This is a little overdue, but I tend to go away from computers and other electronicy things on the weekends, and so I didn’t see the request for a new post until this morning. I apologize for the delay.
Late last week, a lively discussion arose in the comments under the Comment of the Week post concerning Penn Jillette, his views on public education, and the libertarian (or Libertarian) wing of the skeptical movement. The problem was, only a handful of the folks posting comments in that thread were involved in the discussion, so we decided to post a main entry for those who may not have been reading the CotW, and to allow the discussion to continue without bogging down Rebecca’s already awesome thread. (Sorry, there aren’t really any twins.)
First, I suggest you read the pertinent comments under the CotW post (comment #s 2, 5, 9, 10, 11, 17, 18, 19, 20, 23, 27, 28). That’s where the meat of this discussion is, but I’ll give you a brief back story:
At The Amaz!ng Meeting, during Penn & Teller’s disturbingly weak question and answer session, Penn made what, to me, appeared to be an offhand remark to the effect that all public schools should be abolished. It seemed he was more in favor of making education available within a free market framework than he was for doing away with education completely.
Now, I don’t get tingly with anticipation to find out what Penn’s political views are, so I personally didn’t give it another thought. Thankfully, however, Skepchick readers pay much better attention than I do to these types of things, and our friend, Joshua, very correctly pointed out my mistake by linking to this Penn & Teller interview.
Seems there is more to it than I had originally thought. Both Penn and Teller appear to hold to the notion that nothing resembling any conventional education system is required for every child to learn what most of us picked up in public schools.
In addition to that, there were some questions raised about apparent inconsistencies in Penn’s thinking. Blake Stacey pointed out:
I found it just a little weird when Penn Jillette said that we should abolish the public school system and make ‘em all private and then turned around to complain about what Hearst did to commercialize, sensationalize and ruin the press.
At any rate, we just wanted to make this discussion available to everyone. So take a few moments to read through the comments in the CotW thread, and feel free to continue the discussion here.
I think what Steve Novella said on the live podcast (cause SOME of us unmoneyed folks couldn’t get to TAM to hear it in person. Maybe I’ll publish a TAM wrap up of my week at home…Thursday: Ate a sandwich. Asked for no mayo, but there it is. WTF? Friday: I saw a dog, I think.)…
Anyway… before I got sidetracked, I was just going to say that what Steve said on that show was about right: politics, oftentimes, is about what you value rather than what you can prove or disprove. Sure, some claims can be analyzed and debunked or vetted…but quite often it comes down to what YOU think is best…
I’m going to come right out and say that my LEAST favorite part about the atheistic/skeptical blogosphere is when people’s politics get involved beyond the level of church/state separtion. I’ve talked about this with Joshua and Blake before, I’m sure, but to reiterate: there’s little I find more infuriating than when people on ANY side of an issue just label everyone one way. The point was brought up in the previous thread and, at least, there was some ground given that only SOME libertarians are cooks or suffer cooks lightly.
But as someone who considers himself an independent with empathy for philosophical libertarianism and classical liberalism, there’s nothing that puts me off a discussion sooner than seeing “Libertarians are drug-addicted, Ayn Rand worshipping gunfetishists” or what have you. I don’t own a gun, and have no desire to read anything Rand has written, yet I’m still put off by that.
SO anyway, yeah. When it comes down to what arguing about what one values and, indeed, the right way to preserve whatever that may be, arguments tend to go moot or negative really quickly. Hope we can avoid that.
(By the way “The Drug Addicted Ayn Rand Worshipping Gun Fetishists” would be a great band or album name…)
@Expatria, “kooks” or “cooks”?
I’m still confused about this Penn stuff.. I guess I’m gonna have to go back and read everything..
I listened to Penn’s Radio show back when it was on the air (and on Podcast) and his main point on any issue, was that he wasn’t comfortable with the idea that the government was taking money to do things. That doesn’t change for him if it’s NASA, Science Funding, Schools, Health Care, FDA or any government systems (except Courts, Police and Military). I think he was a little naive in some of his sentiments about he didn’t think the government could do a good job in these areas, but the main points of his arguments has been that we should not be giving the government that much power over our lives.
