-By Israel Teitelbaum
Failure is okay, provided we are willing to learn from the experience. This year marks 52 years since Dr. Milton Friedman first proposed school vouchers to bring to education the magic of free enterprise. We now have less than 150,000 children throughout the USA with vouchers. This amounts to an average success rate of under 2,884.6 children per year. At this rate, it will take 20,800 years until his plan is fully implemented. This is a long time to wait for freedom of choice in educating our children! However, we can take a tip from our Founding Fathers and greatly speed up the process.
The key can be found in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. “Congress shall make no law…abridging…the right of the people peaceably to assembly, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Apparently, our Founding Fathers reasoned that the silencing of grievances was a sure way to tyranny.
Thankfully, free speech and assembly is still very much respected in the USA, and we are most grateful for the freedoms we have. Yet, we need not be intimidated from openly expressing our legitimate grievances. This is prerequisite to restoring our civil right to educational choice.
We hear from parents every day, and from community and political leaders as well. They all agree that parental choice in education is absolutely essential in a free society. It’s inevitable and must be implemented – some time in the future – but not now.
Children and parents are suffering daily, but their cry is not being heard. Although there is occasional news of a general nature, such as the recent AP report on 10 percent of our nation’s high schools being dubbed “Dropout Factory,” there is rarely a report on the intolerable conditions in our nation’s schools. Even while the media was recently broadcasting statements by Sen. Hillary Clinton and Speaker Nancy Palosi about the “suffering children,” not a ripple was heard about those suffering in our nation’s schools. No one is held accountable, except the hard-working taxpayer, who is compelled to pay ever more into this bottomless pit.
While families struggle to send their children to private and religious schools, in accordance with their family values and traditions, hardly a word is said about the grave injustice of double taxation. There have been some clear and loud voices heard, most notably George Will and John Stossel, but our own grass-roots community remains deathly silent.
“Assembly” implies unity. The message of freedom needs to be clear, united and amplified. There are surely countless advantages to equal educational opportunity. The most essential is liberty! A nation that was founded on individual liberty should not be financially coercing parents to send their children to government run schools!
We will vote for candidates who will promote and sponsor the Civil Rights Act for Equal Educational Opportunity, and we hope you will too! Making our voices heard is a prerequisite to school choice victory!
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Israel Teitelbaum is currently creating a new school choice organization to help further the efforts to improve our public schools. His blog will soon be up and running at SchoolChoiceVoter.org. Mr. Teitelbaum can be reached at israel@schoolchoicenj.org.