Hello, I'm Robert McKenzie and welcome
again to the University of Chicago.
It was here in 1976, that Milton Friedman,
professor of economics, learned that he
had been awarded that year's
Nobel Prize for Economic Science.
Then university is in a sense his
intellectual and professional home.
That's why Free to Choose has been
coming here the past several weeks.
Now the subject tonight is education.
And it's often pointed out that there is
intense dissatisfaction in many quarters
with the state of public educaion.
Billions poured in of taxpayer's money.
Yet too many youngsters leaving school
without adequate skills in reading and other
such equipment they'll need later on in life.
Well now when that happens
what can be done about it?
Milton Friedman, himself a teacher
most of his life has diagnosed the problem.
And he believes he has a solution.
As we'll see in this film.
(opening music)
MILTON FRIEDMAN: These youngsters are
beginning another day at one of
America's public schools, Hyde Park
High School in Boston.
What happens when they pass through
those doors is a vivid illustration of some
of the problems facing America's schools.
They have to pass through metal detectors.
They are faced by security guards
looking for hidden weapons.
They are watched over by armed police.
Isn't that awful?
What a way for kids to have to go to school,
through metal detectors and to be searched.
What can they conceivably learn
under such circumstances?
Nobody is happy with this kind of education.
The taxpayers surely aren't.
This isn't cheap education.
After all, those uniformed policemen,
those metal detectors have to be paid for.
And what about the broken windows,
the torn schoolbooks, and the
smashed school equipment?
The teachers who teach here don't like
this kind of situation.
The students don't like to
come here to go to school.
And most of all, the parents--
they are the ones who get the worst deal.
They pay taxes like the rest of us,
and they are just as concerned about the
kind of education that their kids get
as the rest of us are.
They know their kids are getting a bad
education, but they feel trapped.
Many of them can see no alternative
but to continue sending their kids to
schools like this.
To go back to the beginning, it all started
with the fine idea that every child should
have a chance to learn his three Rs.
Sometimes in June when it gets hot,
the kids come out in the yard to do
their lessons, all 15 of them,
ages 5 to 13, along with their teacher.
This is the last one-room schoolhouse
still operating in the state of Vermont.
That is the way it used to be.
Parental control, parents choosing
the teacher, parents monitoring
the schooling, parents even getting together
and chipping in to paint the schoolhouse,
as they did here just a few weeks ago.
Parental concern is still here, as much in the
slums of the big cities as in bucolic Vermont.
But control by parents over the schooling
of their children is today the exception,
not the rule.
Increasingly, schools have come under the
control of centralized administrations,
professional educators deciding what shall be
taught, who shall do the teaching, and even
what children shall go to what school.
The people who lose most from this system
are the poor and the disadvantaged
in the large cities.
They are simply stuck.
They have no alternative.
Of course, if you are well off
you do have a choice.
You can send your child to a private school,
or you can move to an area where the
public schools are excellent,
as the parents of many of these
students have done.
These students are graduating from
Weston High School in one of Boston's
wealthier suburbs.
Their parents pay taxes instead of tuition,
and they certainly get better value for their
money than do the parents in Hyde Park.
That is partly because they have kept a good
deal of control over the local schools,
and in the process, they have managed
to retain many of the virtues of the
one-room schoolhouse.
Students here, like Barbara King,
get the equivalent of a private education.
They have excellent recreational facilities.
They have a teaching staff that is dedicated
and responsive to parents and students.
There is an atmosphere which encourages
learning, yet the cost per pupil here is no
higher than in many of our inner city schools.
The difference is that at Weston, it all goes
for education, and that the parents
still retain a good deal of control.
Unfortunately, most parents have lost control
over how their tax money in spent.
Avabelle goes to Hyde Park High.
Her parents, too, want her to have a good
education, but many of the students here are
not interested in schooling, and the teachers,
however dedicated, soon lose heart
in an atmosphere like this.
Avabelle's parents are certainly not getting
value for their tax money.
CAROLINE BELL, PARENT: I think it is a
shame, really, that parents are being
ripped off like we are.
I am talking about parents like me that work
every day, scuffle to try to make ends meet.
We send our kids to school hoping that they
will receive something that will benefit them
in the future for when they go out here
and compete in the job market.
Unfortunately, none of that is taking place
out at Hyde Park.
FRIEDMAN: Children like Ava are being short-
changed by a system that was
designed to help.
But there are ways to give all parents more
say over their children's schooling.
This is a fund-raising evening for a school
supported by a voluntary organization,
New York's Inner City Scholarship Fund.
The prints that have brought people here
have been loaned by a wealthy
Japanese industrialist.
Events like this have helped raise two million
dollars to finance Catholic parochial
schools in New York.
The people here are part of a
long American tradition.
The results of their private voluntary
activities have been remarkable.
This is one of the poorest neighborhoods
in New York City: the Bronx.
Yet this parochial school, supported by
the fund, is a joy to visit.
The youngsters here from poor families are
at Saint John Christians because their
parents have picked this school.
And their parents are paying some of the
costs from their own pockets.
The children are well behaved,
eager to learn.
The teachers are dedicated.
The cost per pupil here is far less than in
the public schools, yet on the average
the children are two grades ahead.
That is because teachers and parents are
free to choose how the children
shall be taught.
Private money has replaced the tax money,
and so control has been taken away from the
bureaucrats and put back where it belongs.
This doesn't work just for younger children.
In the 60's, Harlem was devastated by riots.
It was a hot bed of trouble.
Many teenagers dropped out of school.
