

Why Are the Rich So Interested in Public-School Reform? - mikeleeorg
http://ideas.time.com/2011/12/09/why-are-the-rich-so-interested-in-public-school-reform/

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maxharris
I don't think that this is something particular to the rich. I'm not rich, but
I'd like to see true reform, where the public schools phased out altogether.
Truancy laws should be abolished.* The good schools (the profitable ones)
should be sold off to private investors, and the bad ones should simply be
shut down. True morality (non-enslaving, non-sacrificing) says that taxes
should not be taken from Peter to pay for Paul's children. Reforms such as the
ones I've outlined will get us there so we can all get on with our lives.

*Most people will send their kids in anyway. Parents universally tend want their children to have better lives than they do, unless they're in their natural, pre-industrial state, which is poverty. But here in America, where even the poor have cars, cable, microwaves, etc., no one is as poor as the poor were in the pre-industrial world. So what I'm proposing won't result in widespread ignorance (in fact, with parents having greater choice and responsibility, standards and student achievement will go up.)

And for those that simply can't pay to send their kids anywhere? They can
homeschool, or rely on charity. Also, if you care so much, you're free to
donate your own money to help them, and to try to make rational appeals to
others to donate. Using a gun to extract money from some to give to others,
regardless of the supposed end is not a rational argument. That gun is exactly
what the current compulsory school system is based on (if don't pay your
property taxes, you'll see the government point a gun at you eventually) and
that gun is precisely what reforms must abolish if things are going to get
better.

