Split Thread Does compulsory schooling equate to slavery? (Split from: "Liberal Fallacies" thread)

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

And remember, it's the citizens that vote for our leaders. It's citizens that sit on the school boards and are involved in PTA.

a) We have discussed the defect of voting as a feedback mechanism. Imagine the outcome of a nation-wide vote on the one size and style of shoes we all must wear.
b) The PTA is an NEA front.

 

[Belz...]

Compulsory, unpaid labor is slavery.

Repeating it makes it true !

 

[TheGoldcountry]

We agree. I have repeatedly observed "the most effective accountability mechanism that humans have yet devised is a policy that lets unhappy customers take their business elsewhere."

When a child reaches adulthood with a third grade education and negligible marketable skills, it's a little late to "take their business elsewhere."

b) The PTA is an NEA front.

I'll be sure to tell my sister (both a "P" and an "T") that she's actually a shill for a nationwide shadow organization, when she just thought she was working for our community.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Your examples show that one needs checks and balances.

We agree. I have repeatedly observed "the most effective accountability mechanism that humans have yet devised is a policy that lets unhappy customers take their business elsewhere."

When a child reaches adulthood with a third grade education and negligible marketable skills, it's a little late to "take their business elsewhere."

If there are no escape options, there will be more children who reach adulthood with a third grade education than would suffer in a legal environment which features subsidized escape options. Across industries, competitive markets lower costs and improve performance. US States with numerous small school districts outperform States which compel attendance at a few large school districts. Bureaucrats aren't suicidal; when legislatures enact expanded parent options, school districts improve service delivery.

...The PTA is an NEA front.

I'll be sure to tell my sister (both a "P" and an "T") that she's actually a shill for a nationwide shadow organization, when she just thought she was working for our community.

Go for it,
Try this experiment: at a public meeting, ask the head of your local PTA: "What is the largest policy difference between your organization and our local NEA affiliate?"
For years, the PTA national HQ occupied space in the NEA's Washington, DC HQ building.

 

[RandFan]

a) We have discussed the defect of voting as a feedback mechanism. Imagine the outcome of a nation-wide vote on the one size and style of shoes we all must wear.

And I have demonstrated why your analogy is fatally flawed.

• The vast majority of poor people can afford shoes.
• The vast majority of poor people cannot afford to send all of their children to school
• It isn't one size fits all. There is some autonomy as I've documented again and again.
• Parents have choices and so do students. I concentrated on IT while my best friend concentrated on shop. He's a construction worker today and I am a programmer. My youngest son took advanced IT courses in High School and my youngest too auto shop. My daughter concentrated on graphic design. Where you get this idea of one size fits all is beyond me.

So your analogy is fatally flawed and cannot be rescued. You can keep repeating it but it won't make it anymore true.

b) The PTA is an NEA front.

This would have to be true for every school in ever county in America and it would have to be true for all the schools in Canada, Denmark, England, France, Italy, etc.. The scope and size of this conspiracy falls under it's own weight.

While it's true that such a conspiracy or conspiracies would be necessary to sustain your claim it would still fail for two key reasons.

1. Argument by assertion.
2. Ad hominem poisoning of the well.

Both are fallacious.

 

[Border Reiver]

a) We have discussed the defect of voting as a feedback mechanism. Imagine the outcome of a nation-wide vote on the one size and style of shoes we all must wear.
b) The PTA is an NEA front.

A) and when modern democracies start asking that there be vote on the single size and style of shoes your argument will hold water, until then...

Oddly, in every school system I am familiar with there are different levels of instruction for differently baled students, the ability to hold back those not ready to advance to the next cohort, and the ability to accelerate those who are gifted. And the democracies are ok with that;

B) with all the NEA hate I have to ask, were you denied membership by them at one point?

 

[jimbob]

B) with all the NEA hate I have to ask, were you denied membership by them at one point?

Meanwhile, one Scottish supply teacher has been struck off for speaking his mind when he was "having a particularly bad day".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-glasgow-west-24714608

Shame on the General Teaching Council shills.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... with all the NEA hate I have to ask, were you denied membership by them at one point?

I never applied. Hawaii is an agency shop State. I would prefer for myself not to join a union but I have no objection to unionization at the level of individual employers (private schools). I paid agency fees to the HSTA (Hawaii's NEA subsidiary).

