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by Free Market Duck

Why Johnny Can't Read

   Idaho public education test scores are down again.  Big shockaroonie.  Johnny still can’t read, even though Idahoans shell out a whopping $1.3 billion per year in taxes for education – 65% of the state’s $2.0 billion budget.  Is public education just an expensive joke or what?

   According to the Wall Street Journal, a recently released study by the Nelson A. Rockefeller Institute of Government showed no correlation between increased education spending and improved reading test scores from 1997 through 2002.  Idaho ranked # 15 with Missouri in increased spending at 19.7% with no appreciable increase in its National Assessment of Educational Progress reading scores.  DC ranked # 1 in increased spending at 46.2% while Florida ranked last at 3.5%.  All 50 states plus DC increased education spending, and the results were all over the map:  slight improvement, no improvement, or 10 steps backward into the quicksand.  Plop!

   Why can’t Johnny read?  Johnny can’t read because Johnny can’t think.  Johnny can’t think because he has never been taught HOW to think.  In fact, the Pub Ed system teaches Johnny exactly the opposite:  how NOT to think.  Pub Ed does not teach Johnny how to organize perceptions into categorized concepts using step-by-step logic and reasoning.  Instead, Pub Ed throws millions of disconnected terms, unrelated spins, and word globs to be memorized for national tests such as Idaho’s ISATs.  It’s a wonder Johnny can tie his shoelaces.  Come to think of it, he can’t.

   But Johnny’s not the only victim.  Johnny can’t think and neither can what’s left of his teachers.  Those teachers who can read the writing on the wall have already escaped to private enterprise.  Those who remain keep the vicious cycle going.  After all, Johnny’s teachers came from the very schools at which Johnny didn’t learn to read, write, do math, or think.  Johnny’s teachers were the previous Johnnys.

   Teachers spend 4-8 years and $20,000 to $60,000 or more to attend college and then a teaching university to receive what amounts to an expensive State Work Permit.  It’s like the old Plumbers’ Union run by the Mafia in the old days.  The National Education Association, the NEA, is the Education Mafia’s union.  They continually try to use the government to create laws to exclude free market competition such as home schools, private schools, religious schools, and Internet schools.  Charter schools – those bastardized public schools masquerading as private schools – soon find out who their real masters are:  namely, Dr. Suzy Bananas, Superintendent of the local public school system who reports directly to the NEA crime family and their lobbyists down at the state legislature.

   Like good little government monopolists, the NEA jacks the taxpayers up for their milk money to artificially set Pub Ed salaries and numbers of employees above or below free market levels.  The myth that teachers are grossly underpaid assumes somebody knows what free market teachers should be paid.  Is supply and demand different for Math vs. History teachers?  Since there aren’t any free market schools operating outside the influence of the subsidized Pub Ed market, nobody really knows.

   Comparing teachers’ salaries to other professionals’ salaries based upon labor is bogus since it assumes value resides in labor.  But free market economists proved long ago that value resides in service rendered – a qualitative decision by the consumer.  A million men can dig a million holes in the middle of the desert, expending tons of labor, but rendering no service to anybody.  In contrast, The Rolling Stones can expend 15 minutes of labor in a recording studio producing the song I Can’t Get No Satisfaction and render a service worth $50 million in CD sales.

   Whatever teachers earn, they’re just pawns in a bigger game and Pub Ed Administrators typically earn 1 ½ to 2 times the salary of a teacher.  Not surprisingly, the public education system is administratively top-heavy with two Vice Principals for every child’s left elbow.

   Back to the scene of the crime:  If there is no relationship between Pub Ed expenditures and why Johnny can’t read, what keeps this $370 billion public education cycle going?  Public education is Big Business.  Very Big Business.  Big Government Banking Business.

   Let’s follow the money.

   Johnny’s teacher will have a tough time repaying his $60,000 student loan over 15 years at 3 – 10% interest.  Multiply that times all the teachers AND the Johnnys attending every college in America and you get the picture:  big bucks for the bankers for federally subsidized student loans.  You can throw personal education debt into the same financial category as home mortgages and automobiles.  (Automobiles?  Yes.  Inflate the money supply, drive prices up, and now Americans have to finance their $50,000 cars with 7-year bank loans.)  You can never pay them off.  It’s the government subsidized banking industry that is raking in the dough.  The bankers now own your home, your car, and your children’s brains – at exponential rates.

   The federally subsidized Leave No Child Behind Act and Idaho’s ISATs are actually a Full Employment Act for the member banks of the private Federal Reserve System.  Did I say private?  Look it up.  The private Federal Reserve charges the government 2.5 cents for every paper dollar -- or $5, $10, $20, $50, $100 bill -- that it prints up.  The Fed creates billions of dollars of credit and paper money out of thin air for government programs and charges you billions of dollars in interest for this privilege.  If your money was backed 100% by gold, the private Fed Reserve bankers would be out of business.

   Public Education is also very profitable for politicians.  That’s why Congress enacted the Federal Reserve Act and went off the gold standard:  so they could deficit finance it without asking you for more tax money.  Both the GOP and the Democrats are Public Education hookers who screw the taxpayers out of $370 billion per year in exchange for votes and promises to erase ignorance all across America.  As the Rockefeller report shows, it’s all a big lie.  More spending doesn’t make Johnny smarter.  But it’s big business.  Banking business.  Leave No Child Behind is part of the corporate welfare banking slop in the U.S. Congressional Pig Trough.

   Johnny can’t read or think because he’s not supposed to.  Neither is his teacher.  They’re just pawns in the government banking game.  There’s no correlation between increased public education spending and reading test scores because our socialist public education monopoly -- like socialist everything else – doesn’t work.  The Feds know that, but that’s not the point.  The Fed’s goal is not to increase intelligence among the masses.  Their goal is to keep America dumb so they can legally fleece the people through government banking and other welfare redistribution schemes.  Not one person in a million understands the true nature of money and how the Federal Reserve system works and that’s exactly how they like it.

   Welcome to America’s Leave No Banker Behind Fake Education Act:  $370 billion per year and rising.

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