School Vouchers and Prisons

The other day, I wrote about public ownership. It seems clear that natural monopolies, upon which the public depend and for which the public are expected to pay, should be under public control. This need not mean statism. Companies could be established to which the public elect directors, or which function as non-profit companies with autonomous, non-political representatives of the public in charge.

Models as diverse as Minnesota airport or the Spanish railways spring to mind. I think that power utilities, large airports, and water services are obvious candidates for social accountability on an honest basis.

However, the religion of the state is not particularly good, in my experience, for the educational sector, of which I have some experience. In many cases, private sixth-form colleges, and independent schools, are much better than state ones at providing education.

The national curriculum in England is a standing temptation to the state to attempt to engineer the minds of the young and a menace to education. Private, local providers accountable to parents are surely the only people who can make a decision as to what it is acceptable for children to think, or say.

Most Christian religions, which provide the bulk of religious schools in England, are more inclusive and diverse, and more accountable, in my experience, than most of the state's doctrinaires. Religious schools, regulated under a code of respect for others, are better at instilling discipline and education than state schools, except where the middle classes distort the system by inflating house prices within a particular school district.

In any event, if schools taught people intellectual discipline and self respect, their religious culture would not matter, because they would be able to see through nonsense. If the state devalued education so as to force a sort of mush mix of anxiety and self-scrutiny rather than critical self-awareness on minds, people would fall for anything. They would be, as lots are, unequipped for life.

So the choice, as far as I can see, is twofold. We can either have school vouchers, starting at sixth-form and primary level, with the state taking care of most secondary education until or unless the private sector can, or we have a system of complete state schooling.

Monocultures are a bad thing, generally, in public life as in nature. It is better to be diverse, especially when to be so is a logical imperative. Citizens in a democracy have a duty to educate their children and a right to have access to schools. To add to that by saying, 'the state should impose those schools or ban those of which it does not approve' seems to me to miss the point. Giving people the money to choose their school, and allowing to the school the perils of testing by reputation, procedures and curriculum, seems to me sensible.

The case extends to the universities too. Lots of British universities are now filled by timeservers and certifiable people who have never really worked for a living, and who think of themselves as in an 'industry'. Some see their function as preparing people for work whilst institutionalising group think, petty scheming, and outrage. Some spend their time on mad political schemes, or 'campaigns' that depend upon an atmosphere of political correctness and intellectual repression.

Time and again, the real interests of students are lost in such a fetid swamp, which also encourages graduate students to speak in frankly stupid and obscure ways in order to get on.

Many universities also provide a thorough, serious training in the life of the mind, and serious vocational and professional training. At the moment, it is difficult in Britain to separate the good from the bad. The obvious answer is to allow the universities to accumulate endowments, or to give them one endowment, and to float them free to sink, swim or merge as masters of their own ships.

We need rid, in our decadent west, of an army of people who do nothing except use our money to tell us what to do and what not to do whilst doing nothing productive themselves. Freeing education from their grip, whilst administering those vital things for which we as citizens are currently being fleeced, would be a great start.

We also need far fewer supermarkets and far more prisons, with sentences less geared towards community penalties and more to a spot of time 'inside'. And the state should ultimately control those prisons because that which deprives you of your liberty should show itself and be responsible for how it does it. Perhaps people could be given a chance to be exposed to proper education whilst they serve; lecture franchises in prison, anyone?