Tenured failure and self-indulgent pedagogy
If one judges matters by intentions (such as by presuming that effects flow from intentions), one lives in a very congenial world. You are always right, because your intentions are always good. Those who disagree with you must, therefore, have “wrong” intentions and so always be wrong
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But sometimes the alternatives are worse. There are obvious difficulty with privately provided defense forces, for example. (Though I would point out there are also notorious difficulties with peacetime defense forces performing poorly in the first stages of conflict.) And there are private security forces to cover gaps in police services.
Just because the government may not provide schooling directly itself, does not mean it cannot fund it. It would be perfectly possible to fund students--with extra grants for students suffering indicators of educational disadvantage--without the government running any schools. You could even pay by results.
Similar point can be made about health funding.
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is simply bullshit.
Your ‘example’ of totalitarian regimes is a furphy: they want to control education, like they want to control everything else, because that is what they do. They eliminate private schools because they eliminate all opposition, competition and choice, because that is what they do.
That is a very different thing from providing a service. A service which, don't forget, was provided by the government in the first place out of the socialist, dare I say communist, idea that poor children deserve education too ( ... )
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(The comment has been removed)
"Making little Americans" was an explicit part of having government schooling in the US. Such "nation building" was, in one form or other, a pretty common aim, including in Australia. The story out here was not quite as different as all that.
I am a little confused about how providing education is seen as discouraging a wish to get educated.
That there was going to be a push to increase provision for education is more or less a given. Besides, we all have an interested in a literate citizenry. The issue is more why the government would do it. It persistently came down to some form of "because we do not trust anyone else to do it the way we want".
My point about intentions was not to complain that people or policies have them, but about using them as a basis judgments about policy effectiveness/goodness.
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On the topic of private provision of education, check out the great website dedicated to the late Ed West.
http://www.ncl.ac.uk/egwest/
As for providing education and other services to poor people, that could he handled without intervention by the state if all the people who care (including all the libertarians who I know) contribute to a voluntary fund and/or appropriate agencies which you can guarantee would be more effective than the current state provisiom!
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Thanks.
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