The School Revolution (16 page)

Y
ou have arrived at the end. Thank you for sticking with me this far. An author always knows that not all the readers who start his book will finish it. Sad, but true. Listeners usually do not walk out during someone’s speech. But readers put down a book never to pick it up again.

I don’t know if you have already
made the transition to homeschooling. If you have, then I have been preaching to the choir. That’s okay. Choirs need a good sermon every so often. If every chapter is a sermon, you have heard several.

On the other hand, you may be on the fence. You are not sure if you are ready to switch from the convenience of tax-funded schools. (They
are
convenient…until a school-based disaster strikes
a family.)

I have probably lost those parents who are convinced that they, as individuals, can somehow get together with like-minded parents to reform the local public schools. Parents have been attempting this since about 1840. This strategy has not worked well. In recent decades, it has not worked at all.

By now, you know the major themes of this book. Some are
negative. Most are positive.

With respect to the negative themes, there is this: tax-funded education has been corrupted by money from on high, state and federal money. Federal money always brings federal control. State money has the same effect on local school districts: loss of local control, meaning centralization. Funding always identifies the locus of sovereignty in any organization.
Follow the money. It leads back to Washington, DC.

Second, there has been a measurable decline in the performance of tax-funded schools. This began long before I entered school, but it has accelerated ever since the mid-1960s. This decline has not been limited to academics. The moral environment has also decayed. Safety has declined. Yet the cost per student has risen relentlessly,
adjusted for inflation. In 1961 the average cost in year 2000 dollars was around $2,800. In 2008 it was close to $11,000.
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This decline is becoming visible to more and more people, especially parents. Voters are beginning to figure out they do not live in Lake Wobegon. All the local schools are not above average. Worse, the average is declining. The lowest common
denominator keeps getting lower.

When we look at the big picture, we may be tempted to despair. There has been educational reform after reform for over a century. None has worked. Each reform is abandoned as a fad. But none of them was called a fad by the reformers when it was introduced. The reforms become fads only in retrospect. Example: the “new math” fad of the late 1960s. I’ll
tell you some people who learned the new math well: congressmen. The trouble is, Congress has yet to abandon new math. The schools did forty years ago.

The big picture is like an iceberg. All the local critic has is a blowtorch.

This leads me to the other major themes of this book. They are positive. They are positive because of the little picture. The little picture is
your
picture. You have the authority to veto the public school system inside the four walls of your home. You do not have to cooperate any longer.

The phrase “vote with your feet” was applied for decades to people who escaped from Soviet nations. The border guards tried to prevent this form of voting.

In Germany today, it
is illegal to homeschool your children. Across Europe it is illegal. The bureaucrats inside the schools have persuaded the politicians to make voting with your children’s feet illegal. This is not true in the United States. Yes, there are government restrictions on homeschools. There are petty interferences with parental sovereignty. But this is not Germany. There are ways to take your children
out of traditional schools and keep them out.

The cost of doing this keeps dropping. Salman Khan’s Khan Academy teaches students around the world free of charge. Others will imitate him. There is a flood of homeschool materials today, not the trickle of 1980. There is a wide range of choice, and this will grow wider. The economist says, “When the price falls, more is demanded.” Demand
is rising fast.

Adam Smith taught a unique doctrine in his day. He said that when individuals pursue their self-interest in an open economy, they create wealth. This wealth benefits the entire society. He described this in
The Wealth of Nations
. He called for the removal of restrictions on free men’s decisions to seek what they believe is best for themselves and their families.

The same argument applies to privately funded education. When parents become buyers of educational services in a free market, they do so in the name of their children. By turning to the free market for solutions to their problems in gaining the educational training they want for their children, they benefit society. They promote competition among producers of educational programs.
The supply then increases. The division of labor increases. Output increases. The range of choices increases.

The departure of a child from a tax-funded school sends a message to local public school administrators: “Improve the schools or suffer negative consequences.” For every child who is removed, the local district loses funding from the state. This pressures administrators to cut
costs. It pressures them to try a new reform.

As surely as sending an e-mail pressures the U.S. Postal Service to cut costs, so does the departure of a student from a local school. Parents get the educational program they want for their children. As a side effect, this pressures local administrators to fix the system. If the administrators refuse, then other parents will get the message.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a bestselling book titled
The Tipping Point
. I especially like its subtitle:
How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
. It was published in 2000. That book has made a big difference, and a lot of money, too. The book rests on a line of reasoning that is not intuitive. Gladwell describes major social changes as epidemics.
They have the characteristic features of epidemics. He identifies the three characteristic features: contagion, small causes, and the transition from gradual change to a dramatic moment when everything seems to change all at once. This is a powerful metaphor. But it has a glaring defect. Epidemics recede rapidly. Social changes sometimes do, but sometimes they don’t. They can take hold of a society,
for good or ill. They can become permanent.

The homeschooling movement is small but dedicated. The public schools are fat and complacent. It looks as though the idea of tax-funded education is permanent. The exodus from the schools is minimal. But this David versus Goliath situation can be reversed. I believe it will be reversed. When Washington’s checks bounce, it will be
reversed.

