Then, as Alice Cooper so famously sang, school was out for summer.

But, while the lessons are over for some kids, a substantial chunk of the homeschool community continues on much the same as always. 

Homeschool is not traditional school. Quite often, school’s not “out” for summer because their teachers (a.k.a. parents) recognize the fact that learning never stops and home education has no mandatory schedule.

Homeschool is about embracing a lifestyle of lifelong learning, developing a deep sense of curiosity about the world, and exploring complex interests. Summer can be the best time to dive deep into the experience.

Math happens in the kitchen, baking brownies and making change at a local craft fair. Or maybe math is measuring twice and cutting once while building a new deck on the back of the house or sewing decorative table runners. 

Science takes place outside in the backyard, watching strawberries grow from blossoms to blooms to berries. It occurs late at night with a telescope pointed at the moon or searching for a giant red spot on Jupiter, catching glimpses of meteors, or focusing in on a dark, starry sky.

On lazy summer afternoons, reading may last for hours in a hammock in the back yard. And after all the reading, P.E. might be a bike ride, a dip in a swimming pool, or a game of baseball or softball.

There’s time for theatre, art, and music, too. 4-H projects are finished for the county and state fairs. Family vacations reveal rich tapestries of history or geography. Life lessons abound with summer jobs and volunteer projects.

Contrary to stereotypes, homeschool kids have active social lives during the school year and during the summer, because their friendships have never revolved solely around a building, but instead around shared interests and values. 

Homeschool’s not out for summer because homeschool isn’t drudgery. It’s not about finishing workbook pages, sitting in desks, or studying for high stakes tests. Because learning hasn’t been stigmatized as a negative to be avoided, homeschooled kids continue on their merry way all summer long. 

Done right, and with the correct balance between work and play, discipline and relaxation, summer school can become the best school of all. Rather than a time of punishment or extra days to make up for failed classes, the season offers the promise of unique opportunities and time to explore them.

Why would kids want school to be out for summer when it’s so much fun?

Gina Prosch educates her children at home in Mid-Missouri. She is also a homeschool life coach (and parent) who blogs and shares homeschool resources at www.TheHomeschoolWay.com. She is also the co-host of The OnlySchoolers Podcast. 

Image: Wikimedia CCA 3.0

The post School’s NOT Out for Summer appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

From the article:

“We have built of this mythology of “the bigger person,” and told our children that the “bigger person” is the one who walks away from bullies, disengages, tells an adult. The “bigger person” is somehow the submissive one who slinks away and runs for cover. We tell our children that remaining silent in the face of a bully is “strong” and “courageous.” But somehow the strong, courageous, bigger child, who spends his childhood avoiding confrontation and retreating in the face of aggressors, never actually feels very strong, courageous, or big. He feels, rather, like a punchline. Because that is what we have told him to be.”

It was a piece that resonated with me. As a kid who was picked on. As the father of a child who has been picked on because he learned Japanese first, and other kids saw this as an opportunity to pick on a kid whom they felt couldn’t effectively communicate his case. He’s in first grade. He speaks below his grade level. He reads English at his grade level. He speaks and reads Japanese at the Third Grade level. Cool.

But we have an evening ritual at my house. Sparring after reading.

I’m going to up the stakes on Walsh’s article, and bluntly state what he alluded to. Make your children capable of violence.

It sounds like an extreme thing to say, but that’s probably because when you hear the word violence, you tend to think of the upper extreme of the definition. In reality, the capability of violence is the ability to do harm, but not the proactive encouragement of such.

Bullies aren’t versed in Self Defense, which teaches you to defend yourself against an aggressor rather than be an aggressor. As bullies lack discipline by nature, which is the foundation of Self Defense, odds are they don’t even know how to fight. Usually, they rely on a posse, otherwise known as strength in numbers, because they’re cowards. Cut off the head and the body will die.

Let’s approach this from a philosophical standpoint. There is nothing virtuous about saying you’re peaceful if you’re not capable of violence. You’re not actually peaceful. You’re helpless. There’s a difference. You don’t actually have a choice. Being peaceful is a lie you tell yourself to excuse your weakness. It’s like patting yourself on the back because you didn’t get punched this time, while having your lunch money stolen, and giving it up to avoid a conflict.

That’s not the high road. That’s a figure-eight track.

