Modern-day schools and Milton Friedman

Economist Milton Friedman’s documentary on the freedom of education demonstrates that public schools have many shortcomings in its current state.  Its lack of quality schooling and freedoms hurt the people they intend to help.  Friedman’s documentary encompasses many different examples and arguments, but Friedman’s primary argument supports privatizing education rather than federalizing due to the lack of freedom for parents and quality instruction for students that comes from public schools.

Friedman argues that the government’s investment and intervention in education is ineffective.  He cites several examples, one of which is the Storefront Schools in New York City.  The private sector’s Storefront Schools had originally been a success to raise and educate children.  When the schools became financially unstable, the government took over the school system, and this led to the schools conforming to the government’s guidelines.  This resulted in eventual failure. 

Friedman interviewed a public school administrator, who believed that experienced governmental “professionals” on school boards knew what they were doing with the students, and that parents did not know about how to manage their children’s education.  Rather, parents needed the third party/government’s help because they couldn’t do it on their own.  He stated that parents knew how to give children basic necessities, like food or shelter, but education was something that parents couldn’t do.  His generalization did not take into account the many families resorting to private schools or home school.  In light of the parents' continued frustration of the current status quo, Friedman effectively implicated to his audience the government’s uninvited takeover of parental involvement in schools. 

Friedman cites studies which have shown that schools operated by the private sector rank higher in test scores than students from public schools.  He then strongly emphasizes how parents have no input in their children’s education and can thus have no control.  Despite the declining test score rankings, parents cannot remove their children easily from schools.  Yet in today’s society, costs keep adding up, such as building renovations, new technology, and other supplies for what the schools claim would benefit students.  His personal interviews helped to set the stage for additional impact.  Parents were frustrated over the lack of control they had over their children’s futures.   Friedman effectively draws alarm into his audience, as this would stimulate suspicion on why parents could not control their own children’s schooling. 

Societal trends have demonstrated the lack of quality and success.  Like the Storefront schools, the government failed to keep the schools running and fit for success.  While kids and families can be a source of the problem, the schools were not effective in stopping the continuation of bad behavior.  A lot of influences come from schools, and if there is no enforcement of rules, the sin nature will continue to grow.  Parents have no more say in what their children face at schools.  In this sense, the opportunity costs of sending students to public schools decrease.  A lack of enforcement in rules, standards, and education ultimately deprives kids.  Friedman implies that the public schools do not benefit the people whom they intend to help.  Just like a regular economic recession, quality education’s demand is rising, but it is falling short of the potentials in the economy.  History and society have strong indications that public education run by the government has not been quite successful at all in the last few years.  While there are plenty of teachers out there aiming to give quality education to their students, there simply are not enough teachers and motivated students to continue this trend, and the government’s role in their regulations and standards have dramatically driven down the quality of education.  Milton Friedman’s arguments on the failure of the government to uphold quality training for our next generation stand valid to this day.