An Education No-brainer.

If “variety is the spice of life”, then why do we have a public Education system that restricts and monopolizes parents’ choices for their child’s education?

Rural Life is different than urban life.

The top-down planning, funding and delivery of teaching services withing thousands of government schools is an archaic, expensive, inflexible and authoritarian way to teach Ontario’s children in the Digital Age. A far more effective approach would be to decentralize education decision-making down to the level of the parent and to repeal all legislation that currently enables the Government Education Monopoly to exist.

Mark Snow, Leader of the Ontario Libertarian Party, wants government funding for education to follow the child and not the public school. I prefer to take all responsibility for education funding out of the hands of government officials and, instead, allow parents and grandparents to opt out of paying any taxes whatsoever towards a Government Education Monopoly that they don’t use. Those tax savings can then be directly applied to the non-government education service provider of their choice within a Competitive Education Market. Either approach would be better than the status quo.

The linked article about the new Kawartha Farm School offers an inspiring story of parents who want their children to know what Mother Nature and farmers do daily to feed and sustain human and animal life. These children will know that fresh vegetable come from the farm under the nurturing care of Food-growing Professionals, and not from shelves at the local Sobeys grocery store.

Competition is the missing “spice”.

Advocates for Civil Society is a small group of rural residents who want every parent to understand the power of market competition to deliver superior education options for children. These options will only be limited by the imagination of entrepreneurial teachers to bring new teaching approaches to everyone. The primary barriers to realizing these options are government authorities.

Every citizen knows how much their life has changed by advances in technology. These advances are coming at a growing pace. Government institutions, and the entrenched stakeholders therein,  are the only economic actors who resist the positive changes that are possible today in the Digital Age.

Most citizens, however, also resist real change.

Every election results in putting one of two or three political parties in charge of the HONEY POT ==> the crucible of power that contains all public money and every shred of legislation upon which their power is based. Ironically, most voters say they want “change”, then they vote for political parties that restrict their idea of “change” to replacing one MP or MPP with another in the seat of decision-make authority.

Few elected politicians will ever do anything significant over their four year terms. Their voting history will inevitably show a willingness to defend the status quo with perhaps one or two insignificant tweaks.

Treat the cause, not the symptom

Real change will only come from the public when the pain, pressures and frustrations imposed by government authoritarians become too uncomfortable to bare. Like a migraine headache, he or she will eagerly accept a lasting treatment that cures the root cause of the pain rather than turning repeatedly to medications that treat only the symptoms.