With that said, I have heard him state, that going private would be a better system in every case, which I think could be addressed scientifically. The SGU specifically addressed the argument that a private watchdog group could work better than the FDA (which is not correct if you look at post-DSHEA). For Penn however this is a value judgment and he would not trust the government to such things.
On a side note, the Radio Show was an excellent one in general. He does push Libertarian ideals a lot on the show, but also science and skepticism (along with guests like Randi, Dawkins, Phil Plait and call in people like Skepchicks’ very own A) along with Monkeys.
I’ll read the comments when I get the time a little later, but I just wanted to hit a couple of points right off the bat:
First of all, Penn should have said “government schools” and not “public schools.” The free market absolutely allows for privately-run public schools.
Second, I think Blake Stacey is confused on the free market vs. corporatism. Hearst did what he did through corporatism. There’s no place for that in a free market. You only get that when the corporations can lobby the government to do their bidding. Hearst used his newspapers to sensationalize events in order to get the government to respond with legislation (sound familiar?) and used them to swing public opinion in favor of candidates he supported (again, sound familiar?). He himself was even elected to the House, remember.
I think the commingling of corporations and government is as dangerous if not moreso than the commingling of religion and government.
I found Shemer’s comment about the fallacy of people assuming the government can always provide service X better to be a bit of a straw man. One could make a similar criticism of libertarianism that they make the assumption that the free market can always provide X better.
The fact of the matter is that this is a caricature, and I think few people make either assumption all the time. Most of us realize there are somethings the government are better suited to do and some things the free market is better suited to solve. However, the free market will not solve every problem because it may be optimizing for the wrong thing.
I wish I had Shermer’s exact words, but I don’t. If anyone knows them, please enlighten me because I may be putting words in his mouth.
i was also a big fan of penn radio, and from listening to that, my understanding of penn’s position is that he is always in favor of more freedom.
the problem, as i see it, is in deciding what kind of freedom you want, and figuring out how to make sure everyone gets that freedom.
if you turn education over to the free market, people’s ability to be educated will become more tied to their economic status than it is now. so you would be giving people the financial freedom of not having to pay the government to administer schools, but they would lose the freedom afforded to everyone by having reasonably equal educational access.
penn has argued that he sees corporations stepping in to fix this problem (eg: microsoft schools). it’s possible this could work, but do we really want our educational system to be administered at the whims of corporations? what happens if they have a bad year and the stockholders decide they don’t want to invest in the school anymore? when it comes down to it, corporations exist to make money, and i’m not sure they’d have the public interest at heart in such an endeavor.
in a lot of ways, it seems to me that the libertarian view is to do away with the idea of “the public interest” entirely. while i agree that government could be better, i think it is pretty much a fact of life if we want to live in any kind of organized society.
i think the market does many things well, and other things not so much. it’s not a panacea. like most things in life, the answer lies not on the extremities, but somewhere in the middle: the grey area. i, for one, like grey.
@Tina: BOTH! Not all Libertarians are totally crazy, and not all of them capable of preparing a souffle! :-P Well-spotted. I’ve been painting little wooden discs all day, I’m surprised my post had even that much lucidity!
carrd2:
That is a nice, to the point version of the 1000 word essay I was contemplating writing. It is eery how similar it is to what was in my head. Not so eery that I believe in psi, though. :-)
Joshua’s assertion that “nearly all” private schools are religious is BOGUS. I’ve done a LOT of research since my son was diagnosed with autism, and although there are a lot of religious schools (most of which are VERY good and teach evolution and everything), there are a lot of secular private schools run by non-profits. By being secular, they can get donations and grants from a wide variety of sources, not just one church or members of a certain denomination.
This fall, my daughter will be going to a charter school, which is EXCELLENT. It’s a privately-run public school, and my tax money which would have ordinarily gone into the local government school system for her instead goes to the charter school. Compare: our county stupidly voted to go ANOTHER $46 million in debt to build new schools. With that money, the Challenge Foundation (who runs our local charter school) could have built SEVEN new school buildings (fully supplied, with athletic fields and everything) and had money left over!!!
