Without government who will build the schools? It’s a stupid question since nongovernment schools have existed for ages but it’s a question statists love to ask. They seem to think that single question justifies the existence of the State. So I’m going to answer it. People who are sick of the poor quality of education will build the schools:
A libertarian businessman based in Raleigh, North Carolina, Luddy made his fortune as the owner of the nation’s leading manufacturer of commercial kitchen ventilation systems. CaptiveAire has factories in six states, and its 2016 revenues were $400 million. But what does fabricating stove hoods and building HVAC systems have in common with turning out successful students? More than you might think.
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In 2007, he decided to take a more radical step by creating a non-profit network of schools called Thales Academy. Influenced by economist Albert Hirschman’s classic 1970 treatise on political science, Exit, Voice and Loyalty, Luddy conceived of Thales as a way to give families “exit.”
“‘Voice’ is [when] you go to vote [or you] express an opinion…Exit…is like Uber…where someone comes up with an entirely new idea, they bypass the existing industry, and they get amazing results.”
The first thing statists are likely to complain about is that Thales Academy charges tuition. Supposedly schools that charge tuition put education out of reach of poorer families. But as anybody who has been to a school in a poorer neighborhood knows, even though every family is forced to pay tuition for the school (although they use the euphemism of taxes) the quality of education is usually subpar (and that’s being extremely generous). In other words, the complaint is equally applicable to both private and public schools.
What should be considered is that even though public schools they are so bad at providing an education that Mr. Luddy still decided to invest a portion of his wealth to build an alternative education system. That right there speaks volumes about the quality of government schools.
I’ve heard claims that there was a higher literacy rate in the U.S. in the first half of the 19th Century than there is today. All schools were private then, and the populace, while largely very poor, scraped together the wherewithal to get their kids an education. Of course, liberals today would scream at the way schools were organized: there were no expensive layers upon layers of bureaucracies to ensure everything was properly done.