Kid Prison–And I’m Not Talking About Juvie…

Bryan Caplan misnamed his recent tour-de-force on the failures of the American education system.

The Case Against Education should be entitled The Case Against Schooling, as the great Gene Epstein has pointed out. Still, Caplan’s research and arguments lead to the ultimate conclusions that Brett Veinotte at the SchoolSucks Project and Tom Woods among others have been stating for years. Schooling is the scam–forget about the rich and connected getting their kids into USC: That is all about prestige. I can guarantee you that celebrity kids are not going to their preferred college because the labs are so advanced.

If the American public education system ever had a bout of uncharacteristic honesty and transparency, it might produce the following ad for its “program”:

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Who’s ready to be bored to death while acquiring only basic literacy and numeracy for the next 14 years of your life?

At the low, low price of only $170,000 (much more if you sign on for 4 more years of what we call “college”), we’ll be sure to teach you geometry and other subjects that you’re sure to never use, rendering you totally ill-prepared for employment in the modern, global economy.

Trust us: We’ve been doing this, i.e. mandating this since Bismarck’s Prussia in the 19th century. As a special bonus for your compliance, we’ll indoctrinate you so thoroughly in the notion that government exists as the only institution able to provide remedies to social and economic ills that you’ll be, in very short order, as complacent and obedient as the soldiers and bureaucrats that the “program” churned out in ol’ Iron Chancellor Otto’s day.

Call 1-800-PUBLIC-ED today to register just like the draft. Warning: failure to do so will land you in our other prison system.

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With few competitors and no market incentive to be actually responsive to the students it serves, the American public school system runs on dollars plundered from the taxpayers and serves only the state for statist ends.

Free the schools, and you will free minds to be operated by free people.