Joshua also says there’s no evidence that competition will make schools better. I can only guess that the amount of evidence he’s seen on the subject is, NONE AT ALL. Watch John Stossel’s “Stupid in America” for a lot of good info: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9069323583494421392
You can also look at places where the money follows the students (as it sort of does with our charter schools here). Time and time again, once the schools have to compete for their funding, they ALWAYS improve. School choice makes school better not only for the students who move, but also the students who stay.
Joshua also says, “it’ll just lead existing schools to pander to what rich donors think they should be teaching” and “at least [the government schools] have some kind of accountability.” I’d LOVE to see evidence for EITHER of these assertions.
My daughter spent Kindergarten in the government schools were she was taught, for example, that we only have five senses. If you (with your own government school education) wonder what’s wrong with that, then read my blog: http://www.shanekillian.com/blog/index.php?/archives/112-It-starts-early….html
Finally, let me just link to an article from a wonderful man who was not only a Libertarian but also a consummate skeptic (he would often mention James Randi and other skeptics on his radio show–and yes, that means that we had an agnostic candidate for President, TWICE!), Harry Browne: http://harrybrowne.org/articles/FreeTheSchools.htm
carr2d2:
“if you turn education over to the free market, people’s ability to be educated will become more tied to their economic status than it is now.”
There’s absolutely no evidence of that. In fact, lots of poor kids are going to private school and doing BETTER. They WANT the poor kids. Again, watch the Stossel special.
“do we really want our educational system to be administered at the whims of corporations?”
I don’t. So, we won’t send our kids to a corporate-run school. We’ll send them to one run by a non-profit organization.
“if we want to live in any kind of organized society.”
Who says that organization has to be top-down? There’s nothing unorganized about a free market society, it’s just organized from the bottom up–and that makes it much more efficient, much more flexible, and much more responsive to everybody’s needs.
carr2d2
To take Devil’s Advocate (and Penn did play the Devil on Sabrina) I will simply state that the other side of the argument is that the government has its own agenda. We can see that easily with the pressure from the right to move creationism into school systems. He also makes the point that he doesn’t believe that parents should be forced to send their kids to public schools that teach evolution if they choose not to…That out to make a lot more people interested.
I personally have no idea what we should do about the school systems. I think there is definitely a public interest in giving all members of the population an education, but I have no idea where that falls on. I do not think the government would do the best job, but it might do the best job for the most people. The scary part for me would be if a political party gets into power who decides that all schools should ban Evolution from being taught (or an event like Lysenkoism in Russia), which is a possibility with having a government based education system. I think I would say that with the current system we need to maintain constant vigilance and ensure that the politicians don’t do something like that….(Like in Louisiana).
shanek: i will have to check that out. i do like the idea of schools run by non-profits, though i don’t really see much structural difference between this and government administration (apart from how the money is obtained). i mentioned the corporate idea because that seems to be penn’s main argument for how to solve the problem.
another problem i can see here is with what gets taught. it isn’t much of a stretch of the imagination to think that kids’ choices could be severely limited, especially in rural areas. what if you couldn’t homeschool, and your kid’s only option was to go to a fundamentalist religious school?
i guess i don’t understand how libertarian skeptics can talk one minute about making sure
that our kids are getting proper science education and then turn around and talk about abolishing the only institution that is actually positioned to address this issue.
we have enough trouble with this as it is now. if you remove the public school system, you take away the constitutional protections for secular education.
let’s not forget for a minute that we are a minority in this country. there are certain things that the market just can’t see. scientific truth is not a democracy, and i fear that if education is opened up to the free market, it would be treated as though it were.
protesilaus:
i see what you’re saying, but at least with the government in charge, we have (at least theoretically) constitutional protection that gives us recourse in a doomsday situation like that.
with a free market system, i don’t see what would stop the majority (right or wrong) from dictating what everyone gets taught.
