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Do away with public schools


Ohanian Comment: Here is Goldberg's bio from the National Review website. But read on. You may get a little shock of surprise. All this certainly sets the context for who this is, saying to abolish public education.



Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online for which he writes his thrice-weekly column "The Goldberg File" and a contributing editor to National Review. Goldberg also writes a nationally syndicated column distributed by Tribune Media Services, which appears often such newspapers as the Kansas City Star, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Times, the Orlando Sentinel, San Francisco Chronicle, the Manchester Union Leader, and others. He also writes a regular media criticism column for The American Enterprise magazine. Mr. Goldberg was a contributing editor and columnist for the now-defunct Brill's Content.

Mr. Goldberg is also a CNN contributor and regular panelist on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. He is an occasional guest-host on Crossfire and has appeared on numerous television and radio programs.

Since Mr. Goldberg became editor of National Review Online, it rapidly become one of the dominant players in web journalism, earning high praise from The Columbia Journalism Review, Vanity Fair, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Christian Science Monitor. The New York Press concluded that National Review Online is "by far the best political online operation going today."

Jonah Goldberg is a former television producer who has credits in a wide range of productions. He was the senior producer of Think Tank with Ben Wattenberg, the award-winning public-affairs program and he has written and produced two PBS documentaries. Prior to his work in television Mr. Goldberg was a researcher at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington DC. An award-winning journalist, his writing has appeared in The New Yorker, Worth, the Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, the New York Post, Reason, The Women's Quarterly, The New Criterion, Food and Wine, The Street.com, and Slate.



And in case you've forgotten, here's a reminder from Wikipedia:



Goldberg's career as a pundit was launched following his mother Lucianne Goldberg's role in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.

Goldberg has spoken of his mother and the Lewinsky scandal:

"My mother was the one who advised Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and to save the dress. I was privy to some of that stuff, and when the administration set about to destroy Lewinsky, Tripp, and my mom, I defended my mom and by extension Tripp...I have zero desire to have those arguments again. I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton's trousers."

These tapes became the focal point of the Lewinsky scandal. Jonah Goldberg was privy to the tapes and the conversations Lucianne Goldberg had with Ms. Tripp because he served as a vice president of his mother's now-defunct literary agency. When the scandal broke, Goldberg defended his mother and Ms. Tripp during the ensuing media firestorm




And now this fellow is a regular at the LA Times. The Times dropped liberal columnist Robert Sheer and hired bottom feeder Jonah Goldberg.

I think there's plenty wrong with public schools, but people who call them "government schools" reveal their bias right away. Next, you can be sure they'll trot out Milton Friedman. Goldberg doesn't disappoint. This whole rant is just a come-on for vouchers.

Jonah Goldberg

Government is inept at running schools. It should subsidize education for needy students, then get out of the way.

HERE'S A GOOD question for you: Why have public schools at all?

OK, cue the marching music. We need public schools because blah blah blah and yada yada yada. We could say blah is common culture and yada is the government's interest in promoting the general welfare. Or that children are the future. And a mind is a terrible thing to waste. Because we can't leave any child behind.


The problem with all these bromides is that they leave out the simple fact that one of the surest ways to leave a kid "behind" is to hand him over to the government. Americans want universal education, just as they want universally safe food. But nobody believes that the government should run 90% of the restaurants, farms and supermarkets. Why should it run 90% of the schools — particularly when it gets terrible results?

Consider Washington, home of the nation's most devoted government-lovers and, ironically, the city with arguably the worst public schools in the country. Out of the 100 largest school districts, according to the Washington Post, D.C. ranks third in spending for each pupil — $12,979 — but last in spending on instruction. Fifty-six cents out of every dollar goes to administrators who, it's no secret, do a miserable job administrating, even though D.C. schools have been in a state of "reform" for nearly 40 years.

In a blistering series, the Post has documented how badly the bureaucrats have run public education. More than half of the District of Columbia's kids spend their days in "persistently dangerous" schools, with an average of nine violent incidents a day in a system with 135 schools. "Principals reporting dangerous conditions or urgently needed repairs in their buildings wait, on average, 379 days … for the problems to be fixed," according to the Post. But hey, at least the kids are getting a lousy education. A mere 19 schools managed to get "proficient" scores or better for a majority of students on the district's Comprehensive Assessment Test.

A standard response to such criticisms is to say we don't spend enough on public education. But if money were the solution, wouldn't the district, which spends nearly $13,000 on every kid, rank near the top? If you think more money will fix the schools, make your checks out to "cash" and send them to me.

Private, parochial and charter schools get better results. Parents know this. Applications for vouchers in the district dwarf the available supply, and home schooling has exploded.

As for schools teaching kids about the common culture and all that, as a conservative I couldn't agree more. But is there evidence that public schools are better at it? According to the 2006 National Assessment of Educational Progress history and civics exams, two-thirds of U.S. high school seniors couldn't identify the significance of a photo of a theater with a sign reading "Colored Entrance." And keep in mind, political correctness pretty much guarantees that Jim Crow and the civil rights movement are included in syllabi. Imagine how few kids can intelligently discuss Manifest Destiny or free silver.

Right now, there's a renewed debate about providing "universal" health insurance. For some liberals, this simply means replicating the public school model for healthcare. (Stop laughing.) But for others, this means mandating that everyone have health insurance — just as we mandate that all drivers have car insurance — and then throwing tax dollars at poorer folks to make sure no one falls through the cracks.

There's a consensus in America that every child should get an education, but as David Gelernter noted recently in the Weekly Standard, there's no such consensus that public schools need to do the educating.

Really, what would be so terrible about government mandating that every kid has to go to school, and providing subsidies and oversight when necessary, but then getting out of the way?

Milton Friedman noted long ago that the government is bad at providing services — that's why he wanted public schools to be called "government schools" — but that it's good at writing checks. So why not cut checks to people so they can send their kids to school?

What about the good public schools? Well, the reason good public schools are good has nothing to do with government's special expertise and everything to do with the fact that parents care enough to ensure their kids get a good education. That wouldn't change if the government got out of the school business. What would change is that fewer kids would get left behind.

— Jonah Goldberg
Los Angeles Times
2007-06-12
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg12jun12,0,4683079.column?coll=la-opinion-center

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