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Comment by TFYS | Hacker News Reader

Don't you think leaving education to the free market would make it harder for kids from poor backgrounds to go up in life? When everyone uses the same system, it's in everyone's best interest to fund it and make it as good as possible. You won't get the best results, but at least everyone gets a decent education.

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Except we've seen that this doesn't really work in practice. Kids are not all getting a decent education. Poor kids are still at a huge disadvantage compared to wealthy kids. There isn't a one size fits all education. Different roles which are needed by society require different skills. Everyone doesn't need to go to college. The world still needs ditch diggers and it likely always will. Not everyone is equal when it comes to intellectual or physical capability. When you try to shove everyone through the same system, you get a lot of square pegs going through round holes. This prevents those with high intellectual capabilities from reaching their full potential by reducing education to the lowest common denominator.

> it's in everyone's best interest to fund it and make it as good as possible.

Often this is addressed through a voucher system. Single Payer (or subsidizer), multiple provider.

Eg: gov't gives a voucher for $10k per head, you're free to shop for the best schooling your money can buy (perhaps even online!)

Aside: this exact concept can apply to healthcare too

I like this idea! In fact I have wondered what effect it would have on government if citizens could literally vote with their dollars, ie. democratically decide how government funds are allocated. So every year each citizen would be allocated ( yearly budget / total population ) dollars and could choose how their dollars are spent.

My expectation is that a free market of ideas would allow superior modes of education to rapidly emerge, which would then be slowly and poorly copied by the mainstream. If I'm understanding you right, you're saying that by allowing a parallel education system with freedom of choice, all the smart and rich people would abandon the old one to die. (It would be kept alive, of course by taxes, in body, if not in spirit!)

My personal belief is that the death of the old education system is over a century overdue.

We don't need to kill it, just stop making alternatives illegal and the problem will solve it itself.

Letting the people with wealth and power use an alternative system would be the same thing as killing the public system. No one with the ability to improve the system would have the incentive to. It's the reason public schools aren't improving. In a privatized system you'll get a divided population with some being very well educated and while some get no education at all.

There's nothing preventing a public system from being changed and improved. Take Finland as an example. Everyone goes to the same public schools there, rich or poor. The result is one of the best education systems in the world. New methods are regularly tested and teachers have a lot of freedom to choose the ones that suit them.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Ufmcubp2szg

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