carrd2d2:
let’s not forget for a minute that we are a minority in this country. there are certain things that the market just can’t see. scientific truth is not a democracy, and i fear that if education is opened up to the free market, it would be treated as though it were
Me:
And I think that is also going to be a problem with a government school, except that with privatized schools you get a choice in most cases. If Bush is (was) able to put one more Justice on the Supreme Court, we could lose Evolution from science classes all over the country. All of the Supreme Court decisions on these issues have always been very close, and most are based on political lines and not what the Constitution states. It’s not entirely a Dichotomy though, there is most likely a happy median, but I don’t think anyone has hit on it yet.
carr2d2:
i see what you’re saying, but at least with the government in charge, we have (at least theoretically) constitutional protection that gives us recourse in a doomsday situation like that.
with a free market system, i don’t see what would stop the majority (right or wrong) from dictating what everyone gets taught.
Me:
We posted at the same time (or at least eerily close). I think that in a truly Free Market you don’t get the majority dictating. I think that the internet would be a good analog to that (hopefully). As long as an individual school manages to make money it will survive, so even if we are a minority there could be a niche market for a school system that panders to us.
I also want to say thank you to Sam for pointing this out, since I completely missed this discussion the first time around and I would have loved to give my imput. Your are by far my 4th favorite Skepchick. I think 4th.
Hey, I’m just happy to be in there somewhere.
Now back to your regularly scheduled program.
carr2d2:
“i don’t really see much structural difference between [a non-profit organization] and government administration (apart from how the money is obtained).”
Well, first off, how the money is obtained is VERY important. Since government just taxes people by force, they have no incentive to spend it efficiently, and they have no accountability for results. That’s not the case with a non-profit.
The second major difference is competition. If a non-profit does a bad job of running a school, parents can take their children elsewhere and donors can donate the money elsewhere. Again, that competition just doesn’t exist with government (although there are ways to partially introduce it).
“what if you couldn’t homeschool, and your kid’s only option was to go to a fundamentalist religious school?”
Sounds like a profitable niche to me!
And even if other competition doesn’t show up, there are bound to be other parents in your area in the same situation. You could all home-school your children together, taking turns teaching or even pooling your money to hire a teacher or tutor. And then you have a community school!
“abolishing the only institution that is actually positioned to address this issue.”
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but they aren’t exactly doing a stellar job with science education. They CERTAINLY aren’t teaching critical thinking skills.
“you take away the constitutional protections for secular education.”
Granted, but you add a LOT more protections for problems that can now be addressed a lot more cheaply than going to the courts.
“with a free market system, i don’t see what would stop the majority (right or wrong) from dictating what everyone gets taught.”
It’s the government where you have to worry about that. The free market delights in catering to even the smallest of minorities. That’s the point–they COULDN’T dictate what everyone gets taught! You’re in control of your child’s education.
One of the most common libertarian complaints about government is excessive bureaucracy. Overlooking that corporations produce monstrous bureaucracies themselves, it seems to me that bureaucracy is often desirable. It slows things down, but this also make it more difficult to cheat the system, since more people are checking what’s going on. Also, by having separate institution to monitor others, it circumvents the problem of potential offenders hiding infractions that would harm their image. So, for instance, we cannot reasonably expect McDonalds to accurately report their own sanitary conditions unless they are good, so we create an organization (expanding the bureaucracy) to check into sanitation at restaurants. Private watchdogs won’t cut it, because they can’t force a company to allow them to inspect like the government
I think that, with regards to schooling, who determines the curriculum (I say this should be a government panel of experts in each subject being taught) is more important than who runs the actual schools.
Josh:
“So, for instance, we cannot reasonably expect McDonalds to accurately report their own sanitary conditions unless they are good, so we create an organization (expanding the bureaucracy) to check into sanitation at restaurants.”
The problem is, government bureaucracy is expensive, inefficient, and often corrupt. Let’s consider another example:
We cannot reasonably expect makers of electronic devices to accurately report their device’s safety, so the free market created an organization (Underwriters Laboratories) to test these devices and make sure they’re safe.
UL WORKS. Like no government bureaucracy ever could. They actually do the testing themselves, they underwrite the results, and they have every incentive to spend the money they have efficiently. Since they underwrite the results, they also have every incentive to make their mistakes as close to zero as possible. If they do a bad job, people will just switch to a competitor (CE probably being the biggest one).
