I need spend no time whatsoever on the proposition that the state of schooling--elementary, secondary,
higher schooling--in the United States is deplorable. That evidence is available for
all of us to see. It is a conclusion that all of us recognize and are aware of. At the
lower levels we have seen problems arise, particularly in the major cities and particularly
in the inner cities. We have seen problems of discipline, problems of schools becoming
places for keeping people rather than for schooling and educating people.
One reason, the immediate reason, the reason that we can all see, is the increasing centralization
and bureaucratization of schooling. Education has increasingly become centralized, has increasingly
moved away from the control of the local community to the control of broader and broader communities.
It has moved away from control of the parents to control by educational administrators.
Now there’s nothing wrong with educational administrators; they’re fine people. Indeed,
some of my best friends are educational administrators. So I have no prejudice against them. But as
in every area, the question is: Is the ultimate task of schooling the children running the
administrators, or are the administrators running that task? Who is in the saddle?
So you have a crystal clear illustration of the tendency that the more you centralize
authority and bureaucratize it, the more it costs you to produce less and less.
Now let me turn to my more fundamental reason. Why is it that the role of government in education
has been increasing? Why is it that the parents have been given less control and the administrators
more? The increasing role of government in education is true not only at the elementary level,
not only at the secondary level, it is also true at the university and college level.
Fundamentally, I believe, it reflects part of a general shift from the philosophy of
individual responsibility that prevailed in the nineteenth and early twentieth century
to an increasing belief in social responsibility. The nineteenth century view was that an
individual was fundamentally responsible for himself. It was up to him to make his way
in the world, he was responsible for his success, and he had to bear the responsibility
for his failures. Of course everybody realizes, everybody realized then, that an individual
was much affected by the circumstances of the society, that an individual who was fortunate
enough to be in the United States could do a lot better with his life than an individual
who was born in India or in Africa or in a less-developed country. So this wasn’t to
say that society didn’t matter, but it was to say that the function of government
and of the social setting was to provide the individual with the maximum opportunity to
express his own values, to develop his own capacities in accordance with his own values
and own beliefs. How can you give parents more power? There
is a very simple scheme for doing so. It is a scheme that is very old, that I personally
happen to have been trying to recommend and propose now for over twenty years. It is called
the voucher plan, and it is a very simple plan. It says you are a parent, you are sending
your children to school, the government is providing public schools for your children
to go to; if you decide you would like to send your child to another school, a private
school, you’re saving the city money--the city of New York today doesn’t have to spend
$2,728 per pupil to school those children who are going to nonpublic schools. Therefore,
the city should say “Very well. If you relieve us of the expense of schooling your child,
we will give you a voucher, a piece of paper, worth a certain sum of money which you may
use for one purpose and one purpose only, to pay the cost of schooling your child in
any school you want him to go to.” I say the city of New York would save $2,728, but
I want to make this proposal attractive to everybody; and I think it would be very attractive
to parents, if instead of their getting a voucher for $2,728, they were to get a voucher
for $2,000 or $1,500 or $1,000. In the usual rule I would estimate that to have schooling
provided privately of better quality would cost half as much, so that if you gave parents
$1,500 they would be able to acquire with that better schooling than they’re now getting
for the $2,700 that is being spent on their account. The voucher scheme would say any
parent who chooses to send his child to a school other than the governmental public
school is entitled to a voucher which he can use for the payment of tuition and costs at
that school. It’s exactly the same principle that was applied after World War II, and much
more recently in the so-called GI Bill for returning veterans. They chose their school--this
was at the college level, they went to the University of Chicago or they went to Notre
Dame, or they went to NYU or City College or wherever they went to--and they were entitled
to receive, as long as they could show they were going to school, so much per month. In
that case the voucher covered not only tuition but also living expenses.
So I do not mean to say that the road is easy, but I only say that first, we know what the
right thing to do is, and second, there is support for it. There are people who are interested
in this. There are possibilities of moving in this direction and it is the most promising
direction, the only way I can see that we have a hope of turning around the trend that
has been going on. So I say to you, go to it parents. You have everything to gain for
your children. Thank you.