Groups of concerned parents and teachers
decided to do something about it.
They used private funds to take over
empty stores, and they set up what
became known as storefront schools.
One of the first and most successful
was Harlem Prep.
It was designed to cater to students for
whom conventional education had failed.
Many of the teachers didn't have the right
pieces of paper to qualify for
employment in public schools.
That didn't stop them from
doing a good job here.
A lot of the students had been
misfits and dropouts.
Here they found the sort of
teaching they wanted.
After all, they had made a deliberate
choice to come to Harlem Prep.
It was a very successful school.
Many students went on to college,
and some to leading colleges.
But after some years, the school
ran short of cash.
The board of education offered Ed Carpenter,
the head of the school and one of its
founders, tax money, provided he
would conform to their regulations.
After a long battle to preserve independence,
he finally gave in.
The school was taken over by bureaucrats.
ED CARPENTER, FORMER PRINCIPAL:
I felt that a school
like Harlem Prep would certainly die
and not prosper under the rigid bureaucracy
of a board of education.
We had to see what was going to happen.
I didn't believe it was going to be good.
I am right. What has happened since we
have come to the board of education is not
all good -- it is not all bad --
but it is more bad than good.
FRIEDMAN: The school may not look
different yet, but 30 of the
former teachers have gone.
Ed Carpenter has resigned.
The school is being moved to a
traditional school building.
No one, except maybe the bureaucrats,
is very optimistic about its future.
Unfortunately, the strangling of successful
experiments by bureaucrats is not unusual.
The same thing happened in California,
at a place called Alum Rock.
For three years parents at this school could
choose to send their children to any of
several specially created mini-schools,
each with a different curriculum.
The experiment was designed to restore a
choice to those who were most closely
involved, the parents and the teachers.
DON AYERS, FORMER PRINCIPAL:
Probably the most significant thing that
happened was that the teachers,
for the first time, had some power,
and they were able to build the curriculum to
fit the needs of the children as they saw it.
The state and local school board did not
dictate the kind of curriculum that was
used in the McCollum School.
The parents became more
involved in this school.
They attended more meetings.
Also, they had a power to pull their child out
of that particular mini-school if they
chose another mini-school.
FRIEDMAN: Giving parents greater choice
had a dramatic effect on educational quality.
In terms of test scores, this school went from
13th to 2nd place among the schools in its
district, but the experiment is now over.
When school resumed after the summer
vacation, this was just another public school,
back in the hands of the bureaucrats.
Giving parents a choice is a good idea,
yet it always meets with opposition from
the educational establishment.
This is Ashford,
a town in the south of England.
For four years, there have been efforts here
to introduce an experiment in
greater parental choice.
Parents would be given vouchers
covering the cost of schooling.
They could use the voucher to send their
child to any school of their choice.
I have long believed that children,
teachers, all of us, would benefit
from a voucher system.
But the headmaster here, who happens also
to be secretary of the local teacher's union,
has very different views about
introducing vouchers.
MR. DENNIS GEE, HEADMASTER: We see this
as a barrier between us and the parent.
This sticky little piece of paper in their hand,
coming in and under due writ,
"you will do this or else."
We make our judgment because we believe
it is in the best interest of every Willy
and every little Johnny that we have got,
and not because someone is going to say,
"If you don't do it, we will do that."
It is this sort of philosophy of the
marketplace that we object to.
FRIEDMAN: In other words, Mr. Gee objects
to giving the customer, in this case
the parent, anything to say about the kind
of schooling his child gets.
Instead, the bureaucrats should decide.
GEE: We are answerable to parents
through our government bodies,
through the inspectorate of the county
council and through Her Majesty's
inspectorate to the secretary of state.
These are people, professionals, who are
able to make professional judgments.
FRIEDMAN: But things look very different
from the point of view of parents.
Jason Walton's parents had to fight the
bureaucracy, the professionals,
for a year before they could get him
into the school that they thought
was best suited to his needs.
MAURICE WALTON, PARENT: As the present
system stands, I think virtually parents
have got no freedom of choice whatsoever.
They are told what is good for them by the
teachers, and are told that the teachers
are doing a great job,
and I've just got no say at all.
If the voucher system were introduced,
I think it would bring teachers and
parents together, I think closer.
A parent that is worried about his child
would remove their child from the school
that wasn't giving it good service
and take it to one that was.
And if a school is going to crumble
because it's got nothing but vandalism,
it is generally slack on discipline,
and the children aren't learning well,
that is a good thing from my point of view.
FRIEDMAN: Even good schools like this
would benefit from a voucher system,
from having to shape up or see
parents take children elsewhere.
But that is not how it looks to
the head master.
GEE: I am not sure that parents know what
is best educationally for their children.
They know what is best for them to eat,
they know the best environment they can
provide at home, but we've been trained to
ascertain the problems of children,
to detect their weaknesses, and put right
those things that need putting right,
and we want to do this freely,
with the cooperation of parents,
and not under any undue strains.
WALTON: I can understand the teacher
saying, yes, it is a gun at my head,
but they have got the same gun at
the parent's head at the moment.
The parent goes up to the teacher and says,
well, I am not satisfied with what you are
doing, and the teacher can say, well,
tough, you can't take him away,
you can't move him,
you can't do what you like,
so go away and stop bothering me.
That can be the attitude of some
teachers today -- it often is.
But now that the positions are being
reversed and the roles are changed,
I can only say tough on the teachers.
Let them pull their socks up and give us a
better deal and let us participate more.
FRIEDMAN: In America there is one part
of education where the market
has had extensive scope.