Unions succeed by making a majority of workers consider themselves below average. The abstract argument for collective bargaining does not support either industry-wide collective bargaining nor public-sector unions. The advent of widespread public sector unionization in the mid 60's coincided with an acceleration of the erosion of school performance. Chubb and Moe (Politics, Markets and America's Schools) make an abstract argument that unionization will erode school performance (measured in test gains per dollar). Caroline Hoxby finds a union-related deterioration in school performance.

 

[RandFan]

Yet all modern liberal democracies have state run compulsory school and most if not all have unions and they all turn out the PHD's and the engineers and the doctors and all of the other specialists we see throughout the world.

Mortality is declining. Violent crime is declining, measurable wealth is increasing and we manage to do all of that without our current representative democratic system where the parents vote and volunteer to be on school boards and members of the PTA.

It could be better but it would be downright idiotic to get rid of it, IMHO.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

I address the following to any silent readers of this thread, not to anyone in particular.

We have discussed the defect of voting as a feedback mechanism. Imagine the outcome of a nation-wide vote on the one size and style of shoes we all must wear.

And I have demonstrated why your analogy is fatally flawed.

• The vast majority of poor people can afford shoes.
• The vast majority of poor people cannot afford to send all of their children to school
• It isn't one size fits all. There is some autonomy as I've documented again and again.
• Parents have choices and so do students. I concentrated on IT while my best friend concentrated on shop. He's a construction worker today and I am a programmer. My youngest son took advanced IT courses in High School and my youngest too auto shop. My daughter concentrated on graphic design. Where you get this idea of one size fits all is beyond me.

So your analogy is fatally flawed and cannot be rescued. You can keep repeating it but it won't make it anymore true.¹
This² would have to be true for every school in ever county in America and it would have to be true for all the schools in Canada, Denmark, England, France, Italy, etc.. The scope and size of this conspiracy falls under it's own weight.³

1. Randfan makes two arguments here: (a) that somehow the cost of the good or service matters to the goodness of fit issue and (b) that the the variety of options within the current system somehow obviates the goodness of fit issue. The argument that cost matters to the goodness of fit issue is simply false. Aggregating preferences in shoe size and averaging them would not produce a better result if shoes cost $10,000 per pair. If a conditional is beyond the mental capacity of the cartel's defenders, consider something genuinely expensive that depends on goodness of fit, like artificial joints or transplant organs. Voting on the one serotype of transplanted organs would guarantee death for many patients. One size does not fit all.
Randfan apparently accepts the goodness of fit issue with his second rebuttal (b). That's progress. My question then is: why stop with the degree of variety in the current system when policies that enhance parent control (tuition vouchers, charter schools, subsidized homeschooling, Parent Performance Contracting) offer so much more?
Randfan's argument is inconsistent.
2. To what does "this" refer?
3. Neither counties, US States, nor nations arrived at their policies of compulsory, tax-subsidized, government-operated schools independently. It's not "conspiracy"; it's interest-group politics.

 

[jimbob]

Your examples show that one needs checks and balances.

We agree. I have repeatedly observed "the most effective accountability mechanism that humans have yet devised is a policy that lets unhappy customers take their business elsewhere."

I know several people whose children are being educated in private schools. I am led to believe that there are private schools in the US too.

There is a market - it is just that there is also a state option, which provides a better education than most parents could otherwise afford to provide.

I'd argue that compulsory education is to ensure that the childrens' interests are looked after in the small number of cases where the parents/guardians would otherwise* make choices that would not be in the childrens' best interest.

"To" is a statement of intention. Intentions are invisible mental events. We will agree on the observable fact (from contemporary newspaper accounts, transcripts of testimony in support of legislation, and the "whereas" prefaces to legislation) that advocates for compulsory schooling made this argument in support of their cause. Wilfredo Pareto observed that people often turn their interests into principles. What I see missing in the "negligent parent" argument is any consideration given to the costs that compulsory attendance policies impose on parents who are not negligent and on their children. If the "negligent parent" consideration really motivates compulsory schooling legislation, why are all parents treated as negligent? I suspect that some people give the "negligent parent" argument considerable weight and couple it with a (racially) "disparate impact" consideration that they will not make explicit.

"To" is a statement of intention. Intentions are invisible mental events. We will agree on the observable fact (from contemporary newspaper accounts, transcripts of testimony in support of legislation, and the "whereas" prefaces to legislation) that advocates for compulsory schooling made this argument in support of their cause.

