Recently, on the BipolarNation.com Forums, BorderJumper said this:

Are you suggesting a complete privatization of the educational system?

I had a few questions like this back when I wrote my column about the system, so I’ll pretty much answer it in this post.

Yes, I’m suggesting a complete privatization of the educational system, an abolishing of the worthless Department of Education, and at the very least – the very least, mind you – having the government, instead of teaching us, give parents money to spend on education.

I can see how Big Education teachers would think this is a ridiculous position to hold, as they counter-argue with things like “teachers have it rough!” and “you should try working with kids all day!” But I’m not calling for the illegalization of teaching – I’m just calling for the privatization of it. Teachers who love the sweet nectar of the Big Education teat equate desocializing with “getting rid of,” as if the private market would fail to employ them.

In a private market, if you have something of value, you’ll be able to sell it, so I don’t know what teachers are so worried about – they would have services to offer and market. Unless, deep down, they don’t actually believe in the value of what they’re doing, in which case it makes sense that they’re afraid to switch to the market.

And it’s not like this solution would be cruel to kids. Cruelty is forcing kids to go to school – which is what our law does.

Actually, even if teachers did have baloney jobs and couldn’t market themselves in a free market, home schooling does well.

Check the stats:

The study demonstrated that homeschoolers, on the average, out-performed their counterparts in the public schools by 30 to 37 percentile points in all subjects. A significant finding when analyzing the data for 8th graders was the evidence that homeschoolers who are homeschooled two or more years score substantially higher than students who have been homeschooled one year or less.

Those statistics aren’t definitive, but they are indicative of the surprising quality of home-schooling, and they go in the face of the “but we neeeeed teachers” argument.