That is higher education.
These students attend Dartmouth College,
a private school founded in 1769.
The college is supported entirely by
private donations, income from endowment,
and student fees.
It has a high reputation and a fine record.
Ninety-five percent of the students who
enroll here complete their undergraduate
course and get a degree.
The students here pay high fees,
fees which cover most of the cost of
the schooling which they get.
Most of them get the money from
their parents, but some are on scholarships
provided either by Dartmouth or
by outside sources.
Still others take out loans to pay the
costs of schooling, loans which they
will have to pay back years later.
Still others work, either during the school
year or during the summer, to pay the costs.
Many students work in the
college's own hotel.
This girl is helping to pay her own way,
which is pretty good evidence that she is
serious about getting an education.
Parents of prospective students come
here on shopping expeditions to check out
the product before they buy.
What you have here is a private market
in education, and the college is
selling schooling.
The students are buying schooling.
And as in most such markets, both sides
have a strong incentive to serve one another.
For the college, it has a strong incentive
to provide the kind of schooling
that its students want.
If it doesn't, they can simply
pick up and go elsewhere.
For the students,
they want to get their money's worth.
They are customers, and like every customer
everywhere, they want to get full value for
the money they are paying.
And so much of the success here comes from
the fact that students understand precisely
the cost involved and they are
determined to get their money's worth.
REGINA BARRECA, STUDENT:
. . . they send you sheets saying how much
everything costs all the time, so that you
know exactly, you can break
it down per lecture.
And when you see each lecture costing $35,
and you think of the other things you could
be doing with the $35, you're making very
sure you're going to that lecture.
FRIEDMAN: Many of the buildings and
facilities at Dartmouth have been donated
by private individuals and foundations.
Like other private universities, Dartmouth
has combined the selling of monuments with
the provision of education and the one
activity reinforces the other.
The students, in effect, earn part of their
keep by helping to solicit alumni for
contributions, knowing full well that they will
be solicited in their turn.
It is another way in which the real value
of education is brought home.
This may not be the usual idea of an
economic market, but it is nonetheless a
marketplace where buyers can choose and
sellers must compete for customers.
What happens when the educational
market is distorted?
Look at state colleges and universities.
Their fees are generally very low, paying for
only a small part of the cost of schooling.
They attract serious students,
just as interested in their education as the
students at Dartmouth or other private
schools, but they also attract a great many
others; students who come because fees are
low, residential housing is good,
food is good, and above all there
are lots of their peers.
It's a pleasant interlude for them.
The University of California at Los Angeles.
For those students who are here as a
pleasant interlude, going to class is a price
they pay to be here, not the product
they are buying.
DARRELL DEARMONE, LECTURER:
We frequently wind up with people
who cannot compete favorably with even
the average person here.
There is a magnet here for everything.
We have the best weather,
practically speaking, in the country.
Hollywood is here, Beverly Hills is here,
the social scene, the television industry
in this country is centered here.
FRIEDMAN: The justification for using tax
money to support institutions like this is
supposed to be so that every youngster,
regardless of the income or wealth of his
parents, can go to college.
A few youngsters from poor families
are here, but not very many.
Most of these students are from middle and
upper income families, yet everybody,
whatever his income, pays taxes to
help support these institutions.
That is a disgraceful situation.
It is hardly what public education
was all about.
These students are being subsidized by
people who will never go to college.
That means that on the average people who
will end up with higher incomes are being
subsidized by people who will
end up with lower incomes.
And in addition, the quality of
undergraduate education is poor.
Undergraduate teaching is not what
UCLA is famous for.
Besides from its athletic teams, UCLA's
reputation is for graduate work and research.
Faculty members have every incentive
to do research, that's the way to advance
in their profession.
They have much less to gain
by good teaching.
Only about half of those who enroll in
UCLA complete the undergraduate course.
Compare that with the 95% at Dartmouth
who finish the work for their degrees.
What a waste of student time,
and what a waste of taxpayers' money.
What should we do about this
disgraceful situation?
We must not deny any young man or
woman who desires one an education.
Everyone who has the capacity and the
the desire to have a higher education
should be able to do so,
provided they are willing to undertake the
obligation to pay the cost of their schooling,
either currently or in later years out of the
higher income that their education will
make possible.
We now have a governmental program of
loans, which is supposedly directed to this
objective, but it's a loan program
in name only.
The interest rate charged is well below
the market rate.
Many of these loans are never paid back.
We must have a system under which those
who are not able or do not go to college
are not forced to pay for those who do.
As we have seen, the market works
in education.
When people pay for what they get,
they value what they get.
The market works in higher education.
It can also work at the level of primary
and secondary education.
Until we change the way we run our public
schools, far too many children will end up
without being able to read, write,
or do arithmetic.
That is not what any of us wants.
The system is not working, and it is not
working because it lacks a vital ingredient.
The experts mean well, but a centralized
system cannot possibly have that degree of
personal concern for each individual child
that we have as parents.
The centralization produces
deadening uniformity.
It destroys the experimentation
that is a fundamental source of progress.
What we need to do is to enable parents,
by vouchers or other means, to have more
say about the school which their
child goes to; a public school or a
private school, whichever meets the need
of the child best.
That will inevitably give them also more say
about what their children are taught,
and how they are taught.
Market competition is the surest way to
improve the quality and promote innovation,
in education as in every other field.
ROBERT MCKENZIE: The distinguished
guests tonight are all intimately concerned
with the world of education, so let's find out
how they react to Friedman's analysis.