“Private watchdogs won’t cut it, because they can’t force a company to allow them to inspect like the government”
So who needs force? UL and CE and the rest don’t use force, and they’re ubiquitous.
Now, if GOVERNMENT were in charge of electronics safety, by their track record it would take ten years to get a new device to market, they’d be hideously expensive, and often need recalling. And we’d still be waiting for this great new technology they’ve been promising us called “cell phones.”
“the free market created an organization”
Getting a bit anthropomorphic, aren’t we?
An independent group can buy electronics and test them, that’s why I used the restaurant example. An independent group cannot simply demand access. And, a restaurant with poor sanitation, but a lot of money, can simply pay some sham organization to claim they’re doing well.
What if I accrue a fortune and then pay random schools to teach that the moon is made of cheese? Then everyone at the school has to either raise more moeny than I’m offering or move to a different school? Is this really a desirable situation? (or do we not think that groups would do this? Coke not pay schools to advertise? Churches pay for them to evangelize? It isn’t as if they don’t try already.)
Democratic governments are designed to protect minorities (this is why we have the constitution/bill of rights), even if they do not do as good a job as desirable. A free market has no such purpose; whatever can be paid for is what you get. Can you afford to trample on the rights of minorities? Then feel free to.
i still don’t see how you think everyone would be served by a free market system. yeah, you say that there might be a niche market for something like a science academy in the back country of the bible belt, but that niche market might consist of just you. nobody’s going to build a school for one person.
i’ll grant you that adding online education into the mix would mitigate a lot of the problems i have with a free market educational system. this is the only way you could reach a critical mass and really make sure that all minority groups are recognized.
but then you get into the issues of internet accessibility and to me it still comes down to freedom for the affluent and take what you can get for the working class.
shanek: “Now, if GOVERNMENT were in charge of electronics safety, by their track record it would take ten years to get a new device to market, they’d be hideously expensive, and often need recalling. And we’d still be waiting for this great new technology they’ve been promising us called “cell phones.—
i mentioned above that there are things that the market does well. one of those things is driving technology. in fact, i think driving technological innovation is what the market does best.
this does not mean that it will do well at everything. as i said above, i suspect that the answer lies somewhere in the grey area.
i’m curious if there has ever been a real attempt to create a completely libertarian state. does one exist? i think a lot of the ideas look good on paper, but i’d love to see it in action; whether it works as well in the real world.
This being my first comment ever posted on here I thought I would throw my hat into the ring. While his opinion of no government involvement in society sounds far-fetched in allowing people in that given society to work things out. An anarchistic way of living in flavor country would mean an end to governments and thus government funding which would then mean that hate-ridden organizations like the church and boy scouts would lose their financial strangleholds and would either have to change their ways or die off. Free-and-public schools would allow any child the same education (plus without the interference, there wouldn’t be the propaganda put upon them). While there is no such thing as a utopian society, maybe Penn is just saying that he has more hope in people making their own decisions than someone telling them what they should think or learn.
Josh:
“Getting a bit anthropomorphic, aren’t we?”
There’s no other way to do it. The free market created this in the same way that evolution created the eye.
“a restaurant with poor sanitation, but a lot of money, can simply pay some sham organization to claim they’re doing well.”
And their legitimate competitors will expose them for the sham they are. That sort of thing just does not work in a free market. You need corporatism to make that happen.
“What if I accrue a fortune and then pay random schools to teach that the moon is made of cheese?”
Then they’ll laugh at you and ignore you, because they care about their own credibility, they want their graduates to be accepted to college, and they don’t want to lose the business of parents who also care about these things and would therefore send their children elsewhere.
“Can you afford to trample on the rights of minorities? Then feel free to.”
There is a word to describe businesses that do this in a free market:
Bankrupt.
Carr2d2:
“nobody’s going to build a school for one person.”
They wouldn’t have to. If it’s just my child, they can do it in my home or anywhere. Besides, what are the chances of there being just one, really? If you REALLY have to go to those laughable kinds of extremes to find a problem with it, I’d say it’s pretty unassailable.