Yes. At the time across the liberal democracies, and also now. I accept that you are sincere in your beliefs, but you must have noticed that they are not mainstream. In this subject the other posters on this thread are far closer to the general consensus than you. So are legislators. Note that this is not an argumentum ad populum because we are discussing the motives of people subscribing to the majority view.

Wilfredo Pareto observed that people often turn their interests into principles. What I see missing in the "negligent parent" argument is any consideration given to the costs that compulsory attendance policies impose on parents who are not negligent and on their children. If the "negligent parent" consideration really motivates compulsory schooling legislation, why are all parents treated as negligent? I suspect that some people give the "negligent parent" argument considerable weight and couple it with a (racially) "disparate impact" consideration that they will not make explicit.

The costs imposed are those of general taxation. A responsible parent can chose to send their child to a governmentally-funded school of some description, a privately-funded school of some description, or, depending on certain conditions that vary on the parents' location, homeschool the children. The parents are not allowed to neglect to provide some form of education that meets minimum standards. As a responsible parent, I am not hindered by the requirement any more than I am hindered by the legal requirement to hold a valid driving licence when driving on the public highway.

The highlighted bit. Historically there was a problem, there is evidence that it still is a potential problem in some areas - there are schools in deprived areas with high truancy rates.

The cure is worse than the disease.

E.G. West
"Education Vouchers in Principle and Practice: A Survey"
The World Bank Research Observer 1997-Feb.

In economics the three most quoted normative reasons for state intervention in education are to protect children against negligent parents, to internalize beneficial "externalities," and to ensure equality of opportunity. Compulsory education laws are generally regarded as satisfying the first argument for state intervention.
The externalities argument, to be completely persuasive, needs the support of evidence that externalities really exist and are positive at the margin-that is, that people outside the family unit are willing to pay for extra units of education beyond what parents would purchase. In the absence of formal or systematic evidence, most writers simply assume, explicitly or implicitly, that positive marginal external benefits do exist.
The third argument for intervention-the need to ensure equality of opportunity-reflects concern about the distributional implications of purely private provision. Richer parents are likely to spend more than poorer parents to educate their children, just as they spend more on cars, homes, and clothes. The view that children's life chances should not depend on the wealth of their parents or the fortuitous circumstances of the community in which they live is widely accepted. The prospect of upward mobility, of ensuring that one's children will be better off, has been a keystone of political support for the public school system in the past. This "equality" argument for intervention depends on the assumption that governments are best equipped to supply the appropriate institutions. But a public system that confines children to schools nearest their home or within administratively determined attendance zones can actually reduce mobility. And where the quality of public education is better in middle-class zones than elsewhere, upward mobility is obviously blocked. In other words, the public system can often narrow a child's options, forcing the child to attend an inferior school when a superior one may be physically within reach. One of the arguments for vouchers is that they enable families to break through these obstacles to give equal opportunity a genuine chance.

If opposition to parent control (school choice) is not opportunistic, why do you see dedicated opposition to vouchers, charter schools, subsidized homeschooling, and tuition tax credits from the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's defenders?

I don't follow your reasoning here. In this thread, I am not arguing for a particular system of education. I am arguing for compulsory education of some approved type, and for governmental funding of the education system in some form.

The method of this implementation is for a separate discussion, but is a distraction from whether governments should fund education and what aspects should be compulsory

To me, your worldview seems to be too optimistic when considering the worst of individuals, and too pessimistic when considering the normal case of democracies.

Two people whom I respect and admire, Wafa Sultan and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, make (in passing) the only good argument that I have seen for policies that compel attendance at government-operated schools: that in Western democracies, these schools could break the intergenerational transfer of Muslim indoctrination. Even malevolent parents who teach their children to hate __X__ (fill in the blank) or to steal do not represent the threat to Enlightenment values that Islam represents. The KKK took a similar position against Catholic schools in the case Pierce versus Society of Sisters. The Klan was wrong. Sultan and Ali have a point.

I hope that compulsory education helps promote tolerance. I tend to think that religious fundamentalism of any flavour is bad, but am not sure that there is much to chose between moderate Islam, Reform Judaism, and moderate Christianity (based on people I know with those beliefs, although it might be hard for an American to appreciate how utterly unimportant religion is for most Brits).

