Don Boudreaux considers what it would be like if grocery stores were run like schools.
Suppose that we were supplied with groceries in same way that we are supplied with K-12 education.
Residents of each county would pay taxes on their properties. A huge chunk of these tax receipts would then be spent by government officials on building and operating supermarkets. County residents, depending upon their specific residential addresses, would be assigned to a particular supermarket. Each family could then get its weekly allotment of groceries for “free.” (Department of Supermarket officials would no doubt be charged with the responsibility for determining the proper amounts and kinds of groceries that families of different kinds and sizes are entitled to receive.)
Except in rare circumstances, no family would be allowed to patronize a “public” supermarket outside of its district.
Sounds like a nightmare. I wonder why we keep doing it?
It’s not a secret to anyone that public schools suck and have sucked for a very long time. Seems silly to keep doing the same thing we know doesn’t work, over and over again.
Isn’t that a definition of insanity?
Apparently the solution is to just throw more money at it.
And if you don’t agree with the solution, you’re some sort of horrible individual who hates children and doesn’t want them to get an education.
How about the bottom-up view? Imagine if your cashier had a six-year degree but was still completely clueless about how to do her job, the maintenance people have no idea how often to sweep the floors or when was the last time it was done, the stockers had no idea what was on the shelves, and the bosses were too busy delegating to notice any of these situations. Furthermore, none of these morons can be fired because anyone who attempts it will be run into the ground by a corrupt organization that can arbitrarily dictate working conditions and therefore administrative policies, all while violating workers’ First Amendment rights by confiscating their wages to fund only certain political campaigns.
A good place to start would be the colleges that make teachers. I suspect that there is a lot of deep cutting could be done to eliminate useless blowhards who spout marxist diarrhea or special interest studies that send tuition costs through the roof.
Public education isn’t just low-hanging fruit–it’s rotten fruit fallen from the tree, in the mouth of a lame duck that’s super glued to a plywood plank with the muzzle of a loaded shotgun up it’s ass end. The fact that the Stupid Party hasn’t progressed past teacher salaries is disappointing to say the least.
I’d be happy if proper use of the apostrophe were all the progress made this year in my district…
I’d be happy if proper use of the apostrophe was what I did in my last paragraph.