“but then you get into the issues of internet accessibility”
There are a LOT of poor people in this country with computers and internet access. Mostly because the government got out of the way.
It occurs to me that people are basing their argument, as usual, on, “I can’t understand how a free market would do this, therefore I don’t think it can.” It always amazes me that people who apparently have no trouble with the idea that evolution can develop an eye with no intelligent direction just can’t extend their imagination to the free market.
If that’s the case, then there’s an excellent essay you should all read. It’s probably the best economics essay ever written: “I, Pencil” by Leonard Read: http://www.fee.org/Publications/the-Freeman/article.asp?aid=3308
but the extremities are where the real problems lie. when it comes down to it, the system needs to serve everyone equally, or at least should be able to in theory. even if it is just one person.
there may be a lot of poor people with computers, but not everyone. and the internet access that many poor people have is provided by public libraries, which are also paid for by the government, so those have to go too.
as i said before, i think a lot of libertarian ideas look good on paper, but have they really been tested in the real world? yes, we know that the market can work out certain things very effectively, but has there ever been an effectively libertarian state?
If McDonalds gave you food poisoning when you ate there would you still go? Or would you wait for some government agency to force it to clean up its act?
My wife stopped going to Taco Bell when she kept getting sick after eating their food. I never saw a Health Department action to clean it up or shut it down.
My daughter goes to a government school and she makes reference to god everyday. At school choir events she sings christian songs, not just xmas carols. I don’t see government doing a thing about it either.
Poor kids in poor neighborhoods go to crappy government schools. Rich kids in rich neighborhoods go to good government schools.
How is government doing anything in schooling that is significantly different than a non-government school?
I just graduated with a degree in elementary education. I will teach in a public school for at least four years (to pay back my scholarship).
I’m not sure how I feel about this whole thing. I don’t know if I’m against the idea of abolishing public schools because it’s all I know and all I’ve been taught, or if it’s because I really think it’s a bad idea.
It’s something I should think about more, especially since it’s so central to who I am. I do feel uneasy at shifting from one extreme to another… that rarely works. This screams of overcompensation, rather than fixing a problem. “We’re so sick of this, let’s do away with it entirely!”
My program focused on fostering critical thinking and integrating all subjects. I really think that the system is changing, however slowly, and headed toward a grey area. If we overshoot and end up at another extreme, we’ll end up with unforeseen problems that we aren’t equipped to fix because the change is so drastic and happened so rapidly.
I really think we should consider all this carefully… this discussion is a good way to do that.
@ fatherdaddy:
The idea of having a government agency to watch over restaurants is to *prevent* you from getting food poisoning in the first place. And just because Taco Bell made your wife sick, doesn’t mean the restaurant is at fault – there are many people that feel ill when they eat cheap beans and cheese. If there was something truly wrong going on, the health department would probably shut them down.
Yes, I realize there are faults… but if nobody has the right to go in and inspect a restaurant, nobody would know it’s bad until people started getting sick, or worse – dying.
Efficiency aside, I think doing away with standard inspections altogether is not the answer.
Carr2d2:
“the system needs to serve everyone equally,”
Then the LAST thing you should do is put it in the hands of government. Government will make sure it serves politicians and politically-connected corporations at everyone else’s expense.
And before you can ask if there’s been an effective libertarian state, you have to ask if there’s been ANY libertarian states. What I can tell you is that, the more libertarian a state is, the better off the people are; the less libertarian, the worse off they are. And that has been shown throughout history.
“My daughter goes to a government school and she makes reference to god everyday. At school choir events she sings christian songs, not just xmas carols. I don’t see government doing a thing about it either.”
The First Amendment isn’t there to eliminate that sort of thing anyway.
Amanda:
“I do feel uneasy at shifting from one extreme to another… that rarely works. This screams of overcompensation, rather than fixing a problem. ‘We’re so sick of this, let’s do away with it entirely!'”
So, is it any more rational to say, “This system really sucks; let’s put MORE money into it”?
But I’m up for a grey area: Let’s have the complete ability to create charter schools and have a “follow the money” policy for every child, even those who go to private school or are home-schooled. T