Suppose that there are children throughout America who are utterly disengaged in their assigned public school each day, but that are absolutely riveted by the sports news on TV or YouTube each night. Suppose that at least one set of their parents realize their sports nut child is uninterested in school because it targets the instruction and examples to generic children.
In 1926, J. Gresham Machen testified before a congressional committee regarding a proposed federal department of education. In the first minute of his testimony, he explained that the purpose of the bill was “to promote uniformity in education,” which, he asserted, “is the worst fate into which any country can fall.”
“Perhaps the voucher movement ought to be called the ‘Make schools accountable to parents’ movement.” – Arnold Kling
The new trend of university administrators arbitrarily punishing their men’s sports teams is even worse than I thought
Why is a model of education that is also profitable seen as such a bad thing?
How many of you would spend the time you are spending, pay the money you are paying, and do the things you have to do as a student if at the end of your time at this university, you wouldn’t receive a degree?
College construction has focused more on creating non-academic than academic space, and about half of all college space today is for non-academic use.
Making higher education free of charge won’t make it free to provide.
Which group of teachers should benefit more? The ones that forcefully receive resources from the taxpayers, or the ones that produce educational outcomes that are desired by children and parents?
It is the examined life that both George and West view as the purpose of a liberal-arts education. Its goal, that is, is to encourage critical reflection on the biggest questions; to lead us into an intellectual engagement that fulfills our nature as thinking beings; to help us achieve self-mastery; to enlarge our souls.
However, DeVos’s nomination has come under assault because she supports vouchers that enable parents to, among other options, send their children to religious schools.
Like any other economic good, the value of a higher education degree is determined on the market, at the intersection of the subjective valuations and appraisements of those constituting the supply and demand of that particular good.
Beneath the surface there’s a lot of progress occurring that should make us all feel a little more optimistic about the future.
“Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” — Milton Friedman
Last month, Last Week Tonight host John Oliver covered charter schools, calling for more government oversight. While Oliver explicitly declined to discuss “whether or not charter school are a good idea in principle,” his focus on failed and mismanaged charter schools has upset many charter school supporters and re-ignited debates about the value of school choice.
Because students educated at home or in private schools regularly outperform students in public schools, it seems reasonable to conclude that such accommodations have not had a detrimental effect on the quality of education in these states.
Emigration restrictions are guaranteed to injure the would-be emigrants in exchange for a very small positive effect on those who would not emigrate – if there is a positive effect at all. It’s a foolish policy that does more harm to more people than just letting skilled foreigners seek jobs where they are most highly valued.
Learn Liberty is happy to announce its first-ever blog contest! Each month we’ll be announcing a theme, and inviting fans to compete to have their writing published on Learn Liberty’s blog. For the next two weeks we will be accepting your original blog article submissions for consideration. Once the submission window has closed on Tuesday, […]
Should I go to grad school? I’ve benefited enormously from great advice from friends and mentors like Pete Boettke, Tyler Cowen, Deirdre McCloskey, Mike Munger, John Nye, and many others (here, for example, is the indispensable IHS publication Scaling the Ivory Tower, to which I still refer periodically). If I could go back in time […]
The ControversyIn preparation for the November 2016 release of her upcoming film, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (which is set in 1920s New York City and features MACUSA, the Magical Congress of the United States of America), J.K. Rowling has shifted her focus from Harry Potter’s Great Britain to North America. Last month […]
The U.S. public school system has faced criticism for decades. Whether it’s school funding, curriculum controversies, debates over teacher compensation and tenure, or American students under performing when compared to other developed countries, there’s no shortage of discontent with the way things are. Professor Kevin Currie-Knight asks, in a recent piece at FEE, why things […]
Two members of the student government at Bowdoin College faced impeachment proceedings for committing an “act of ethnic stereotyping” because they attended a party where some guests wore tiny sombreros. It’s the kind of story that will make you want to reach for the tequila. But it’s also one that is unfortunately all too common […]
Reason reported last week that a high school production of The Producers has been forbidden from using swastikas: The New York school district that oversees Tappan Zee High School considers the inclusion of a swastika to be offensive and, possibly, a hate crime—regardless of the context. “There is no context in a public high school […]
A common theme among liberty-minded thinkers is a high degree of skepticism toward state administered education. They’ve often come to the conclusion that public schools act more to create a population of subservient factory workers with little skills in the way of critical thinking. To learn more about how the public school system harms students […]