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... What I see missing in the "negligent parent" argument is any consideration given to the costs that compulsory attendance policies impose on parents who are not negligent and on their children.

The costs imposed are those of general taxation.

The cost of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' sub-adult education subsidy vastly exceed the tax-generated K-12 school budget. The costs include the opportunity cost to students of the time that they spend in school, lost productivity that sub-adults might generate if employed in the private sector during on-the-job training, lost lifetime productivity, losses due to crime, and the cost of incarceration for the poor kids whose lives the cartel trashes. A more subtle cost is the opportunity cost of the lost innovation that a competitive market in educational services would generate.

 

[Border Reiver]

The cost of the NEA/AFT/AFSCMEUSN/USArmy/USAF/USMCcartel's exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' sub-adult education defence subsidy vastly exceed the tax-generated K-12 schooldefence budget. The costs include the opportunity cost to students of the time that they spend in school training lost productivity that sub-adultssoldiers might generate if employed in the private sector during on-the-job training, lost lifetime productivity, losses due to crime, and the cost of incarceration for the poor kids whose lives the cartel trashes. A more subtle cost is the opportunity cost of the lost innovation that a competitive market in educationalmilitary services would generate.

Fixed that for you.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Fixed that for you.

I believe Reiver is capable of making an intelligent contribution to the discussion. I wonder why s/he doesn't try. Reiver wrote (strikeouts removed):...

The cost of the USArmy/USAF/USMC cartel's exclusive position in receipt of the taxpayers' defence subsidy vastly exceed the tax-generated defence budget. The costs include the opportunity cost to training¹ lost productivity that soldiers might generate if employed in the private sector during on-the-job training², lost lifetime productivity, losses due to crime³, and the cost of incarceration for the poor kids whose lives the cartel trashes. A more subtle cost is the opportunity cost of the lost innovation that a competitive market in military services would generate.⁴

1. "(T)he opportunity cost to training" doesn't make sense.
2. The point of my reference to OJT is that OJT is "education". Governments purchase specialized labor services from soldiers, who require training. The analogy to lost productivity does not apply. While soldiers could be producing something else if employed instead as mechanics or masons, that "something else" is not defense; mechanic services and masonry services are not alternative forms of defense services (as OJT is an alternative to school attendance).
3. I rather doubt that a link between military service and crime is as solid as the link between compulsory schooling and crime.
4. A dominant position by the State in the interpersonal violence business reduces the level of violence. Competitive markets are generally more productive. Since interpersonal violence is a bad, not a good, a dominant (NOT monopoly) State role will enhance aggregate social welfare. Note that the DOD benefits from competitive markets in weapons systems.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

If opposition to parent control (school choice) is not opportunistic, why do you see dedicated opposition to vouchers, charter schools, subsidized homeschooling, and tuition tax credits from the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's defenders?

I don't follow your reasoning here. In this thread, I am not arguing for a particular system of education. I am arguing for compulsory education of some approved type, and for governmental funding of the education system in some form.

The method of this implementation is for a separate discussion, but is a distraction from whether governments should fund education and what aspects should be compulsory.

I don't believe that government attention makes any net positive contribution to the education industry. Many people disagree. There's a lot of room between total State indifference and a North Korean-style State-monopoly education industry. Before I gave the education industry much thought, I accepted most of the features of the current system. Close inspection of basic terms, such as "attendance" (when is someone in school? What about Alaska's government-operated K-12 correspondence schools?), "enrollment" (can a student be enrolled simultaneously in a government school and a parochial school?), "employee" (What's the difference between an employee and an independent contractor? If provision of education services by government employees adds some undefinable magic, why not hire parents to provide for their own children's education?) led me slowly to my current view. Most people have other things on their minds, so, as a compromise with political reality, I look for the smallest changes to the current structure that will yield the greatest return for the effort. Avoiding legislators and contests with the unions entirely, I recommend to parents that they homeschool. Accepting some confrontation with insider interest groups, I recommend to legislators that they require schools to offer every course required for graduation on a credit-by-exam basis, so that students who can move faster than the average may avoid boredom. Unions will object, since (for one reason) they depend on teachers for dues money the teacher workforce is a function of enrollment. Aside from that detail, the conceptually simplest policy that enhances parents' options while minimizing the threat to independent schools is the policy I call Parent Performance Contracting.

