Sunday, May 23, 2010

How Michael Gove plans to destroy private education

School Vouchers: The Welcome Mat for Leviathan

There is a tiny private education system in the UK, which has somehow managed to survive the past 150 years of the state trying to destroy it, local authorities throttling it through the mechanism of constantly denying 'planning permission', and hideous bureaucrats trying to drown it in hugely expensive Gosplan-style red tape.

But Michael Gove, the 'Education Minister' of the Glorious Coalition has a plan to wipe away even this tiny remnant. The rough outline of this plan has been revealed by The Guardian:

=> Conservatives aim to lure private schools into state system

Say what you like about The Guardian (and I often do), I think their headline hits Gove's plan on the button to try to wipe away the last vestige of private education in this country, and replace it with Swedish-style socialism, with state-funding being used as the lure to walk complete state control of all schools in through the back door of pecuniary need.

Alas, many private schools will fall for the lure, and suck in state funding and other trendy 'parent control' measures (read: Interfering Busybodies). Obviously, in the fullness of time, this glorious state funding will make itself felt as the state's fundmasters dictate the terms on which a school can run, despite all the promises at the beginning of keeping their dead hands out.

Michael Gove, by then retired, will be able to smile on his fat ex-ministerial pension, and relax in the knowledge that his ideological plan to destroy state-free education succeeded. Complete mental control of all children will then finally be in the lap of the state.

So do not be fooled into thinking that Michael Gove's Friedmanite plans should be supported. The only plans which can be supported are those in which state funding of schools is reduced, with the savings passed back to taxpayers to do with as they will.

Follow the money. If the state supplies it, they also supply the control. If consumers of school services have it, they have control. It really is as simple as that. For more on the dangers of school 'vouchers', try these short pieces:

=> Voucher Socialism (Lew Rockwell)

=> Vouchers: What Went Wrong (Uncle Murray)

=> Vouchers: Another Central Plan (Laurence M. Vance)

=> Freedom and School Vouchers (Debate between Milton Friedman and Lew Rockwell)

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