A generation ago, a very fine American historian named Clarence Carson wrote a book,
The World in the Grip of an Idea
. That idea was socialism. The book was published in 1979. It argued that the whole world was being influenced by individuals who believed in socialism. The idea was spreading. It is not spreading today. It has retreated from the public arena.

In 1996, Carson wrote an article that looked back on that book published a dozen years before the fall of the USSR in 1991. He admitted that the fall of the Soviet Union was a major setback for socialists of all varieties. In my view, it was more than a major setback. It was an unexpected event that undermined the very word
socialism
. In short, it was a tipping point. There is Keynesianism
today. It is the preferred system for government intervention for every country outside of North Korea. But this is not socialism: the state’s ownership of the means of production. It is the same old welfare state dressed up in formulas and jargon. But I agree with Carson’s closing words:

I believe that family-run, family-funded education is an important component of any program of anti-Keynesian reform. It
starts small, the way that Gladwell says an epidemic starts. It starts with you. As Leonard E. Read always said, reform must begin with us. The most effective way to reform the tax-funded schools is for dedicated parents to remove their children from those schools. The only way to persuade a senior bureaucrat to reform his bureaucracy is to reduce its funding. Every time a child is removed from a
local school, the district loses state funding. That catches the bureaucrats’ attention. The more often it happens, the more it catches their attention.

This does not require any political action. It does not require mobilization of any kind. It does not succeed or fail based on voters showing up at the polls. All it takes is parents deciding to bring their children home. No more yellow
buses. No more peer pressure for fashion updates. No more PTA meetings. No more parent-teacher conferences. Just a desk; some inexpensive supplies; maybe a few textbooks, or maybe none, if the program is entirely digital and online, the way mine is. (With my curriculum, all the books the students use are printed out, with only one exception in kindergarten, and one in high school: Hayek’s
Road
to Serfdom
. It’s a paperback.)

I am well aware of just how big a commitment this is. It will change the way parents interact with their children. Parents can no longer be spectators who talk briefly with their children during unscheduled moments in between school, TV, YouTube, texting, and Skype. I am assuming that you would like
to speak with your children about important matters before the day the person at the college dorm desk hands the room key over to your last child to leave home.

Let’s consider a few of the costs.

Time:
A parent (usually the mother) must spend several hours a day with young children to help them with school-work. But with a well-designed curriculum that rests on a strategy
of self-teaching and student tutorials, this time declines steadily after grade three. As children get older, they can and should teach themselves. By high school, the curriculum should be 98 percent self-taught. The parent’s main task is to read writing assignments. The rest of it is taken care of.

Money:
The costs are mostly textbook costs. If you can avoid textbooks by
relying on public domain materials online, you can eliminate this expense. If you use an online curriculum, the costs are mainly paper and toner. A well-designed curriculum does not require physical textbooks.

Some programs are 100 percent free. Salman Khan’s program is not complete, but he offers free math videos. My curriculum, when completed (target date: early 2015), will
be free through the fifth grade. Kindergarten and third grade are available now. This gets families started. After fifth grade, it costs about what a textbook-based curriculum does. If you shop around, you can find online materials that are free or close to it.

Then there is forfeited income. If the mother is in the workforce, she will have to quit her job. Or if she is the major breadwinner,
the father will have to quit. But don’t forget to deduct the costs of participation in the workplace: taxes, child-care costs, commuting costs (time and car maintenance), wardrobe costs, food costs, and a whole host of others. There is also workplace pressure. There is the corporate rat race. All this gets left behind in the name of spending far more time raising and teaching your children.

Paperwork:
Most states require homeschooling parents to keep records of what their children have studied. This is minimal. If you have your children do simple writing from at least the second grade, plus arithmetic worksheets, that is plenty. I recommend that homeschool families join the Home School Legal Defense Association. It supplies lawyers in a crisis. Local school districts like
to avoid dealing with an HSLDA lawyer.

Frustration:
From time to time, homeschool teachers hit an emotional brick wall. On a bad day, the teacher thinks she is not qualified, that nothing seems to work. But this is true of every job. I surely had days like that in my twenty-three years in Congress. But the next day will be better. Things get rolling again.

Peer Pressure:
It is not just students who suffer from peer pressure. It is also their parents. Friends, relatives, and colleagues who still trust the local tax-funded schools find many reasons to dismiss homeschooling. It is just too radical. It breaks with the community.

They ask questions. “What about social skills?” Answer: “You mean like turning down drug dealers
politely?” “What about sports?” Answer: “There are community sports leagues.” “What about cheerleading or other activities?” Answer: “My daughter prefers community service and her part-time job, which pays for her college courses.” “What college courses?” Answer: “CLEP exams.” “What are CLEP exams?” Answer: “They are exams administered by the College Board, which also administers SAT exams. For ninety
dollars a high school student can test out of a semester in college—maybe even two semesters. She wants to earn her BA from an accredited college on the day she graduates from high school. The whole deal costs about fifteen thousand dollars. Her part-time job pays for it. It costs about eleven dollars a day. So we don’t have to pay for her college. Just search Google for ‘college’ and ‘$11.’”