The cold reality is that the US K-12 tax-funded education industry provides a $500 billion+ annual revenue stream to system insiders. That motivates insiders to defend the cartel's exclusive position in receipt of this revenue stream, and to oppose efficient use of student time.

"When somebody says 'it's not the money, it's the principle', it's the money."

 

[Border Reiver]

I believe Reiver is capable of making an intelligent contribution to the discussion. I wonder why s/he doesn't try. Reiver wrote (strikeouts removed):...1. "(T)he opportunity cost to training" doesn't make sense.

It makes perfect sense. Any time the military is training they could be doing a job more productive to the economy, rather than being net tax recipients.

2. The point of my reference to OJT is that OJT is "education". Governments purchase specialized labor services from soldiers, who require training. The analogy to lost productivity does not apply. While soldiers could be producing something else if employed instead as mechanics or masons, that "something else" is not defense; mechanic services and masonry services are not alternative forms of defense services (as OJT is an alternative to school attendance).

Why should the tax payer pay for the training? Why pay for such skills if they are not needed at that time? Surely the fluff of military training such as drill can be ignored, and all non-core skills or occupations, such as driving, policing, administration, repair of equipment, etc. can be done on an as-needed basis by the private sector for less cost? Instead of a navy we can authorize private businessmen to outfit ships with weapons to act as an alternate service delivery navy. That way, when not doing defence functions those ships can carry cargo, etc.

3. I rather doubt that a link between military service and crime is as solid as the link between compulsory schooling and crime.

There is at least one study paper showing that military service leads to higher instances of violent crime.

4. A dominant position by the State in the interpersonal violence business reduces the level of violence. Competitive markets are generally more productive. Since interpersonal violence is a bad, not a good, a dominant (NOT monopoly) State role will enhance aggregate social welfare. Note that the DOD benefits from competitive markets in weapons systems.

That is like saying that the school systems benefit from a competitive market in textbooks. Just think of the savings to the taxpayer with a free market military - no long term carrying costs for ex employees, only get the services that you think you need right then, defrayed training costs,etc. if a competitive market will ensure that every child has the opportunity to get a rounded education to realize their potential, then why would that not also apply to military services?

The expansion of publically funded education, offering a broad based education at entry levels and increasing levels of specialization as the child moves through it has managed to increase the spread of overall wealth in society, reduce the overall levels of violence in society and increase social mobility.

 

[Belz...]

3. I rather doubt that a link between military service and crime is as solid as the link between compulsory schooling and crime.

To me this kinda translates as "I believe what I want to believe."

 

[RandFan]

I address the following to any silent readers of this thread, not to anyone in particular.1. Randfan makes two arguments here: (a) that somehow the cost of the good or service matters to the goodness of fit issue and (b) that the the variety of options within the current system somehow obviates the goodness of fit issue. The argument that cost matters to the goodness of fit issue is simply false. Aggregating preferences in shoe size and averaging them would not produce a better result if shoes cost $10,000 per pair. If a conditional is beyond the mental capacity of the cartel's defenders, consider something genuinely expensive that depends on goodness of fit, like artificial joints or transplant organs. Voting on the one serotype of transplanted organs would guarantee death for many patients. One size does not fit all.
Randfan apparently accepts the goodness of fit issue with his second rebuttal (b). That's progress. My question then is: why stop with the degree of variety in the current system when policies that enhance parent control (tuition vouchers, charter schools, subsidized homeschooling, Parent Performance Contracting) offer so much more?
Randfan's argument is inconsistent.
2. To what does "this" refer?
3. Neither counties, US States, nor nations arrived at their policies of compulsory, tax-subsidized, government-operated schools independently. It's not "conspiracy"; it's interest-group politics.

1. You could be reasonable and refer to me directly instead of smugly referring to me in the third person. You are presumptuous and arrogant to assume that anyone other than myself cares about our conversation. In any event, the point stands. Poor people who cannot afford to buy a car have a public option. It's called public transportation. You seek to deny poor people a public option when it comes to education.
2. "This", refers to your argument.
3. All have it. All are democratic. Of course it's not a conspiracy. A conspiracy only works in your world. Either it's a coincidence that these nations are all failing their future or there is a conspiracy or, letting parents choose is a good thing. parents choose via balot. we are talking about modern liberal democracies. Either they are all failing and none have the wisdom that you have or they have chosen wisely. My guess is they chose wisely since you cannot show a single real world example of a nation that is superior and by coincidence doesn't provide social services like public schools (state run compulsory).

