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I Are a Student This dire happenstance looms on the horizon like a devouring monster threatening the wailing students of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. According to an Associated Press story, "forty-two of the city's low-performing middle and elementary schools are to be turned over to for-profit companies and universities." More than a quarter of the students in the system will be affected by this usurpation of that holy grail of the collectivists and statists: direct access to the malleable minds and souls of our young people. The story claims this change is "part of the nation's largest school privatization plan." Edison Schools will be in charge of twenty schools. Other "private companies and non-profits" will run twenty-two schools. The remaining twenty-eight schools "will be run by parent groups." From the gnashing of teeth from certain quarters when this small shift was announced, one might reasonably believe that these youthful and delicate creatures, the future leaders of our country, were being cruelly thrust into the slavering jaws and curved talons of a leering werewolf or vampire. The tale of this minor upheaval illuminates the plethora of erroneous ideas that have seeped into impressionable psyches. Sadly, I refer not only to some of the students themselves but to their parents, as well. First of all, these schools are hardly "being turned over" to these new players on the field of education. If this and similar loosenings of the chains of State control is "privatization," then, to quote that best of all Ducks, Donald, "I'll take vanilla." Nothing more is really occurring here than a change in management to facilitate "reform" of a corrupt system. As we all know, however, it is impossible to "reform" a system that is, by its very nature, a violation of individual rights. No More "Reform," Please We've had "reform" of campaign finance from the congenial idiots roaming the halls of Congress that throttles free speech. The Clintonistas and their annoying spokesman — that Cassandra warning us of the dire dangers of the "internal combustion engine" — Al(pha male) Gore, gave us "government" reform that left the State bigger than ever. We endured income tax "reform" that keeps us more confused and worse off than before. Welfare "reform" shifted a few people to private jobs and others to government subsided make-work employment that masks a new kind of welfare. Health "reform" has given us rising costs, diminished services, constricted privacy, and shrinking liberty. Immigration "reform" promises to hand us over to military border patrols, a national identification card, and non-eligible voters being registered into the electoral system. How much more "reform" can we endure? Perhaps this shift in Philadelphia will help their schools in the short term. As the saying goes, they could hardly do worse than the old guard. Edison's "unproven track record" could not be a greater threat to students' learning than the proven — abysmal — track record of current State-run schools. For School Reform Commissioner Michael Masch to characterize this modest move, however, as one of great magnitude and "too ambitious" would be laughable were it not so sad. The only valid "reform" that will actually solve the problem of a deteriorating educational system and falling performance levels is abolition of State-owned and -run schools at all levels: preschool, grade school, middle school, high school, and college. Changing captains on a sinking ship may keep the boat afloat a trifle longer, but sooner or later a vessel with a massive hole in its keel will vanish beneath the waves rushing into its hold. Edison and these other groups will still have to operate within the strictures of government-mandated rules. They will ultimately answer — not to their customers, the students and their parents — but to the State, a master that can dictate terms as it sees fit and that can fire its employees whenever it becomes dissatisfied with the course they are taking. The largest single group of Philadelphia schools slated to gain new managers will remain profit-free. "Profit," of course, is anathema to those who love the State and hate freedom. Profit is evil. Profit is base. Profit is corruption manifested. But if the parents and students complaining about this change truly wanted to improve education, they would embrace profit and applaud those with the brains and the skills necessary to wrest money from tightfisted consumers. Assuming absence of fraud, profit is a badge of honor and accomplishment; a recognition of the value one person creates for others. To earn profit is to succeed, both as an independent soul and a shrewd evaluator of what other people desire. As Ayn Rand pointed out, the productivity that is the source for profit is the only rational basis for pride or a sense of "moral ambitiousness." It is the integration of thought (one's mind) and action (one's behavior) in order to achieve one's values in the world. The achievement of moral worth is an integral precondition for true self-esteem. Ignoramuses Loathe Profit No wonder so many whining citizens loathe profit. Profit points out in stark clarity their own shortcomings as they slink through life dependent upon the State and its immoral depredations on their betters. What do these facts imply about the two-dozen or so students who camped overnight outside the administration building and "formed a human chain . . . and refused to allow anyone inside"? Nothing complimentary, I assure you. Sixteen-year-old Andrew Hopkins revealed the depths of his ignorance and the excellence of the brainwashing administered to him over his educational career when he said, ". . . We're talking about our education here. They shouldn't be giving these schools to private companies that care mostly about their own profits." The question never percolates through Andrew's stultified mind how, exactly, Edison — or any company or person producing any good or service — obtains that nasty ol' profit unless it manages to give folks what they want. In reality, he should bow down and figuratively kiss the profit that has given him and his cohorts the highest standard of living on the planet. Andrew's economic illiteracy mirrors the same lack of effective teaching that his beloved "public" education has produced in the college students I teach; students who had not a single course in logic or critical thinking throughout their entire primary or secondary schooling. It is no wonder that these protesters are innocent of the knowledge that truly to "privatize" or "turn over" a school to someone means to sell it. Unless you own something and have the ability to exercise your property rights — the ability to sell your property, to change it, to set the conditions for its use or nonuse as you decide without external interference — then the miracle that is the "profit motive" will fail to reach its full potential. To those who worship at the altar of collectivism, statism, and the irrational, however, "profit" is and will remain the sacrificial lamb to be torn asunder beneath their envious claws, its flesh savored even as it is denounced as vile and unfit for human consumption. Philadelphia was once a center for the explosion of liberty that helped create the United States. Perhaps one day its citizens will abandon the illusion that there can be a "middle-way" between freedom and its opposite. Perhaps one day they will opt for true educational reform and, at last, set their students free.
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