 First of all, can everyone hear me if I remain seated in the back? Fine. If my voice drops, just say something and I'll try to speak louder. In the 10 minutes or so allotted to me, I want to make a few basic points concerning the political aspects of what is sometimes called public schooling or what I prefer to call state schooling. Sure. Is this better? Okay. I'm going to make a few general points about the political aspects of state schooling in the 10 minutes I have here. And I think it's important in talking about the privatization of schooling that we understand something of the philosophy and history of state schooling in America because obviously the call for privatization of schooling necessarily involves some degree of attack on the present school system where the state basically finances and controls much of the educational system. There are many arguments that we could advance such as economic arguments. We could cite figures how much more efficient private schools are. We could give cost per pupil statistics showing that children are educated not only better, generally speaking, in private schools but also at a much lower cost. And all those arguments are very important. But I'm going to suggest to you that we shouldn't overlook the political aspects of state schooling. If your version or your vision or idea of the reasons behind state schooling consists of something like this, that in say the 19th century where there were all these humanitarian altruists who were very concerned about poor children who might not get an education and however misguided they may have been out of good motives they decided to help these poor kids and therefore establish public schooling if that is a general concept that you have of the origins of state schooling that I wish to address that point this afternoon and point out that that had very little at all to do with the reasons for state schooling. State schooling originated from purely political motives. The originators of the state schooling system in America as in other countries were very clear about what their motives were and those motives exist in large degree today. Now the reason this issue is important is that one tends to miss the point if one focuses only on economic efficiency arguments. I'm going to return to this point in a second. But first is a way of getting into this. Let me pose to you what I consider a basic paradox of state education in America today. Consider the following. Public education in state schools is provided free. That is to say there are no users fees associated with it. Anyone can send his child to a public school without having to pay a fee for so doing. Of course we ultimately end up paying through taxes but that's a different method of financing. Now economists would tell us to the extent that the price of a service or a good is artificially lowered there will tend to be more demand than there is supply. So that if you have price controls for example you'll have shortages. Now what happens if the price goes to zero? Well presumably one would have massive shortages of the service in question. Now what you have in education in effect is a zero price. So economics would tell us in theory at least that there should be an overwhelming demand for public education far more demand than there is supply. Now consider that fact with the equally interesting fact that education in these schools or in some kind of schools is compulsory. We have compulsory attendance laws in the United States. Now does that make a great deal of sense on the surface? If on the one hand you are providing a free good or service do you have to force people to consume it? Imagine for example if there were no price whatever on steak or on food in general or on various types of other services would you have to force people to consume those things? Obviously not. It's silly. There would be so much demand that you couldn't possibly provide it to meet the demand. You couldn't provide enough to meet the demand. So here we have what I call a basic paradox in public schooling. Why on the one hand does a government provide this service free? And on the other hand require people to consume it. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. The reason I suggest to you that doesn't make sense is because there's an ambiguity or there's a misunderstanding about what the purpose of public education is. Sometimes we look at other state school systems for example the Soviet Union or in Cuba in totalitarian countries and we say look those kinds of state school systems are bad because those kinds of state school systems are designed to buttress the existing political order to indoctrinate children and so forth. Whereas some liberals think that in free countries such as the United States the exact opposite is true that these public school systems exist not for the benefit of the state but rather for the benefit of the child. So whether one emphasizes the benefit of the state or the benefit of the child would seem to be the basic difference that many people have in their mind between bad public school systems those that emphasize the state versus good public school systems those that emphasize the child. The point out to you is that the school system in America the public school system and that according to that criterion falls clearly in the bad category. State schoolers have always been very clear that the primary justification for state schooling is first and foremost the benefit of the state not the benefit of the child. This is very very clear in the writing throughout the history of American state schooling. I will give you just one brief example out of many literally dozens and perhaps hundreds of examples that I could quote to you. This is a very typical statement. This was issued by the Supreme Court of the State of New Hampshire in 1902 in a very important compulsory attendance case that came before it. Here's what the