ALBERT SHANKER: I think it's very foolish
to throw out something that you've got
and that has some shortcomings,
but is very, very good in order to try out
someone's pet ideas
Well, before we ask Milton to reply to that,
let's get other views on the same quotation,
"Market competition is the surest way to
improve the quality and promote innovation
in education." John Coons.
Well, of course, there's enormous evidence
that that is exactly right,
and we see it in the case in California
that I observe every day,
of low income children whose families
are making great sacrifices to go to schools
that operate at a third of the cost of public
education and are turning out kids who are
performing and are learning and achieving
at very high levels.
On the other hand, I wouldn't want to
suggest that unlimited competition is
the answer to every problem.
And, indeed, the whole definition of
competition is very ambiguous.
It seems to me that if one is truly
interested in liberty, which I think is the
ultimate value that Milton Friedman
talks about, one has to be very careful
how he structures the kinds of subsidies that
are proposed for education so that you do
not wind up with the poor in one kind of
school and the rich all in the other,
and very little liberty for low-income people
left over, which is what is what I think
he has in mind.
That is, I don't think he has
that result in mind. He has the hope
in mind of liberty, but that it's going to
need a certain kind of tailoring
before it works that way.
SHANKER: I think your remarks about free
competition are very unfair for a
very simple reason. You cannot have free
competition where one group of schools
must accept every single student who
comes along, no matter what his physical or
emotional handicaps or other problems;
whereas the very essence of a private school
and your voucher school is that they're
going to be able to keep out the students.
And the finest schools that you saw in
that film were schools that deliberately
kept out the most difficult students.
Of course you can have a wonderful school
if you pick students whose parents...
(Several talking at once)
...no, no. Whose parents are so highly
motivated, that they're willing to spend
more money, and willing to go out of
their way to do something like that?
Now the public schools have to take the
handicapped, must provide bilingual
education, must engage in bussing or
other programs in terms of integration,
must do all of these things;
whereas the private school can come
along and say, "Well, if your child has
no problems, you know what we can do?
We can offer you a school where
you don't have to sit next to
a child with these other problems.
We're gonna put you next to
other children who are advantaged.
SHANNON: I think in the real world
there is no competition between
private schools and public schools, because
private schools, especially parochial schools,
do not have to comply with federal and state
mandates and constitutional limitations
and things of that sort.
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig.
GREGORY ANRIG: I think the part
of the film that speaks to the greater
parental involvement, I agree with
very enthusiastically. However, I think
the solution is the wrong solution for
the problem that you identify.
I think the role of public education
in a democracy is not akin to that
of the marketplace. The purpose for the
common school is not the same as
the purpose for the marketplace.
We are trying in our public schools
to create a democracy,
to create an educated electorate.
If you're going to do that, you have
to have the common school.
How far do you accept
his analysis of the present
condition of the public education system?
A pretty drastic analysis.
Well, I think he's established three
straw men that I think have to
be challenged, with all respect,
Professor Friedman. The first is that
there is a profession of educators
out there which has run amuck.
We have the most decentralized system
in the world in the American education.
Sixteen thousand school districts that
are governed not by the profession,
but by elected citizen representatives,
most of whom are parents.
Secondly, you long, as I would,
for the good old days of
the one-room school in Vermont.
That school served a small proportion of
the youngsters for a short period
of time, and those days will never
come back. Third, you use as an example
of American education, a troubled
high school in an urban center.
McKENZIE: In your bailiwick.
In my bailiwick,
which is not typical of where
the American student goes to school,
first of all; and secondly is not typical of
the City of Boston. And I do think
it's important to point out that
that particular school, at the time that
you took filming there, or your
production crew did, was in the
middle of a desegregation process
that was not anywhere remarked
about in the film. So it was not a
typical example, either of education in
America, or of education in Boston.
The one unsurprising thing about these
comments is that all of the opposition
to allowing the market to work
comes from people who have a
very strong vested interest in the
present public school system.
I am not proposing, we are not proposing
to destroy the public school system.
We are only asking that the public
school system should be free to compete,
should be open to competition.
If it is really as good as you people
make it out to be,
it has nothing to worry about.
Now, in terms of your comment,
of course there's a great deal of
decentralization. We showed a very good
school in this film as well as
a very bad school. There are many
good schools. And the more decentralized
the control, in my opinion, the more
satisfactory is the schooling.
The real problem is concentrated in
those areas where decentralization
is broken down, where you have
moved to much greater centralization,
much greater control. And the main
trouble areas are in the large cities.
That's why we picked that school to show.
In response to the question of the
excellence of the schooling that's
coming, I think there is nobody
who can question the declining
SAT scores, the declining scores
on exams, the declining performance
in the schools, the fact that there is
widespread dissatisfaction, that many
schools, not all schools, some schools,
in urban areas are more accurately
described as centers to keep people off
the street than as educational institutions.
SHANKER: When you have a free market,
there are dangers that go along
with that market. Now, we know
that there are people in our society
who buy Consumer's Reports, and
and there are people who do a
great deal of research before they
buy something, and there are other
people who are taken in by the crass
commercials and instant appeal to give
them some sort of a gimmick
with a thing. And I think that
the evidence is pretty clear that
if you take middle class and
wealthier families, they are gonna do
a good deal of research. They may
very well be able to invest some
additional money of their own
to take some inconvenience.
And if you have an open system of
this sort it may very well be that
the poorest parents are gonna have to
take what is most convenient for
them, what is going to fit in with
their own work schedules, what is not
going to require additional sums of money.
