Milton Friedman on Schools and vouchers
Throughout this long period, we have been repeatedly frustrated by the gulf between the clear and present need—the burning desire of parents to have more control over the schooling of their children—on the one hand, and the adamant and effective opposition of trade union leaders and educational administrators to any change that would in any way reduce their control of the educational system.
Context. From an essay written fifty years after his 1955 article “The Role of Government in Education,” in which he first proposed school vouchers. “We” is he and his wife, with whom, he writes, he set up a foundation to promote parental choice. Just before, he lists the limited voucher and tax-credit programs then in effect.
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Milton Friedman, “Free to Choose” (The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2005; reprinted in Hoover Digest 2005 No. 3 under the title “Free to Choose”, 2005). https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/gulf-parents-desire-unions-administrators-control-2005
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The key difference, and it is crucial, is that parents—and not government bureaucrats—would decide what schools their children attend. In the process, they would also decide which schools got more funds and which less, and parents who chose private schools would be relieved, at least in part, from having to pay twice for schooling their children—once through taxes, once through school fees. The result would be to give teachers and administrators a strong incentive to meet the wants of their real customers—the students. “The customer is the boss” is the characteristic slogan of a competitive market. Vouchers would make that slogan apply to schooling.
Context. From the book’s chapter on education. Just before, the Friedmans describe versions of a school voucher plan and say that none of them changes where the money for schooling comes from: all citizens, with children or without, would still pay taxes to finance it. “The key difference” is the difference from the present system.
Tyranny of the Status QuoBook, 1984, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Ch. 8 “Education”, p. 156 (with Rose D. Friedman)Checked against the sourceFind the bookIn general, I have little sympathy with trade unions. They have done immense harm by restricting access to jobs, denying excluded workers the opportunity to make the most of their abilities, and forcing them to take less satisfactory jobs. Yet surely in the present instance they are right that it is inequitable for the Government retroactively to void contracts freely arrived at. The way to reduce the monopoly power of unions is to remove the special legal immunities they are now granted, not to replace one concentrated power by another.
Context. From the second of two New York Times op-ed essays on the wage and price controls, October 1971, on what enforcing the Phase II pay board and price board would do to ordinary people.
Morality and Controls: IIColumn, 1971, The New York Times, October 29, 1971; reprinted in the Congressional Record, Senate, October 29, 1971, p. 38202, introduced by Senator Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon, who dates the two essays to “the October 28 and 29 editions of the New York Times”. The reprint heads it only “Morality and Controls”; the date is the senator’s., Congressional Record, October 29, 1971, p. 38202Checked against the sourceRead the originalThere is enormous room for improvement in our educational system. Hardly any activity in the United States is technically more backward. We essentially teach children in the same way that we did 200 years ago: one teacher in front of a bunch of kids in a closed room.
Context. From a February 1995 Washington Post article arguing that American elementary and secondary schooling must be radically reconstructed by privatizing much of it, through a universal voucher that lets parents choose their children’s schools, a plan he first proposed in 1955. He goes on to say that only competition from private enterprise, as in other industries, would bring real innovation in how children are taught.
Public Schools: Make Them PrivateColumn, 1995, The Washington Post, February 19, 1995; reprinted in full in the Congressional Record, Extensions of Remarks, March 28, 1995, pp. 9551 to 9552 (E703 to E704 in the daily edition), inserted by Representative Philip M. Crane., Congressional Record, March 28, 1995, p. 9552
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