Supreme Court said echoing the sentiments of educators and legal experts on education everywhere. Quote, free schooling furnished by the state is not so much a right branded to pupils as a duty imposed upon them for the public good. If they do not voluntarily attend the schools provided for them they may be compelled to do so. While most people regard the public schools as the means of great advantages to the pupils the fact is too often overlooked that they are governmental means of protecting the state from the consequences of an ignorant and incompetent citizenship. Now this I suggest is the basic resolution to the paradox I posited before. The reason the state compels education is because they see education as what has commonly been called a self-defense measure. This is the term that's often used by state educators that state education is necessary as a means of self-defense for the state itself and therefore children are required to go as a duty. Now in fact in a lot of the literature you will see parallels drawn to education between education and military conscription. The argument is basically look if we can draft 18 year olds into military service for the benefit of the nation then we can draft 8 year olds so to speak into educational service for the benefit of the nation. Even libertarians are amazed by how often that argument appears in the educational literature. Let me give you just a few brief examples of the attitude that some of the most prominent state educators have had from the late 18th century to the present regarding the role of the pupil and the child in the state educational system. Consider just this one example from Benjamin Rush the beloved forefathers of state education in America. Rush wrote in 1786 regarding state schooling quote, let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself but that he has public property. Let him be taught to love his family but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it. He must be taught to amass wealth but it must be only to increase his power of contributing to the wants and demands of the state. He must be taught that his life is not his own when the safety of his country requires it. Now I could run through literally dozens of examples state commissioners of education in the 19th and 20th centuries who have basically echoed and reformulated the basic sentiment here expressed by Benjamin Rush. This idea occurs over and over and over again. If I had a half an hour or an hour I could give you many such cases. I will just give you one final example by a very prominent sociologist Edward Ross who was very prominent during the progressive year in the 20s and he put it again quite bluntly regarding the function of public schools in America. This is how Ross put it. To collect little plastic lumps of human dough from private households and shape them on the social needing board exhibits a faith in the power of suggestion which few people ever attained to and so it happens that the role of the school master is just beginning. Close quote. Now I suggest to you that unless you fully appreciate and understand the political function of state schooling you can never launch an effective attack on it. To conclude with one final example there was two editorials that appeared about I'd say a year and a half, two years ago in the Los Angeles Times. I don't recall one of the authors. The one defending public schools was R. Freeman Butts a very prominent American educator and historian of education. Here's the way the argument broke down. Let's read about vouchers. Whether we should institute vouchers as a means of freeing up the educational system. The guy arguing in favor of vouchers more or less argued a kind of Chicago school Friedman-esque position that vouchers would bring more efficiency into the public schools that we would have less costs and we would have more efficient education. A very, very common argument, right? You've all heard that argument before. What did Butts reply? This very well-known American educator. What was his reply? This may surprise you. What Butts said was, I agree with you. There probably would be more efficiency in education if in fact we had vouchers and tax credits. Butts went on to say, what makes you think that the public schools were ever instituted with efficiency in mind? That was not their purpose, nor is it their purpose now. He went on to say that the basic purpose of public schools is and always has been what he calls now civic virtue. To teach the duties and values of citizenship to our students so that we can have an educated and informed citizenry. That's what the schools define what constitutes a good citizen. And he said, efficiency has nothing to do with this and even if we admit that private schools may be more efficient, they will not accomplish the task of molding a homogeneous population with the same civic values. And therefore Butts correctly pointed out the efficiency argument really has very little to do with the issue of public schooling. Now, I bring this up, as I said, just to point out and make you aware that you must be careful in using efficiency arguments, although they are important, they can convince many people, you must also be aware of the enormous political implications and overtones of the state school system in America. The only way you can do this, ultimately, if you're interested in this as a personal crusade, if you're an educator or whatever, is to read some of the history, especially by so-called revisionists, regarding the American state school system. A possible place to begin, I notice out here in the Pacific Institute table, they have order forms and a sample copy of a public school monopoly, which has a number of excellent essays on precisely this point. In fact, I have an essay in there myself on some of the historical aspects of state schooling. So that's basically the major point that I wanted to make. Thank you.