And there is no doubt in mind that
if you set up a system of free choice
of this sort, you're going to with the
poor in one set of schools of their
own on the basis of a good deal of
gimmicks that will be offered to them.
COONS: They can't learn, right? They're –
FRIEDMAN: Excuse me, Mr. Shanker.
I want to ask you one question:
How do you explain the fact that there is
no area of the free market, no area of the
private market, in which the poor people
who live in the ghettos of our major cities
are as disadvantaged as they are with
respect to the kind of schooling they can get?
I want you to name me any aspect of the
private market- they're not as disadvantaged
in the kind of supermarkets they can go to.
They're not as disadvantaged even in the
kind of housing they can occupy,
as they are in respect of the kind of
schooling their children can go to.
How does – SHANKER: What's your evidence for that?
I don't think you have any evidence for that.
COONS: But, they're trying to get out.
FRIEDMAN: They're trying desperately
to get out.
Families with very low incomes are
trying to get into the parochial
schools that you're talking about. SHANKER: Exactly.
And they're trying to get out of the slums,
and they're trying to
get into different neighborhoods –
FRIEDMAN: They are trying to, sure.
FRIEDMAN: They're doing better on that.
They're doing better on that.
And instead, in a free choice system you
would have more heterogeneous schools in
my opinion, far less segregation by social
and economic class than you now have.
Because –
(Several talking at once.)
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig.
ANRIG: It just doesn't hold up by the
very examples he's used.
FRIEDMAN: Excuse me.
It so happens that right now, the parochial
schools are the only alternative really
available to low-income people.
SHANKER: Do they take all the children
who want to get in?
FRIEDMAN: And the reason for that is
that it's very hard to sell something
when other people are giving it away.
Anybody who wants to send his child to a
non-public school has to pay twice for it,
once in the form of taxes and
once in the form of tuition.
Under the kind of voucher scheme that
Jack Coons and I would support,
that difficulty would be eliminated.
You would now have a situation in which the
low-income people would have the kind of
bargaining power, the kind of possibility of
choice, that those of us who are in the
upper-income groups have had all along.
(Several talking at once.)
McKENZIE: I want to move -- Jack Coons.
Jack Coons, I want you to come in now.
I know you're in principle advocating
the voucher system.
Could you give us the case as you see it?
I know you've got your differences with
Milton on it, but let's have the case.
COONS: What we are doing in California
is establishing a form of change,
possible change, proposing a change,
in which lower-income people will get
information along with the opportunity to go
to any school of their choice,
and transportation to get there.
Of course they need information.
Anybody needs information in a market.
And they need information from independent
sources, not from the schools themselves.
And that's the way the initiative is designed,
to come from independent sources.
Now, we believe that ordinary people can
make the best judgments for their children
about where they should go, if they're
given good professional advice.
And it also helps teachers because they can,
for the first time, be professionals.
They can act like real professionals,
because they don't have a captive audience.
They don't dominate their client, they
respect their client, and they deal with them
on the basis of contract.
What could be better for teachers than,
for the first time, to become people who are
dealing in a democratic and respectful way
with clientele instead of with captives?
SHANNON: I am concerned that voucher
systems will lead towards havens for white
flight, will lead towards a dual school
system, in the sense that you have one
school system operating under one set of
rules, the other school system, public school
system, operating under carefully articulated
educational policy in any given state.
And that's why I think it's -
COONS: Exactly, in Los Angeles County
the movement to private schools
last year was less, a smaller percentage,
than in the statewide pattern.
SHANKER: You may have five or
ten percent of the students -
FRIEDMAN: Right, right. SHANKER: - you have very severe problems,
and come from families with very severe
problems, and those students take up
95 percent of the time of the teachers
and the administrators and the other
children aren't getting an education.
Now, you're gonna set up
your voucher school.
Are your voucher schools going
to accept these tough children?
COONS: You bet they are.
(Several talking at once.)
COONS: May I answer the question?
SHANKER: If they accept those children,
I'll tell you what's gonna happen.
COONS: Okay, you tell me and
then I'll tell you. SHANKER: What's gonna happen
is that the parents of all the other children
are gonna move right out and go to another
school, because ultimately you're going to
have to deal with hardcore problems--
McKENZIE: Okay, John Coons.
SHANKER: -- whether it's in a private school
or whether it's in a public school.
COONS: In other words,
that kid isn't tough in the school that
he's in because he's stuck there;
he's just a rotten, tough kid.
SHANKER: He may be a kid with
a lot of problems, not rotten,
a kid with a lot of problems. COONS: And it will never --
you can't imagine a situation where if he
were given choice, and allowed to go to a
school that he liked, and to which he would
connect emotionally, that he would no
longer be a troublemaker, but that he would
like to stay in a place where he has chosen
and would, therefore, do what is necessary
to stay there and to learn.
SHANKER: You know, I don't think
you've been near schools or classrooms
for a heck of a long time. COONS: Thanks a lot.
(Laughter and applause.)
COONS: I happen to have five kids
who've done a lot of time in public
and private schools both.
SHANKER: We're not talking about the
problems of your children, though.
McKENZIE: Let's get around the table,
I want to -
FRIEDMAN: No, no. I have to get to this
point, because I think it's a very crucial one.
I don't think Mr. Shanker is saying that you
should never use a doctor, if you have
cancer, who hasn't himself had cancer.
SHANKER Oh, I didn't say that.
FRIEDMAN: Let's get rid of the idea that the
only people who are competent to judge
about whether a school is good or bad is a
parent who at the moment has
children in that school.
