Anti-Climacus

WELL: My inner commutarian is about to come out, so beware.

Ben Domenech has an interesting think-blog about the benefits of home-schooling. I will, of course, be taking the opposite side here.

The problem is that there are essentially three public policy options: the full public funding, the actual public funding, and the homeschool. Public policy working the way it does (the Rosemary Nagle game, and the political preferences of some people for lower taxes over higher social benefits), teachers will be perpetually underpaid, infrastructure will be sub-par, and the educational experience will be shoddy. It's not surprising that homeschooling (especially in the hands of dedicated parents, which seems to be a pre-requisite of home-schooling in the first place) produces better results, because the effort and money will be better targeted.

But let's imagine a Shangri-La for a moment, where there's a large number of well-educated people (some might aver one of the highest per capita concentrations of PhDs in the country) where people constantly vote up their property taxes to keep their schools at the highest possible levels of quality. And let's suppose further that there existed private individuals with some money to throw around, allowing for a high variety of cultural experiences (including a very, very nice library collection). One might be inclined to argue that, should such a place exist, it might provide as flexible and excellent an educational environment as any home school.

The moral of this particular story? Collective actions allows buy-ins on a scale otherwise impossible (school buildings, state-of-the-art science labs, libraries), but only if you're willing to pay for them. If you're not, don't be surprised if those collective institutions underperform.