nearest our house. If we want to shop somewhere else, we're forced to pick up our family and move into another neighborhood. If we can afford it.

In this imaginary world, we elect food boards to oversee our grocery stores. And many of us think the food is free. Well, not quite. We all pay taxes to the government, which then recycles those dollars to grocery store districts, and eventually down to our neighborhood stores. We think we eat pretty well, although the government spends five dollars for a gallon of milk, and four fifty for a loaf of bread. The bread is often stale, and the milk is often sour.

Each district has a central office staff of specialists and administrators who work very hard designing store shelves, checkout lanes, and -- most important -- the nutritional content of every food item. Since we're a nation that separates Church and State, the big battles at food board meetings often revolve around whether stores can sell Christmas cookies.

Now, imagine that voters decide to give the government less money for the public food system. Suddenly, food stores find themselves in a crisis. There isn't enough tax money to keep food district central bureaucracies in tact. Stores don't have enough money to keep all the clerks employed. Food Superintendents are faced with the difficult task of eliminating some items from the shelves.

Customers are up in arms when bureaucrats decide to stop offering twinkies and dingdongs. Until taxpayers give food stores more money, only nutritious staples will be available, and the aisles will be more crowded.

How could we possibly feed ourselves without the government taxing us, building big brick food buildings, and telling us where to shop?

If this imaginary world — and its problems — sounds familiar, you're way ahead of me. It's the world of our public school system. It's the world most of us grew up in. Our parents grew up in the same world. But, I submit to you that our children — and their children — will grow up in a different world.

In this new world we can no longer afford to dump more money into a system that isn't keeping pace with the progress all around us.

Many people advocate that we should lead the world in education spending. But you don't get to be the competitive leader in any industry by being the world's highest cost producer.

Don't you really want to be the producer with the highest quality, but at an affordable cost? The driving force to achieve high quality, while keeping costs down, is the profit motive. But that's exactly the motive that doesn't exist in our public school system.

Why aren't we worried about a tax revolt decimating our local grocery store shelves? It's because our grocery stores are private. They're subject to intense competition, and each of us have virtually unlimited choices about where we shop.

For those who can't afford food, we don't build government food stores — we give them food stamps, and they shop in the same stores — and for the same products — that we do.

In essence, our public schools are the equivalent of the former Soviet Union's collective farms. Communism said government should own and run the food stores — and the farms. The result was a nation that couldn't feed itself.

We don't have to ask whether to replace our current public school system with a private one. We can simply ask that we let education dollars be spent where the customers think they should go.

Please don't let the details of any specific proposal stop you from accepting the concept. Instead, let's figure out why so many of our tax dollars don't get down to the classroom -- and why nearly half the people who work for our public school system don't teach. Let's look for ways to put the children first — the system second.

The only proven way to accomplish these things is through competition, and choice. Spending more dollars in the current system will just get us more of the same.

But if we allow consumer choice won't schools be able to pick and choose students, creating winners and losers? We all want every child to win. But how is that most likely? Every child who drops out, or who graduates from our current public school system functionally illiterate, is already a loser. But if we give parents the chance to send their children to the schools of their choice, everybody can win under that scenario.

Some are concerned that we can't let public dollars subsidize religious schools, or cult schools. Even neonazis might have their own schools funded with tax dollars. But when you think about it, nearly all the neonazis and gang members in our cities today are products of today's public school system.

Hatred and bigotry are bred of ignorance. If you want to see more skinheads in our communities, just continue the system that allows teenagers to walk across the stage at graduation — unable to read their diplomas.

Others believe that our current educational reform efforts will improve the public school system by the year 2000. But think about it. The year 2000 was the future in 1950; today it's as futuristic as next Thursday.

That thought comes from Futurist Lewis J. Perelman. He's written a marvelous book you all should read. It's titled School's Out. In it he says "The new 'improved' education...is really a sold gold life jacket. It glitters for attention. It's outrageously expensive. And the longer we cling to it, the deeper it will sink us."

Adding my own interpretation to Perelman's statement: The Titanic sunk on its maiden voyage, and over fifteen hundred lives were lost because there weren't enough life boats. Our public school system doesn't have enough life boats either.

Every child who drops out of school, or who graduates functionally illiterate, is being tossed into the sea without a life boat. If you think rearranging the deck chairs on this ship will save those children, think again.