The plain fact is that children
are not born troublemakers.
They do not emerge from the womb -some of
them do, of course, but most of them do not.
Most of the cases of the tough kids in the
schools you're talking about are tough kids
because they're lousy schools.
Because the schools do not
evoke their interest.
Because the school does not -
SHANKER: You're dead wrong. You're dead -
(Several talking at once.)
McKENZIE: Now wait a minute now,
Greg Anrig on this one. Milton, let -
ANRIG: It's not often I have a chance to
tell a professor he's wrong.
With all respect, Professor, the problems that
you see in the urban schools of this country
are not problems of the schools,
they are problems of poverty.
And they are problems of what do you do
when, for demographic and sociological and
economic reasons, in a country like ours,
you begin to concentrate those people
who are poor in the inner and older
parts of the cities of our country.
That's when the problem comes,
and it's not just a problem with schools.
It's a problem of housing, of jobs,
of medical care, of social services,
and the same problems crop up, and to say
that the answer to that is take one part
of that element and say,
"Just set up a competitive marketplace,"
is not dealing with the problem.
The problem is the problem of poverty.
FRIEDMAN: We've dealt with the problem –
THOMAS SHANNON: I am struck with the
anomaly, the anomaly that rises out of this
discussion of the voucher system.
The facts are that government support
call it subventions, call it direct aid,
call it grants in aid, call it vouchers,
call it anything, will lead ultimately to
government control of the private schools,
thus undercutting the alternative nature
of private schooling, and hurting it
at its very source.
COONS: Well, then you ought
to look at our initiative.
FRIEDMAN: We've had long experience with
that on the higher education level.
You have the whole GI Bill.
Did the GI Bill really lead, fundamentally,
to control of all the schools?
There's a fundamental difference between
government giving money to an institution,
to a school, that does lead to control directly,
and government giving money to people to
use, the food stamps don't determine what
people buy with their food stamps.
They may be a good or a bad program,
that's not my point.
My point is that don't underestimate the
crucial difference between making money
available to parents to spend as they choose
to exercise their judgment, and making
money available to institutions like schools,
which they spend, subject to all the
conflicts which they have with
schoolteachers and others.
ANRIG: You use Dartmouth as an example,
and I think the concerns that I have about
the voucher systems, the various ones
proposed, is not with the one applicant that
can get accepted to Dartmouth, but with the
eight applicants that don't
get accepted to Dartmouth.
What's going to happen to those
or that group of youngsters?
You can have a situation in the free
marketplace where everybody takes the
cream, but what about the youngster
that doesn't measure up?
What about the youngster that's a risk?
It seems to me that some of the greatest
leaders of this country were people that
would have been rejected by Dartmouth,
and most of the Ivy League schools.
McKENZIE: Let's get other views on this,
then we'll come back to you, Milton. FRIEDMAN: No, no.
I just want to comment,
because I have to comment on two points,
the one he made earlier about
poverty and this one.
But on this one.
Dartmouth is one of the best examples
of the private schools.
UCLA is one of the best examples
of the state schools.
That's why we chose it.
There are many other private schools which
are not as selective and do not
-are available to people who
can't make the Dartmouth cut.
There are many other public schools,
state schools, that are less advanced than
UCLA and the California system.
There are all sorts of grades of schools.
But the difference between the
two is the same at lower levels.
Now I do want to make one comment going
back to your poverty thing; and that is that,
first of all, other programs in this series deal
with the issues you've raised.
But, second, do not underestimate the role
which bad schooling, provided by our
present governmental mechanism,
has played in creating poverty.
It's been a major source, particularly among
black and white teenagers coming up in the
slums, it's been a major source of their
difficulties of getting out of
the trap of poverty.
So it's not a one-way relation between
poverty and the schools,
the schools themselves bear a
great deal of responsibility.
SHANKER: Well, the reason the schools bear
it, and it isn't the schools directly, it's that
we don't put enough resources in for children
who need special and additional help
because they are not getting it in their
homes, or they're not getting the same sort
of support in home and community as middle
class kids do, and then we wait until the
child is 16 or 17 and drops out,
and then we provide a youth employment
program for them where we spend between
five and ten thousand dollars to try to undo
what could have been undone in the first,
second and third grade if we had a decent
investment in the public schools.
FRIEDMAN: I have never yet known anybody
who was trying to defend a government
program who didn't say all its evils came
from the fact that it wasn't big enough.
Now the facts are -
SHANKER: Would you think the children
with problems need the same
amount of education -
FRIEDMAN: No, no.
SHANKER: -- the same amount as children
who don't have special problems? FRIEDMAN: No, but I just want to
tell you some facts.
The number of students in schools
has been going down.
The total expenditures on schools, allowance
being made for inflation, after allowing
for inflation, has been going up.
The number of pupils has been going down,
the number of teachers has been going up,
and by all accounts the quality
has been going down.
SHANKER: But I have to explain -
(Several talking at once)
McKENZIE: Milton, just a minute.
I want to hold you Mr. Shanker, Mr. Shanker.
We got onto higher education and I don't
want to leave it without getting the
rest of Milton's thoughts on it.
In particular, you seem to be coming to say
at the end of the film that the right answer
is a system of realistic loans where people,
therefore, know what it's costing, rather
than trying to hold down college fees
and that kind of thing.
FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
McKENZIE: Yeah. And-
FRIEDMAN: I think that the higher education
is the most disgraceful example
on the record.
I know of no governmental program that
seem to me is so unfair and disgraceful in
imposing costs on low income people to
benefit high income people.
