gat

The best way to start offering some choice immediately is to give each public school the
independence that private schools have. De-systematize them, grant each private, parochial, and
homeschool equal access to public funds through vouchers administered as a loan program, along
with tax credits. In time the need for even this would diminish, but my warning stands—if these
keys to choice are tied to intrusive government oversight, as some would argue they must be, they
will only hasten the end of the American libertarian experiment. Vouchers are only a transition to
what is really called for: an economy of independent livelihoods, a resurrection of principles over
pragmatism, and restoration of the private obligation, self-imposed, to provide a living wage to all
who work for you.
School can never deal with really important things. Only education can teach us that quests don’t
always work, that even worthy lives most often end in tragedy, that money can’t prevent this; that
failure is a regular part of the human condition; that you will never understand evil; that serious
pursuits are almost always lonely; that you can’t negotiate love; that money can’t buy much that
really matters; that happiness is free.
A twenty-five-year-old school dropout walked the length of the planet without help, a
seventeen-year-old school dropout worked a twenty-six-foot sailboat all by herself around the
girdle of the globe. What else does it take to realize the horrifying limitations we have inflicted
on our children? School is a liar’s world. Let us be done with it.
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