Milton Friedman on Schools and vouchers
There 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.
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Milton Friedman, “Public Schools: Make Them Private” (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., 1995), Congressional Record, March 28, 1995, p. 9552. https://miltonfriedman.org/quotes/hardly-any-activity-technically-more-backward-1995
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He also said
I believe that the only way to make a major improvement in our educational system is through privatization to the point at which a substantial fraction of all educational services are rendered to individuals by private enterprises. Nothing else will destroy or even greatly weaken the power of the current educational establishment—a necessary precondition for radical improvement in our educational system. And nothing else will provide the public schools with the competition that will force them to improve in order to hold their clientele.
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. Earlier in the article he names the school establishment, reinforced by the two national teachers’ unions, as the main obstacle to vouchers.
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. 9552Throughout 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.
Free to ChooseColumn, 2005, The Wall Street Journal, June 9, 2005; reprinted in Hoover Digest 2005 No. 3 under the title “Free to Choose”Checked against the sourceRead the sourceJust as banks all around the country were closing, the Fed raised the discount rate; that's the rate they charge for loans to banks. Bank failures consequently increased spectacularly. We might have had an economic downturn in the thirties anyway, but in the absence of the Federal Reserve System—with its enormous power to make a bad situation worse—it wouldn't have been on anything like the scale we experienced.
Interview with Milton FriedmanInterview, 1973, Playboy, February 1973; reprinted in There’s No Such Thing as a Free Lunch (Open Court, 1975), p. 5Checked against the sourceFind the book
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