We in the upper and middle income classes
have conned the poor in this country to
supporting our children in going through
college and university and we don't -- and
we scream to the treetops about how
disinterested and how public-spirited we are.
We ought to have a system under
which everybody who wants to go
to college can go there.
He has to pay his own way, either now or
later on, and the schemes I have in mind, if
we developed them more fully,
and as I have in other contexts,
in other areas, are along the line of the
educational opportunity bank, that Professor
Zacharias of MIT and a commission
appointed by President Johnson came up
with as a way of enabling students to finance
their own higher education without facing
the problem you raised of ending
up with a large dollar debt. ANRIG: I do think --
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig.
ANRIG: With some trepidation, Professor,
I raise a question of taxation.
That is that I agree that we need better loan
systems than we have, but as I understand
the American tax system in general,
as a generality, it is a graduated system. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
ANRIG: It is an equalizing system. FRIEDMAN: Absolutely.
ANRIG: And to reach the conclusion that the
FRIEDMAN: No, no, it is not. It's on paper,
but you've got to look at the facts.
McKENZIE: Let him make his point, yes.
ANRIG: Well, I'm trying to -- it is a system
which the wealthier get -- or the middle
class get taxed more than somebody who's
making a lesser salary.
To say then that the poor are funding -
FRIEDMAN: That's true.
ANRIG: -- public higher educations, where
middle class youngsters, and by the way a
lot of poor youngsters go as well, it doesn't
fit with my understanding at least
of the tax system.
Now I'm not an economist, I admit it.
FRIEDMAN: Well, it turns out that there have
been some very careful studies made of
exactly what you're describing.
There's one particularly careful
one for California.
There's one for Florida.
These show -- it's not a minor item,
that if you take the total receipts from
expenditures on higher education going to
the lower classes, and the total taxes they
pay that are used for higher education, the
lower classes are paying more than they're
getting, and the higher classes are getting
more than they are paying for.
(Several talking at once.)
FRIEDMAN: Now I myself am a
beneficiary of this subsidy.
I'm one of the worst cases on record.
I went to a state school, Rutgers University.
I went on a state scholarship.
The poor suckers in the State of New Jersey
paid for my going to college.
I personally think that was a good thing,
there are many people who have
different opinions about that.
(Laughing)
FRIEDMAN: But I personally think
it's a good thing.
But I don't see that any reason whatsoever
why I shouldn't have been required to pay
back that money.
Individuals pursuing their separate individual
interests also provide public benefits.
Of course I think that the public benefited
from my getting an education, but the
primary beneficiary was me.
I was the one who got the benefit from it.
I was the one who had the higher income.
COONS: We know you benefited from it.
FRIEDMAN: I know I benefited,
I don't know about the public.
McKENZIE: I'd like others of you to react to
the idea of moving from state education at
the higher level, which is based upon low
fees in state universities,
in favor of a loan system.
This has been hotly debated in many
other countries, too.
What's your own feeling about that?
COONS: Being a tenured professor at a state
university I suppose you've really put
me on the spot.
I hope none of my friends are listening.
But I tend to agree in general with Milton
Friedman that we ought to find a way to
open up to all classes, all income classes,
the kinds of opportunities that the middle
class have at my university.
And I cannot give you -- we don't have time
to go through all of the kinds of ways
which we would do it, but I would
just personally, it seems to me, we ought to
let people come free at the beginning
and pay it back out of their income over their
their life span.
So if they make a lot of money, they pay
back a lot of money.
Perhaps we can run the whole university
in the future on their success, to which we
contributed with our teaching.
And if they don't make any money,
they don't pay anything back,
and that's okay too.
FRIEDMAN: And you ought to share in the
losses if they don't.
COONS: Exactly.
I can't think of anything that would frighten
poor people more than the thought
at the end of the four years or six or seven
or eight years of higher education,
they have this albatross around their neck -
COONS: Only if they're rich.
Only if they become rich.
FRIEDMAN: There's no albatross --
would you say the same thing about people
who start businesses?
We've got millions of people who start
private businesses every year.
Many of them lose money.
Many of them make money.
Would you say that nobody is gonna start a
business because he might end up
with an albatross?
You ought to let people
decide that for themselves.
What I really want to know is a very
different thing. How do you justify taxing the
people in Watts to send the children from
Beverly Hills to college?
That's a demagogic statement, but it
happens to be empirically a correct
statement. How do you justify it?
SHANKER: Well I don't know how we justify
taxing all the people of this country
to send the GIs under the GI bill
but I'm very grateful that we did it.
I don't know what this country would have
done in a postwar period without a huge
number of educated people in a whole
bunch of fields that opened up after that.
I doubt very much that the GIs would have
come back at the age that they were
and everything else, and would have decided
that now they're gonna take out loans
SHANNON: And a lot of
them were poor.
in order to go to college.
SHANKER: Yes, they were poor, and they
went because they had government support
to go, and because basically there were
were a lot of state-supported low-tuition
schools, and if you didn't have the state
schools, and if you didn't have the
government support we wouldn't --
we would have been without those people,
and I don't know what would have happened
either to our strength or to our
economy without that.
FRIEDMAN: The history of this country goes
back a little bit before 1945.
It goes back 200 years.
The state schools, universities, were a minor
part of the total higher educational system
for a long time.
That educational system did generate a great
many educated and schooled people,
a great many people who made
great contributions to this country.
SHANKER: What percentage of people went
to college before World War II
in this country?
FRIEDMAN: The percentage that was going
to college was going up and rising.