Odd that you trust parents enough to take away their public option and force them to come up with the means to educate their children, but you don't trust them to elect policy makers that enact state run public schools.


I trust democracy.

 

[RandFan]

Yet all modern liberal democracies have state run compulsory school and most if not all have unions and they all turn out the PHD's and the engineers and the doctors and all of the other specialists we see throughout the world.

Mortality is declining. Violent crime is declining, measurable wealth is increasing and we manage to do all of that without our current representative democratic system where the parents vote and volunteer to be on school boards and members of the PTA.

It could be better but it would be downright idiotic to get rid of it, IMHO.

For those silent readers that Malcolm has faith in. Note he ignores the obvious. The world is getting better and the nations getting better the fastest are those with freedom and those that allow the people to elect their leaders. Those that ensure that poor people get an education and health care. Malcolm doesn't want that for the United States. He wants us to go back to the days of child labor and no safety nets for the vulnerable.

Let me post, once again, those nations highest in economic freedom as measured by the heritage foundation and published in the Wall Street Journal.

Hong Kong
Singapore
Australia
New Zealand
Switzerland
Canada
Chile
Mauritius
Denmark
United States

Now the Index of Human Development.

Norway
Australia
Sweden
Netherlands
Germany
Ireland
Switzerland
Iceland
Denmark
Slovenia
Finland
Austria

Malcolm wants us to believe that all of these democratic nations that lead the world in health, wealth and well being are doing it wrong when it comes to education.

 

[ArmillarySphere]

I'm going to ignore Malcolm's posts since they mostly read like a textbook article on logic fallacies.

Stepping back, it's interesting to examine exactly what we want out of an educational system. Ensuring that top-rate talent gets the very best teaching possible is one thing. Training people for their chosen vocation is another. Making sure that every member of society has at least the basics to understand current events and how to make informed decisions about their lives is a third. The last is what's currently emphasised, and there are good reasons why, many of whom have little to do directly with education.

Starting in the middle, let's assume that schools only taught the very essentials necessary for whatever you chose to do, or tested best for on some aptitude test. What this does is pigeon-hole people, effectively making it harder to switch profession. This might have served well in the middle ages, when you'd send apprentices off for a decade of highly specialised training (mixed with a healthy dollop of mind-numbing unskilled work - why do I get the idea this is MK's preferred schooling system?). Works well, produces skilled professionals - but only as long as the job market and technology is unchanging. In today's society, people are often required to change careers altogether, which would be much more difficult in such a system. Add institutional classism to the mix, and you have pretty much a caste system in the making.

The same objections also apply to the first choice, although to a lesser degree. What about the third then? Well, aside from giving people a general set of knowledge to base choices on, we also would like them to know how to think. The very principles of reasoning is actually the greatest difference between our society and, say, the 18th century - people are not necessarily smarter, but we know very well how to counteract our own biases, construct and use logical arguments. The fact is that the current school system isn't only providing general-purpose education, but more important are the techniques of how to think. This holds true even as far as university level.

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_flynn_why_our_iq_levels_are_higher_than_our_grandparents.html

A second benefit of a general-purpose, one-size-fits-all education system is to reduce class differences in society. This provides vertical mobility and also improves trust - if you've played football with your trailer-park neighbour, it gets more difficult to see them as subhuman. And trust is a much neglected factor in improving the economy; indeed, most everyday dealings require a certain amount of trust that you're not going to get tricked. Every effort spent to insure against that risk reduces the effective operation of the economy.

Thirdly, providing a relatively equal education to all levels of society strengthens the democratic process by making voters more informed and better able to elect representatives and hold them accountable (grant you, that may or may not be the objective of whoever is running the education board).


Now, to provide an example of a place where this is running effectively, look at Finland, who have been a shining example of (government-run) education for a number of years. Their main objective was actually to improve equity, i.e. make sure that all schools provided an equal level of education. A surprise side benefit of this effort is that not only is the basic metrics such as literacy outstanding, but the top-level graduates are more capable as well.

One thing I'd like to point out when it comes to equity, is that having to choose a school for your children is one of the most difficult and unnecessary choices we face today. Why should it matter what school I choose? What benefit does facing this choice provide to society? And even if I distrust the local choices available, how does resigning from the workforce and assigning their education to an individual with no training in teaching (me) benefit either my children or society?