Dumbing down our children: is this “equity” education?

One of their favorite arguments: “Why, we can’t trust the free market to educate our children, the very idea! The free market excels at many things, they say, but it doesn’t guarantee “fair” education for our children.

What are the apologists for “equity” public schools talking about? It means a guarantee that all children receive a “quality” education and “equal opportunity” to learn. “In the cruel free market,” says the public school bureaucrat, “the rich get the best schools, the middle class the mediocre, and the poor children are left in the dust.” That, they say, is not fair, it is not “equity.”

But why not apply his theory of “equity” to food, clothing, and housing? Shouldn’t all houses, food stores and clothing factories also be government owned and operated to ensure “fairness”? After all, the rich eat better, dress warmer, and live in better houses than the poor or middle class. That’s not fair, is it?

It’s not fair.

In a free market, those people who make more money than others usually do. They risk more, work harder, work smarter, persevere longer, make better decisions in life, or choose a profession that has greater opportunities for wealth. Why shouldn’t they enjoy the just fruits of their work, their character, their life decisions?

Also, what economically successful people earn is not taken away from those who earn less. Is it the fault of the successful person that the less successful doesn’t work as hard, persevere as long, or make better decisions? If you’re looking for blame for differences in people’s incomes, don’t blame it on those who are successful. Blame it on life, on human nature.

Nature makes all men and women different: different talents, abilities, strengths and weaknesses. It has always been this way since human beings came out of the trees and began to walk upright. Kicking income disparities is kicking human nature, which is kicking reality.

If “fairness” for all people is our goal, then for every “inequality” between poor, middle-class, and rich people, whether it be in food, housing, health care, or education, the government must financially plunder the people. most successful with taxes to remedy what they didn’t cause, and it’s not their fault. This notion of “fairness,” extended to all aspects of our lives, will turn America into a socialist or communist economic police state. In such a police state, the successful are punished and “leveled” by progressive income taxes, so that all of us end up miserably equal and equally miserable.

But this is an old story, the story called envy. The unhappy who hate the happy, the failures who hate the successful, all seeking to save their self-esteem by tearing down those who envy. The communist soviets tried for eighty years. The result: a chaos of poverty, slavery and failure.
“But,” say the lovers of equity, “why punish children? Is it their fault that their parents are poor?” No, it is not, but it is not the fault of those who are not poor either.

Even assuming we wanted this “equity” for our children, have our public schools really given children equal opportunity and “quality” education during their 150 years of control? Jeanne Chall, in her book, “The Academic Achievement Challenge,” cites grim statistics that 70 percent of inner-city 4th graders read below grade level, that a prison population in increase is comprised primarily of males whose reading and math skills are at or below the eighth grade level. These are just the tip of the iceberg of statistics that prove the total failure of public schools.

Public school employees may have the best intentions in the world. So what? What matters are the results. For all practical purposes, public schools therefore only create inequality for our children by providing them with a third-rate education, especially inner-city children. Our government-controlled public schools condemn millions of children to a life of failure, while school officials speak of pious goals about creating educational “opportunities” for all children. Could our children be worse off if public schools were eliminated and low-cost, competent, free-market schools or tutors taught our children?

To guarantee “equal education” for all children, you must create a massive system of public schools to enforce this guarantee. Once a government monopoly takes control of your children’s education, quality education for your children walks out the door. We demand “equitable” education and condemn millions of children to a miserable future.

On the contrary, if we allow children’s natural love of learning to flourish and a free market in education to flourish, even poor children, as generations of American immigrants have shown, will become middle class or even wealthy. Get rid of public schools and let school choice and open competition prevail, and the majority of poor children will eventually get a quality education and reach their full potential.