You know -- let me tell you one -- another
statistic -- I hate to introduce statistics.
But let me tell you one more.
Do you know that the percentage of the
students at private universities who
come from low-income classes is higher than
the percentage of students at state
universities, at government universities,
that come from the lowest income families?
SHANKER: Because they are there with
government assistance.
FRIEDMAN: Most cases they are there with -
SHANKER: They are there with government
assistance, which in many cases favors
the private as against the public schools.
FRIEDMAN: In most cases they are there
with private scholarships that have
been contributed by people -
SHANKER: Some of them,
some of them, yes.
FRIEDMAN: -- which is all to the good.
McKENZIE: Dr. Anrig on this.
ANRIG: We come back to the point that I
tried to make earlier with Dartmouth.
The reason the public higher education
system developed, the reason that you
have the UCLAs and others, is not simply
that government went amuck or bureaucrats
went that way; but because eight of those
students were not getting into Dartmouth,
and there was not a place for them.
And it was public higher education that
opened up its doors to those students.
Those are the youngsters that now have an
opportunity they wouldn't have had before.
I think on the issue of loans that it's as with
all complex human tasks,
it's not an either/or situation.
You need a mix of strategies.
I think you need a mix of strategies on the
issue of alternatives for
youngsters in schools.
I think you can have, as indeed you do have
alternatives within public school systems.
I think you can have alternatives
within schools.
I think you can have competition through
open enrollment kinds of arrangements.
I am fearful, however, always, for those
eight youngsters than can't get in to
something which is basically selective
and exclusive. If you can assure us -
FRIEDMAN: Well, let's go back -
ANRIG: -- that those eight youngsters all will
be provided with equal attention,
equal opportunity and equal rights, then I
would begin to be more
interested in the alternative.
FRIEDMAN: But I want to suggest to you
that we're not proposing, neither Jack Coons
nor I, to dismantle anything.
We're only saying, put up or shut up.
Either show that you can produce the kind
of education people are willing to go and get,
or reduce your size, go out of business.
We are only proposing that there be a
wider range of alternatives.
Now, it is not true -- let me put a
different point to you.
There are a small minority of people
who are problems.
Is it desirable to impose a straightjacket on
a hundred percent of the people, or ninety
percent of the people, in order to provide
special assistance or special help to four
or five or ten percent of the people?
Not at all.
I think that there's a big difference between
two kinds of systems; one kind of system
in which the great bulk of parents have
have effective freedom to choose the kind
of schools their children go to, whether at
the lower or the higher level.
And there are programs and provisions for
a small minority. That's one kind of a system.
That isn't what we have now.
What people in the public school system,
people like yourselves do, they do not
want to give up the monopoly of the
public school system any more than
the Post Office wants to give up
the monopoly of delivering mail.
ANRIG: I think you attribute the
monopoly desire to the bureaucrat.
And I don't think that's right.
The concern of the public school is for being
sure that every youngster in this country
gets access to a public education.
FRIEDMAN: Excuse me. You have had an
attempt to introduce voucher experiments
around the country. Every one of those
attempts, as at Alum Rock and elsewhere,
has been prevented by the opposition
of the educational bureaucracy.
ANRIG: Oh, but, no, no, you can't --
that's a glittering generality.
FRIEDMAN: That was true in New Hampshire,
it was true in Connecticut.
SHANKER: It was not true in Alum Rock
because, Alum Rock was not what you might
call a voucher system' it was a kind of a
system of free choice within public schools.
And whereas one school did better in its
scores, others did worse, and when you
measured the whole system when it was all
over, the scores were exactly the same as
before, except that some students had
moved to other schools and the grades were
better in one school as against another.
We do very strongly oppose a voucher
system, which will end up with public schools
being abandoned and thereby destroyed,
largely. They will become the schools for
those who can't get in anywhere else,
or who are expelled elsewhere.
SHANKER: Because if you compel public
schools to educate all children, including the
most difficult, and if you have other
schools, that have
FRIEDMAN: It isn't compelling public schools,
its compelling parents
SHANKER: No, no, it's public schools.
The public school cannot say to a parent,
"Your child is very difficult. Your child throws
things. Your child screams & yells.
Your child takes all the attention
of the teacher. Therefore, get out and go find
a private school."
On the other hand, you have hundreds of
private schools in this country where when
they get a very disturbed child, out that child
goes. And where does that child go?
The public schools must take him.
FRIEDMAN: But look at -
SHANKER: And that's what we have.
We have one system of schools which cream,
and which throw out the most difficult --
you know, it would be like the hospital
throwing out all the sick patients
and keeping the healthy ones.
McKENZIE: Well, there we leave
this week's discussion.
We hope you'll join us for the next episode
of Free to Choose.
For more infomation >> Cena do Ocarina?! - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD #27 - Legendado PT-BR - Duration: 30:01. 
For more infomation >> [GRINDER ODDSHOT] Načúral do pohára! :D - Duration: 0:29. 
For more infomation >> Budweiser: Do que Você é Feito? #ThisBudsForYou - Duration: 0:36. 
For more infomation >> Instalação Básica do The Dude 6.39.1 no RouterOS - Duration: 14:24. 
For more infomation >> Study: Black Holes do Have Event Horizons, aka 'Point of No Return' - Duration: 0:57. 
For more infomation >> TJ Aparecida | Economista explica impacto do crescimento do PIB na vida do brasileiro - 02 de junho - Duration: 3:45. 
For more infomation >> Destaques da semana: fim do foro privilegiado, eleição direta e reforma trabalhista - Duration: 1:07. 
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét