Transcripts For CSPAN3 American 20240704

Hello, im Robert Mackenzie and welcome again to the university of chicago. It was here in 1976 that Milton Friedman, professor of economics, learned that hed been awarded that years nobel prize for economics, science, university. Is, in a sense, his intellectual and professional home. And thats why free to choose has been coming here for the past several weeks. Now, the subject tonight is education. And its often pointed out that theres intense dissatisfaction in many quarters with the state of Public Education. Billions poured in of taxpayers money. Yet too many youngsters leaving School Without adequate skills in reading and other such equipment theyll need later on in life. Well, now, when that happens, what can be done about it . Milton friedman, himself a teacher most of his life, has diagnosed the problem, and he believes he has a solution. As well see in this film. These youngsters are beginning another day at one of americas Public Schools, Hyde Park High School in boston. What happens when they pass through those doors is a vivid illustration of some of the problems facing americas schools. What you get, they have to pass through mentally texas. Theyre faced by security guards looking for hidden weapons. Theyre watched over by armed police. All. Of that has to. Isnt that awful . What a way for kids to have to go to school through metal detectors and to be searched. What can they conceivably learn under such circumstances . Nobody is happy with this kind of education. The taxpayer is surely armed. This isnt cheap education after all those uniformed policemen, those metal detectors have to be paid for. And what about the broken windows and the torn schoolbooks and the smashed School Equivalency . The teachers who teach here dont like this kind of situation. The students dont like to come here to go to school and most of all, the parents, they are the ones who get the worst deal. They pay taxes like the rest of us. And they are just as concerned about the kind of education that their kids get as the rest of us are. They know their kids are getting a bad education, but they feel trapped. Many of them can see no alternative but to continue sending their kids to schools like this. Thats. To go back to the beginning. It all started with a fine idea that every child should have a chance to learn his three rs. Sometimes in june, when it gets hard, the kids come out in the yard to do their lessons. All 15 of them ages 5 to 31, along with their teacher. This is the last one room schoolhouse still operating in the state of vermont. That is the way it used to be. Parental control. Parents choosing the teacher. Parents monitoring the schooling. Parents even getting together and chipping in to paint the schoolhouse as they did here. Just a few weeks ago for parental concern is still here as much in the slums of the big cities as in bucolic vermont. But control by parents over the schooling of their children is today. The exception, not the rule. Increasingly, schools have come under the control of centralized administrations. Professional educators deciding what shall be taught, who shall do the teaching, and even what children shall go to what school . The people who lose most from this system are the poor and the disadvantaged in the large cities. They are simply stuck. They have no alternative. Of course, if youre welloff, you do have a choice. You can send your child to a private school or you can move to an area where the Public Schools are excellent. As the parents of many of these students have done. These students are graduating from Western High School in one of bostons wealthier suburbs. Their parents pay taxes instead of tuition, and they certainly get better value for their money than do the parents in hyde park. Thats partly because theyve kept a good deal of control over the local schools and in the process, theyve managed to retain many of the virtues of the one room schoolhouse. Andrew greene and margaret carlson, are you students here like barbara king . Get the equivalent of a private education. They have excellent recreational facilities. What is his how does his plan differ . They have a Teaching Staff that is dedicated and responsive to parents and students. Barbara is decisive and hes a read. Theres an atmosphere which encourages learning. Yet the cost per pupil here is no higher than in many of our inner city schools. The difference is that in weston it all goes for education and that the parents still retain a good deal of control. Unfortunately, most parents have lost control over how their tax money is spent. Ava bell goes to hyde park high. Her parents, too, want her to have a good education. But many of the students here are not interested in school, and the teachers, however dedicated soon lose heart in an atmosphere like this. David bells parents are certainly not getting value for their tax money. I think its a shame really that a parents are being ripped off like we are. When i say im talking about parents like me, that work every day scuffled to try to make you know, to try to make ends meet. We send our kids to school hoping that theyll receive something that will benefit them in the future. But when they go out here and compete in the job market, unfortunately, theyre none of that is taking place out of hyde park. Children like eva are being shortchanged by a system that was designed to help. But there are ways to give all parents more say over their childrens schooling. This is a fundraising evening for schools supported by a voluntary organization. New yorks inner city scholarship fund. The prints that have brought people here have been loaned by a wealthy japanese industrialist. Events like this have helped raise 2 million to finance catholic, Parochial Schools in new york. The people here are part of a long america tradition. The results of their private, voluntary activities have been remarkable. This is one of the poorest neighborhoods in new york city, the bronx. Yet this Parochial School supported by the fund, is a joy to visit. Boys and girls, were are going to start the workshop now. You start out with task one, put the words in alphabetical order. The answers are the youngsters here from poor families or at saint john. Chris stems because their parents have picked this school and their parents are paying some of the costs from their own pockets. The children are will behaved, eager to learn. The teachers are dedicated. Contrary destruction. How old are you . Six. Six. What are you working on . The cost per pupil here is far less than in the Public Schools. Yet on the average, the children are two grades ahead. Thats because teachers and parents are free to choose how the children shall be taught. Private money has replaced tax money and so control has been taken away from the bureaucrats and put back where it belongs. This doesnt work just for younger children. In the sixties, harlem was devastated by riots. It was a hotbed of trouble. Many teenagers dropped out of school. Grew groups of concerned parents and teachers decided to do something about it. They used private funds to take over empty stores. And they set up what became known as storefront schools. One of the first and most successful was harlem prep. It was designed to cater to students for whom conventional education had failed. Kennedy was a very dangerous president in the sense that he was excessively popular. Many of the teachers didnt have the right pieces of paper to qualify for employment in Public Schools. That didnt stop them from doing a good job here. A lot of the students have been misfits and dropouts. Here they found the sort of teaching they wanted. After all, they had made a deliberate choice to come to harlem prep. It was a very successful school. Many students went on to college and some to leading colleges. But after some years, the school ran short of cash. The board of education offered ed carpenter, the head of the school and one of its founders, tax money, provided he would conformed their regulations. Love him and we got along nicely. I know youre busy, but sometime after a long battle to preserve independence, he finally gave in. The school was taken over by bureaucrats. And i know he does, but i was a little bit hurt. And basically, we have a three. I felt that a school like holland prep would certainly die and not prosper under the rigid bureaucracy of a board of education. We had to see what was going to happen. I didnt believe it was going to be good. Im right. What has happened since weve come to the board of education has not all good. Its not all bad, but its more bad than good. Now, again, we do find things that the categories. But the categories really what . The school may not look different yet. But 30 of the former teachers have gone. Ed carpenter has resigned. The school is being moved to a Traditional School building. No one except maybe the bureaucrats, is very optimistic about its future. Unfortunately, the strangling of successful experiments by bureaucrats is not unusual. The same thing happened in california at a place called alum rock. For three years, parents at this school could choose to send their children to any of several specially created mini schools, each with a different curriculum. The experiment was designed to restore choice to those who were most closely involved. The parents and the teachers are probably the most significant thing that happened was the teachers for the first time had some power and they were able to build the curriculum to fit the needs of the children as they saw it. The state and local school board did not dictate the kind of curriculum that was used and a lot of School People became more involved in the school. They attended more meetings. Also, they had a power to pull their child out of that particular mini school. If they chose another mini school, at least in my opinion, was giving parents greater choice, had a dramatic effect on educational quality in terms of test scores. This school went from 13th to second place among the schools in its districts. But the experiment is now over. When school resumed after the summer vacation, this was just another Public School. Back in the hands of the bureaucrats. Giving parents a choice is a good idea. Yet it always meets with opposition from the educational establishment. This is ashford, the town in the south of england for four years. There have been efforts here to introduce an experiment in greater parental choice. Parents would be given vouchers covering the cost of schooling. They could use the voucher to send their child to any school of their choice. I have long believed that children, teachers, all of us would benefit from a voucher system change. But the headmaster here, who happens also to be secretary of the local teachers union, has a very different views about introducing vouchers. We see this as a barrier between us and the parent. This sticky little piece of paper in their hand coming in and under duress, you will do this all else. We make our judgment because we believe its in the best interests, in the best interest of every village and every little johnny that weve got and not because someones going to say, if you dont do it, we will do that. Its this sort of philosophy of the marketplace that we object to. It really means. In other words, mr. G objects to giving the customer, in this case the parent, anything to say about the kind of schooling his child gets. Instead, the bureaucrat should decide to strike. So we are answerable to parents and to our governing bodies through the inspectorate to the Kent County Council and to her majesty. Her majestys inspectorate to the secretary of state. These are people, professionals, who are able to make professional judgments. But things look very different from the point of view of parents. Jason wongs parents had a fight. The bureaucracy, the professionals for a year before they could get him into the school that they thought was best suited to his needs. As the present system stands, i think we virtually parents have got no freedom of choice whatsoever. They are told what is good for them by the teachers. They are told that the teachers are doing a great job. And ive just got no say at all. If the voucher system were introduced, i think it would bring teachers and parents together. I think closer the parent that is worried about his child would send or remove their child from the school that wasnt giving a good service and take it to one that was. And if a school is going to crumble because its got nothing but vandalism, its generally slack on discipline. And the children arent learning well. And thats thats a good thing from my point of view. Even good schools like this would benefit from a voucher system, from having to shape up or see parents, take children elsewhere. But thats not how it looks to the headmaster. Im not sure that parents know what is best educationally for their children. They know whats best for them to eat. They know the best environment. Environment they can provide at home. But weve been trained to ascertain the problem of children, to detect their weaknesses is to put right those things that need putting right. And we want to do this freely with the cooperation of parents and not under under any undue strains. Well, i can understand the teacher saying, yes, its a gun at my head, but theyve got the same gun at the parents head at the moment. The parent goes up to the teacher and says, well, im not satisfied with what youre doing. And the teacher can say, well, tough, you cant take him away. You cant move him, you cant do what youre like. So go away and stop bothering me. That can be the attitude of some teachers today and often is. But now that the positions are being reversed and the roles are changed, i can only say tough on the teachers. Let them pull their socks up and give us a better deal and let us participate more in america. There is one part of education where the market has had extensive scope. Thats Higher Education. These students attend dartmouth college, a private school founded in 1769. The college is supported entirely by private donations. Income from endowment and student fees. It has a high reputation and a fine record. 95 of the students who enroll here complete their undergraduate course and get a degree. So the students here pay high fees. Fees which cover most of the cost of the schooling which they get. Most of them get the money from their parents, but some are on scholarships provided either by dartmouth or by outside sources. Still others take out loans to pay the costs of schooling loans which they will have to pay back years later. Still, others work either during the school year or during the summer to pay the costs. Many students work in the colleges own hotel. This girl is helping to pay her own way, which is pretty good evidence that shes serious about getting an education for the bush. Sure, its a lemon and butter sauce that folk parents have perspective students come here on shopping expeditions to check out the product before they buy them. This is of a reservation. What you have here is a private market in education. The college is selling schooling. The students are buying schooling. And as in most such markets, both sides have a strong incentive to serve one another. For the college. It has a strong incentive to provide the kind of schooling that its students want. If it doesnt, they can simply pick up and go elsewhere for the students. They want to get their moneys worth. They are customers and like every customer, everywhere, they want to get full value for the money they are paying. I really would like to know where the chromium is. Vining. I know school ties. There is some stuff youre interested in. So much of the success. Here comes from the fact that students understand precisely the costs involved and they are determined to get their moneys worth. Different compounds that they send you sheet saying how much everything costs all the time so that you know exactly you can break it down per lecture. And when you see each lecture costing 35 and you think of the other things you can be doing with a 35, youre making very sure that youre going to go to that lecture. Many of the buildings and facilities at dartmouth have been donated by private individuals and foundations like other private universities. Dartmouth has combined the selling of monuments with the provision of education, and the one activity reinforces the other full program. And the students, in effect, earn part of their keep by helping to solicit alumni for contributions, knowing full well that they will be solicited in their turn. We could get any sort of pledge from you. Be greatly appreciated. Its another way in which the real value of education is brought home this year. All right. Thank very much how much the alums really because of your donations. So people like you that im able to go to dartmouth, otherwise id be paying more than 12,000. So i thank you. You pay about 50 of our tuition is up. I dont know if youre aware, but thats fine. Actual pledges. This may not be the usual idea of an economic market, but it is nonetheless a marketplace where buyers can choose and sellers must compete for custom. For the 19th. So you dont realize that too. What happens when the educational market is distorted . Look at state colleges and universities. Their fees are generally very low paying for only a small part of the cost of schooling. They attract serious students just as interested in their education as the students at dartmouth or other private schools. But they also attract a great many others students who come because fees are low. Residential housing is good, food is good. And above all, there are lots of their peers. Its a pleasant interlude for them. The university of california at los angeles. For those students who are here as a pleasant interlude, going to class is a price they pay to be here, not the product they are buying. We frequently wind up with people who cannot compete favorably with with even the average person here. There is a magnet here for everything. We have the best weather, practically speaking, in the country. Hollywood is here. Beverly hills is here. The social scene, the, you know, Television Industry in this country is centered here. The justification for using tax money to support institutions like this is supposed to be so that every youngster, regardless of the income or wealth of his parents, can go to college. A few youngsters from poor families are here, but not very many. Most of these students are for middle and upper income families. Yet everybody, whatever is income, pays taxes to help support these institutions. That is a disgraceful situation. Its hardly what Public Education was all about. These students are being subsidized by people who will never go to college. That means that on the average, people who will end up with higher incomes are being subsidized by people who will end up with lower incomes. And in addition, the quality of undergraduate education is poor. Undergraduate teaching is not what ucla is famous for. Aside from a two athletic teams, uclas reputation is for graduate work and research. Faculty members have every incentive to do research. Thats the way to advance in their profession. They have much less to gain by good teaching. I think we ran well over, didnt we appreciate everybody staying. But we will have our examination on tuesday. Only about half of those who enrolled at ucla complete the undergraduate course. Compare that with the 95 of dartmouth who finish the work for their degrees. What a waste of student time. And what a waste of taxpayers money. I didnt. What should we do about this disgraceful situation . We must not deny any young man or woman who desires one an education, an everyone who has the capacity and the desire to have a Higher Education should be enabled to do so, provided they are willing to undertake the obligation to pay the costs of their schooling either currently or in later years. Out of the higher income that their education will make possible. We now have a Governmental Program of loans, which is supposedly directed to this objective, but its a loan program in name only. The Interest Rate charged is well below the market rate. Many of these loans are never paid back. We must have a system under which those who are not able or do not go to college are not forced to pay for those who do. As weve seen, the market works in education. When people pay for what they get, they value what they get. The market works in Higher Education. The state of being uneducated, you dont know enough. It can also work at the level of primary and secondary education. If hearing it right. Given the until we change the way we run our Public Schools. Far too many children will end up without being able to read, write or do arithmetic. Thats not what any of us wants. The system is not working and it is not working because it lacks a vital ingredient. The experts, meanwhile, but a centralized system cannot possibly have that degree of personal concern for each individual child that we have as parents. The centralization produces deadening uniformity. It destroys the experimentation that is a fundamental source of progress. What we need to do is to enable parents by vouchers or other means to have more say about the school which their child goes to. A Public School or a private school, whichever meets the needs of the child best. That will inevitably give them also a more say about what their children are taught and how they are taught. Market competition is the surest way to improve the quality and promote innovation in education, as in every other field. The distinguished guests tonight are all intimately concerned with the world of education. So lets find out how they react to friedmans analysis. I think its very foolish to throw out something that youve got and that has some shortcomings. But is is very, very good in order to try out someones pet ideas. Well, before we asked you, milton, reply to that. Lets get other views on that same quotation. Market competition is the surest way to improve the quality and promote innovation in education. John koons well, of course theres enormous evidence that that is exactly right. And we see it in the case in california that i observe every day of low income children who are whose families are making great sacrifices to go to schools that operate at a third of the cost of Public Education and are turning out kids who are performing and are learning and achieving at very high levels. The other hand, i wouldnt want to suggest that the that unlimited competition is the answer to every problem and indeed the whole definition of competition is very ambiguous. Seems to me that if one is truly interested in liberty, which i think is the ultimate value, that Milton Friedman talks about, one has to be very careful how he structures the kinds of subsidies that are proposed for education so that you do not wind up with the poor in one kind of school and the rich all in the other, and very little liberty for low income people left over, which is what i think he has in mind. I dont think he has that result in mind. He has the hope in mind of liberty, but that its going to need a certain kind of tailoring before it works that way. I think your remarks about free competition are a are a very unfair for very simple reason. You cannot have free competition where one group of schools must accept every single student who comes along no matter what his physical or emotional handicaps or the problems. Whereas the very essence of a private school in your Voucher School is that theyre going to be able to keep out the students and that and the the finest schools that you saw in that film were schools that deliberately kept out the most difficult students. Of course, you can have a Wonderful School if you pick students who are whose parents, you know, know, those whose parents are are so highly motivated that theyre willing to spend more money and willing to go out of their way to do Something Like that. And the Public Schools have to take the handicapped must provide bilingual education, must engage in bussing or other programs in terms of integration, must do all of these things, whereas the private school can come along and say, well, if your child has no problems, you know what we can do . We can offer you a school where you dont have to sit next to a child with these other problems. Were going to put you next to other children who are advantaged. I think in the real world, there is no competition between private schools and Public Schools because private schools, especially Parochial Schools, do not have to comply with federal and state mandates and constitutional limitations and things of that sort. Dr. Hedwig i think the part of the film that speaks to the greater. Parental involvement, i agree with very enthusiastically. However, i think the solution is the wrong solution for the problem that you identify. I think the role of Public Education in a democracy is not akin to that of the marketplace. The purpose for the Common School is not the same as the purpose for the for the marketplace. We are trying in our Public Schools to create a democracy, to create and elect educated electorate. If youre going to do that, you have to have the Common School. How far do you accept his analysis of the present condition of the Public Education system . A pretty drastic analysis. Well, i think hes established three strawmen that i think have to be challenged. All respect, professor friedman. The first is that there is a profession of educators out there which is run amuck. We have the most decentralized system the world in the american education. 16,000 School Districts that are governed, not by the profession, but by elected citizen representatives, most of whom are parents. Secondly, you long as i would for the good old days of the one room school in vermont that schools served a small proportion of the youngsters for a short period of time. And those days will never come back. Third uses an example of american education, a troubled high school in an urban center that bailiwick and my bailiwick, which is not typical of where the american student goes to school, first of all. And secondly is typical of the city of boston. And i do think its important to point out that thats particular school at the time that you took the filming there or your production crew did was in the middle of a desegregation process that was not anywhere remarkable out in the film. So it was not a typical example either of education in america or of education in boston. But one unsurprising thing about these comments is that all of the opposition to allowing the market work comes from people who have a very strong vested interest in the present Public School system. I am not proposing we are not proposing to destroy the Public School system. We are only asking that the Public School system should be free to compete, should open to competition. If it is really as good as you people make it out to be, it has nothing to worry about. Now, in terms of your comment, of course, theres a great deal of decentralized action. We showed a very good school in this film, as well as a very dense school. There are many good schools and the more decentralized the control, in my opinion, the more satisfied victory is the schooling. The real problem is concentrated in those areas where decentralization is broken down, where you have moved too much greater centralization, much greater. And the main trouble areas are in the large cities. Thats why we picked that school to show. In response to the question of the excellence of the schooling thats coming, i think there is nobody who can question the declining sat scores, a declining scores on exams, the declining performance in the schools, the fact that there is widespread dissatisfaction that many schools, not all schools, some schools in urban areas are more accurately described as centers to keep people off the street than as educational institutions. When you have a free market, there are dangers that go along with that market. Now we know that there are people there are people in our society who buy consumers reports, and there are people who do a great deal of research before they buy something. And there are other people who are taken in by the crass commercial labels and instant appeal to give them some sort of a gimmick with the thing. And i think that the evidence is pretty clear that if you take middle class and wealthy of families, theyre going to do a good deal of research. They may very well be able to invest some additional of their own to take some inconvenience. And if you have an open system, this sort may very well be that the poorest parents are going to have to take what is most convenient for them, what is going to fit in with their own works schedules, what is not going to require additional sums of money. And there is no doubt in my mind that you set up a system of a free choice of this sort. Youre going to end up with the poor in one set of schools of their own on the basis of a good deal of gimmicks that will be like, excuse me. Well, i want to ask you one question. How do you explain the fact that there is no area of the free market, no area of the private market in which the poor people who live in the ghettos of our major cities are as disadvantaged as they are with respect to the kind of schooling they can get. I want you to name me any aspect of the private market there, not as disadvantage in the kind of supermarkets they can go to. Theyre not as disadvantaged even in the kind of housing they can occupy as they in respect of the kind of schooling their children can go to. However, as for that, i dont think you have any evidence for that. Theyre trying to get out. Theyre trying desperately to get out. Families who have very low incomes are trying to get into the Parochial School that youre talking about. They may go and they try to get out of the slums. Theyre trying to get into different neighborhoods and try doing better on that with theyre doing better on that. And instead, in a free choice system, you would have more heterogeneous schools. In my opinion, far less segregation by social, economic class. And you now have become. What you would like itself that doesnt hold up on the executive use. Excuse me. It so happens that right now the Parochial Schools are the only alternative really available to low income people. So they know all the children who want to get in and reason for that is that its hard to sell something when other people are giving it away. Anybody who wants to send child to a nonPublic School or has to pay twice for it once the form of taxes and wants in the form of tuition under the kind of Voucher Scheme the jacksons and i would support, that difficulty would be eliminated. You would now have a situation in which the low income people would have the kind of bargaining power, the kind of possibility of choice that those of us who are in the upper income groups have had all along. I want to move jackson jacksons i want you to come in now. I know you are in principle advocating the voucher system. Could you give us the case as you see it . I know youve got your differences with milton on it, but lets have the case. What we are doing in california is as a form of change, possible change, proposing a change in which lower income will get information along with the opportunity to go to any of their choice and transportation to get there. Of course they need information. Anybody needs information, a market, and they need information from independent sources, not from the schools themselves. And thats the way the initiative is designed to come from independent sources. We believe that ordinary people can make the best judgments for their children about where they should go if theyre given good, professional advice. And it also helps teachers because they can, for the first time, be professional. They can act like real professionals because they dont have a captive audience. They dont dominate their client. They respect their client and they deal with them on the basis of contract. What could be better for teachers . And for the first time they become people who are dealing in a democratic and respectful way with clientele now instead of with captives. I am concerned that a voucher systems will lead towards havens for flight will lead towards a dual School System in the sense that you have one School System operating under one set of rules. The other school, the Public School system operating under a carefully articulated education. No policy in any given state. And thats why i think mass angeles county, the movement to private schools last year was less a smaller percentage than in the statewide pattern. You may have five or 10 of the students write very severe problems and come from families with very severe problems. And those students take up 95 of the time of the teachers and the administrators and the other children arent getting an education. Now youre going to set up your Voucher School or your Voucher School is going to accept these tough. You bet they are. Well, have those children. They if they ask me a question. Yes. If they answer the question, i accept those. Ill tell you whats going to happen. Now, you tell me. And then i whats going to happen is that the parents of all the other children are going to move right out and go to another school, because ultimately they are going to have to deal with with hard core problem jon cohen whether its a private school or whether its in a public. In other words, that kid isnt tough. And the kid in the school that hes in because hes stuck there, hes just a rotten, tough kid. With a lot of problems that you cant imagine. You cant imagine in a situation where if he were given choice and allowed to go to a school that he liked and to which he would connect emotionally, that he would no longer be a troublemaker, but that he would like to stay in a place where he has chosen and would therefore do what is necessary to stay there and to learn. You know, i dont think youve been there. Schools or classrooms. Thanks a lot. I ive i happen to have five kids whove done a lot of time in public and private schools, both. Well, were not talking about the problems that your children around the table. Ive i want a no no i have to get to this point because i think its a very crucial and i dont think mr. Shanker is saying that you should never use a doctor if you have cancer who hasnt himself had cancer. Lets get rid of the idea that the only people who are competent to judge about whether a school is good or bad, a parent who at the moment has children in that school. The plain fact is that children are not born trouble makers. They do not emerge from the womb. Some of them do, of course, but most of them do not. Most of the cases of the tough kids in the schools youre talking about are tough kids because theyre a lousy school, because the schools do not evoke their interest, because the school does not attend your that your your choice. Wait a minute, greg. Anything other milton . Its not often i have a chance to tell a professor hes wrong. That weve all respect professor. The problems that you see in the urban schools of this country are not problems of the schools. Theyre problems of poverty. And their problems are what do you do when for demographic and sociological and economic reasons, in a country like ours, you begin to concentrate those people who are poor in the inner and older parts of the cities of our country. Thats when the problem comes. And its not just a problem with schools. Its a problem of housing, of jobs, of medical care, of social services. And the same problems crop up. And to say that the answer to that is take one part of that element and. Say, just set up a competitive marketplace is not dealing with the problem. The problem is the problem of poverty. Weve dealt with the and i am struck with the anomaly, the anomaly that arises of any of this discussion of the voucher system. The facts are that governments, sport call it subventions, call it direct aid, call it grants and aid, call it vouchers, call it anything, will lead ultimately to government control of the of the private schools. Thus undercutting the alternative nature of private schooling and hurting it at its very source. Well, and you ought to look at our initiative that did the on the Higher Education level, you had the whole gi bill. Did the gi bill really lead fundamentally to control of all the schools . There is a fundamental difference between government giving money to an institution, to a school that does lead to control directly, and government giving money to people to use the food stamps dont determine what people buy with their food stamps. They may be a good or a bad program. Thats not my point. My point is that dont underestimate the crucial difference between making money available to parents to spend as they choose to exercise their judgment and making money available to institutions like schools which they spend subject to all the conflicts which they have with schoolteachers and others. You dartmouth, as an example, and i think the concerns that i have about the vouchers, the voucher systems, the various ones proposed is not with the one applicant that can get accepted, dartmouth, but with the eight applicants that dont get accepted to dartmouth. Whats going to happen to those great that group of youngsters . You can have a situation in the free marketplace where everybody takes the cream. But what about the youngster that that doesnt measure up. What about the youngster . Its a risk. It seems to me that some of the greatest leaders of this company, a country where people that would have been rejected by dartmouth and most the Ivy League Schools get all their views on this, they would come back to you. I just want to come a comment because i have to comment on two points. The one he made earlier about poverty in this one. But on this one, dartmouth is one of the best examples of the private schools. Ucla is one of the best examples of the state schools. Thats why we chose. There are many other private schools which are not as selective and do not are available to people who cant make the dartmouth cut. There are many other Public Schools, state schools that are less advanced than ucla in the california system, there are all sorts of grades of schools. But the difference between the two is the same. At lower levels. Now, i do want to make one comment. Going back to your poverty thing, and that is that first of all, other programs in this series deal with the issues that youve dealt, youve raised. But secondly, do not underestimate the role which bad schooling provided by our present governmental mechanism has played in creating poverty. Its a major source, particularly among black and white. Coming up the slums. Its been a major source of their difficulties of getting out of the trap of poverty. So its not a one way relation between poverty in the schools of schools of themselves. There are a great deal of rich Business Schools better, and it isnt the schools directly. Its we we dont put enough resources in for children who need special and additional help because they are not getting it in their homes or theyre not getting the same sort of support in home and Community Middle class kids do. And then we wait until the child is 16 or 17 and drops out. And then we provide a Youth Employment program for them where we spend between five and 10,000 to try to undo what could have been undone in the first, second and third grade. If we had a decent investment. I never known anybody who was trying defend a Government Program who didnt say all of the evils came from the fact that it wasnt big enough. Now the fact is, take the children with problems, need the same amount of education, the same amount as just one social problem. Tax the number of students in schools has been going down. The total expenditures on schools allowance being made for inflation after allowing for inflation has been going up. The number of pupils has been going down, the number of teachers going out, the quality is melting. I want all that wonderful except for a moment. Those costs we got on to Higher Education. Now that ought to leave it getting the rest of miltons thoughts on it. In particular, you seem to be coming to say at the end of the film that, the right answer is a system of realistic loans where people therefore know what its costing rather than trying to hold down college fees and that kind of thing. Absolutely. Yeah. And i think that the Higher Education is the most disgraceful example on the record. I know of no Governmental Program that seems to me is so unfair and disgraceful in imposing costs on low income people to benefit high income people. We in the upper and middle income classes have conned the poor in this country to supporting our children in going through college and university. And we dont even we we scream to the treetops about how disinterested and how public we are. We ought to have a system under which everybody who wants to go to college can there. He has to pay his own way, either now or later on. And the schemes i have in mind, if we developed and more fully and as i have in other contexts and other areas, are along the line of the Educational Opportunity bank, then professors zacharias of m. I. T. And a commission appointed by president johnson came up with as a way of enabling students to finance their own Higher Education without facing the problem you raised of ending up with a large i do think doctrine with some trepidation with the professor i raise the question of taxation that is that i agree that we need better loan systems than we have. But as i understand, the american tax system in general as a generality, it is a graduated system, it is an equalizing system. And to reach the conclusion that is not its on paper, but you got to look at. Well, what im trying it is a system which the the wealthier get or the middle class gets taxed more than somebody is making a lesser salary. To say then that the poor are funding. Thats true public Higher Education where middle class youngsters and by the way, a lot of poor youngsters go as well. It doesnt fit with understanding, at least the tax system. Now, not an economist, i admit it. When it turns out there have been some very careful studies made of exactly what youre describing. Theres one particularly careful one for california. Theres one for florida. These show in very its not a minority them that if you take the total receipts from expenditures in Higher Education is going to the lower classes and the total taxes they pay that are used for Higher Education, the lower educational lower classes are paying more than theyre getting and the higher classes are getting more than they are paying for. Now, im myself a beneficiary of this of the subsidy. Im one of the worst cases on record. I went to a state school, rutgers university. I went on a state scholarship. The poor suckers in the state of new jersey paid for my going to college. I personally think that was a good thing. And many people who have different opinions about that. But i i dont see any reason whatsoever why i shouldnt have been required to pay back that money. Individuals pursuing their separate individual interests also provide public benefits, of course, i think that the public benefited from my getting an education, but the primary beneficiary was me. I was the one who got the benefit from it. I was the one who had the higher income or you benefit. I know ive had it. I dont know. Thats the problem. I like others. If you direct those, the idea of moving from state education to the higher level, which is based upon low fees and state universities in favor of a loan system. This is the hotly debated in many other countries too. Whats your own feeling about that . Being a tenured professor at a State University . I suppose you really put me on the spot. I hope none of my friends are listening, but i tend to agree in general with Milton Friedman that we ought to find a way to open up to all classes, all income classes, the kinds of opportunities that the middle class have at my university. And i cannot give you. We dont have time to go through all of the kinds of ways in which we would do it. But i would just personally, it seems to me we ought to let people come free at the beginning and pay it back out of their income over their life span. So if they make a lot of money, they pay back a lot of money. Perhaps we run the whole university in the future on their success to which we contributed with our teaching. And if they dont make any money, they dont pay anything back and thats okay too. And you are saying your share in the losses, if they exactly. I cant think of anything that would frighten poor people more than the thought at the end of the four years or six or seven or eight years of Higher Education, they have this albatross around their neck only if theyre rich. Theyre not our future. Theres no albatross. Would you say the same thing about people who start businesses . Youve got millions of people in this country who start private businesses every year. Many of them lose money. Many of them make money. Would you say that nobody is going to start a business because he might end up with an albatross . You ought to let people decide that for themselves. What i really want to know a very different thing. How do you justify taxing the people in whats to send the children from Beverly Hills to college . Thats a demagogic statement, but it happens be empirically a correct statement. How do you justify it . Well, i dont know how we justify taxing all the people this country to send the gis under the gi bill. But im very grateful that we did it. I dont know what this country would have done in the postwar period without a huge number of educated people in a whole bunch of fields that opened up after that. I doubt very much that the guys would have come back at the age that they were and Everything Else and would have decided that now theyre going to take out loans, but a lot of in order to go to college. Yes, they were poor and they went because they had Government Support to go and because basically there were a lot of state supported low tuition schools. And if you didnt have the state schools and if you didnt have the Government Support, we would we would have been without those people. And i dont know what would have happened either to our strength or to our economy. Without that, the history of this country goes a little bit before 1945. It goes back 200 years. The state schools, universities were a minor part of the total Higher Educational system for a long time. That educational system did generate a great, many educated and School People, a great many people who made great contributions to this country. I think people went to college before. Well, percentage was going. The percentage that was going to college was going up and rising. You know, you let me tell you one another statistic. I hate to introduce statistics, but let me tell you one more thing. Do you know that the percentage of the students at private universities who come from low income classes is higher than the percentage of students at state universities and government universities that come from the lowest income as. They are there with government assistance. Most cases of that with government assistance, which in many cases favors the privates as against the public. In most cases, we come back with private scholarships that have been contributed, some of them which some of the good doctor. And we go we come we come back to the point to try to make earlier with dartmouth the reason the public Higher Education system developed the reason that you have the ucla and others is not simply that government went to buck or bureaucrats went that way, but because eight of those students were not getting into the darkness and there was not a place for them and was public Higher Education that opened up its doors to those students. Those are the youngsters that now have an opportunity that they wouldnt have had before. I think on the issue of loans, that its as with all complex human tests, its not an either or situation. You need a mix of strategies. I think you need a mix of strategies on the issue of alternatives for youngsters in schools, i think you can have, as indeed you do have alternatives within Public School systems. I think you can have alternatives within schools. I think you can have competition through open enrollment kinds of arrangements. I am fearful, however, always for those eight youngsters that cant get in to something which is basically selective and exclusive. If you can assure us that those eight youngsters all will be provided with equal attention, equal opportunity and equal rights, then i would begin to be more interested in the alternative. But i want to suggest to you that were not proposing neither. Jared kushner on to dismantle anything. Were only saying put up or shut up. Either show that you can produce the kind of education people are willing to go and get or reduce your size. Go out of business. We are only proposing that there be a wider range of alternatives. Now it is not true. No. Let me put a different point to you. There are a small of people who are problems. Is it desirable to impose a straitjacket on 100 of the people or 90 of the people in order to provide special assistance or special help to four or five or 10 of the people . Not at all. I think that theres a big difference between two kinds of systems, one kind of system in which the great bulk of parents have effective freedom to choose the kind of schools their children go to, whether at the lower or the higher level. And are programs and provision for a small minority. Thats one kind of a system that isnt what we have now. What people in the Public School system, people like yourself do, they do not want to give up the monopoly of the Public School system any more than the post office wants to give up the monopoly of delivering. No, i think you attribute the monopoly desire to the bureaucrat, and i dont think thats right. The concern of the Public School is is for being sure that every youngster in this country gets access to a Public Education. Excuse me. You have had an attempt to introduce voucher experiments around the country. Every one of those attempts as an alum rock and elsewhere, has been prevented by the opposite ation of the educational bureaucracy. Oh, but no, no, you cant. Thats a generality, which in New Hampshire it was true. In connecticut, ohio, an alum rock because alum rock was not what you might call a voucher system. It was a kind a system of free choice within Public Schools. All right. And whereas one school did better and it scores others did worse. And when you measured the whole system, when it was all over, the scores were exactly the same as they were before, except that some students had moved to other schools and the grades were better in one school as against another. We do very strongly oppose a voucher system which will end up with Public Schools being abandoned and thereby destroyed. Largely, they will become the schools for those who cant get in anywhere else or who are expelled elsewhere because if you compel Public Schools to educate all children, including the most difficult, and if you have other schools in compelling Public School systems telling parents, no, no, its public, the Public School cannot say to a parent, your child is very difficult. Your child throws things, your child screams and yells. Child takes all the attention of the teacher. Therefore, get out and go find the private school. On the other hand, you have hundreds of private schools in this country where when they get a very disturbed child out, that child goes in. Where is that child go . The Public Schools must take them, but look at them. And thats what we have. We have one system of schools which cream and which throw out the most difficult. You know, it would be like a hospital throwing out all the sick patients and keeping the healthy ones so that we leave this weeks discussion. The other side of you, i hope you join us for the next episode. Free to choose the course. Or should Consumer Protection agencies have the right to decide for us what we eat and drink . And where should government have the power to rule on what medicine doctors are allowed to prescribe . Or should we all be free to decide for ourselves . Dont miss free to choose. Next week. This is the code that the system uses right now. The the way