Education, Free Markets, and Money

By Jake

©Copyright 2008

I believe that too often claims are made about improving education by more money.  I hate to say it, but more money thrown at a poor and ineffective system is a waste.  For example, people who are bad with money will just waste more money if you give them access to more money.  Give a poor person enough money to be considered rich, then give that same person enough time and the person will be poor again.  If a person wants to become richer, they need to think like a rich person. 

People need to change the way they think and learn what the rich do that makes them rich.  Then we can throw money at a person and they will become richer.  The same ideas ring true with education in America.  If we really want to get America back up to speed, we really should start thinking like the most educated think. 

We need to start doing what the most educated do.  The answer is to look at our universities and colleges as an example to grades K-12.  What do people in those groups do exactly that makes people so educated?  I can’t tell you how many friends I've had that are now successful doctors, attorneys, business owners, and independently wealthy individuals who flunked their way through grades K-12 and then got serious in college.  It wasn't that they changed per say, it is that the learning venue changed their way of thinking when they got to college.  They are just lucky they got their despite what grades K-12 did not offer them. 

The colleges and universities had better ways of teaching and thinking.  The formula has to do with people's personal interests.  A person in college chooses their major and chooses what classes they take.  A large part of what classes they take also depends on what they think of the professor and what reputation the professor has with other students. 

I must say that all colleges and universities want the best professors there to attract more students and increase its reputation.  If you can't see it yet, let me spell it out for you, “Free market.”  Yes, most colleges and universities get to thrive in the free market.  Those schools that don’t thrive in higher education fold up and fall by the wayside for good reason.  Colleges and Universities aren't so driven by government support and thus they are held accountable to something called the “amoral free market”, or what I like to call “people’s opinions, interests, likes, desires, and needs as a collective whole”. 

If we freed up more public dollars spent on education and put them back into the education free market for grades K-12, we would begin thinking like the most educated think.  The best schools in the world and our country, far none, are privately owned schools that compete in the free market.  The reason they are so successful is because people like what they produce and their funding is directly linked to what their students think about what they teach, how they teach, and who teaches it.  They are successful because the students and their loved ones get to choose what they feel is best for their needs and are not so subject to what others, whose opinions they don’t value, think about their education.

©Copyright 2008

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Copyright © 2008 American Education Reform