Why “Public” Education Can Never Be Neutral

The state of the American economy testifies to the dangers of central planning in monetary and fiscal policy. Yet, many overlook the exact same dangers in education, where state provision of educational services produces equally disastrous results.

The following article was originally published by the Mises Institute. The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of Peter Schiff or SchiffGold.

Many people today are upset, and rightly so, about programs that promote “woke” values and “tolerance” for degeneracy. To counter this, some people support efforts to purge the schools of such programs and replace them with better ideas.  It’s easy to understand why people support such efforts, but this approach ignores the root cause of the problem,

So long as the government controls the “public” schools, there are bound to be conflicts over what should be taught there. Only if all schooling is supplied by the free market will the problem end. In a free market, parents can get schools that supply them with the sort of education they want for their children. As the great Ludwig von Mises pointed out, the dollar votes of consumers guide production. So long as a number of parents want a particular kind of school, free market entrepreneurs will supply it. Here is what Mises says: “The direction of all economic affairs is in the market society a task of the entrepreneurs. Theirs is the control of production. They are at the helm and steer the ship. A superficial observer would believe that they are supreme. But they are not. They are bound to obey unconditionally the captain’s orders. The captain is the consumer. Neither the entrepreneurs nor the farmers nor the capitalists determine what has to be produced. The consumers do that. If a businessman does not strictly obey the orders of the public as they are conveyed to him by the structure of market prices, he suffers losses, he goes bankrupt and is thus removed from his eminent position at the helm. Other men who did better in satisfying the demand of the consumers replace him.…