My son used to be in the Edmonds School District in Washington State. A kid pulled down his pants on the playground. I told my son to report it to his teacher and he did. Three days went by, and the school had not communicated with me about the incident. So I emailed his teacher, who stated she had reported it to the offending student’s teacher, but had not heard back and was unaware if he had been disciplined at all.

Even more recently, this is the same school district that did not alert parents district-wide that someone was trying to lure children into their car outside of multiple schools in their district. We found out about it on the news three weeks after it started happening.

Absolutely, I’m raising a kid who can deal damage. A kid whom I will stand behind when schools try to make him equally culpable as the aggressor for defending himself. I’m raising the proverbial stupid prize. 

If you’ve guessed I hold a lot of skepticism towards the public school system, you’d be correct. Especially with his proficiency in Japanese, living in America, and being above kids his age who live in Japan. That was all home school.

But the biggest takeaway is this: Peace through strength is as applicable to grade school as it was on the world stage. Make your children disciplined and capable of violence. Stand up for them in front of them for its principled use. Very few examples will need to be made before the target is off your kids’ backs.

Or, we could be complacent with the rising suicide rate of bullied children, while continuing to enable the bullies. I say punching a bully in the face is favorable in comparison to your child hanging themselves.

But it’s your choice.

The post We Should Teach Our Children To Be Capable Of Violence appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Why do we still throw so much into a failing system? Why is our current system so degenerate? And most of all, why is it much too late for ‘reform’? We need to revolutionize American Education.

I live in Indiana, a stiff battleground for the #RedForEd cause. Many of these statistics will focus around Indiana and its policies, but are applicable to many states which follow a similar system.

If your car breaks down so many times that the money you are putting into it could actually be used to purchase a better vehicle, would you still make the decision to pour money into it (aside from sentimental value)? The answer is no. So why do we continue to sink such an absurd amount of money into the public education system? In Indiana alone, public education receives around 60% of the state budget every two years. If the education system claims it needs money, it gets it. But the question is not how much, it is why.

Much of this goes to infrastructure, teacher pay, etc. Where else does it go? To standardized tests, research, and more. But none of this is actually beneficial to the most important consumer in the education “business”. That consumer is the student. 

Our current system doesn’t educate. It ‘schools’. Public ‘education’ is highly misleading. Education is a fulfillment of the mind, along with the finding of inspiration and solution. Schooling is the practice of merely memorizing facts, numbers, and equations. Our current system fulfills the latter. Instead of teaching valuable assets to children and young adults, we instead ‘school’ them on things that will most likely never be used. (We all remember asking a math teacher when something will be used and not getting a straight answer.) 

In no other aspect of life would you memorize numbers to learn something. If you put your hand on an oven burner, you discover that it burns. That teaches you to not touch a hot burner. You don’t read a manual for that. You don’t read a manual to learn how to ride a bike. So why don’t we receive hands-on instruction on how to do things instead of being schooled on how to do them?

Not only does our current system fail to educate, it indoctrinates and kills creativity. It suppresses free thought and teaches students to obey the law or face the consequences, no matter the level of crime. For example, a 6-year old girl who suffers from sleep apnea was arrested on misdemeanor charges for throwing a temper tantrum in class at an Orlando school. This only occurred last September. This child had to endure processing at a local juvenile center. 

To merely reform our current system is to concede to society’s declining standards. It is the equivalent of throwing money away on a busted car. While the solution is unclear, what is clear is that reform isn’t beneficial.

We need a revolution in American education. As with anything else, government intervention always results in three things: debt, consolidation, and failure. Public education is no different. Will we keep wasting money on a broken, failing model? Or will we invest in a more reliable vehicle of learning for future generations?

The post Forget Reform. It’s Time For REVOLUTION In Education appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

Many of those youths are our own children and students. They’re not dumb, but politics can be intimidating. And the rabble-rousing occupying public discussion these days doesn’t make things easier.

With a new school year upon us, we’d like to offer kids a cheat-sheet on a few basic concepts to navigate today’s troubled political waters.

1. Our Constitution Serves Us Well
It’s common for politicians to point to a public program in another country and argue that it will work here. Perhaps it will. But perhaps it won’t.

These comparisons often overlook the vast population difference between the country du jour and the U.S. Some (Sweden) are barely as big as our mid-sized states (North Carolina), while still others (Finland) are smaller than some of our metro areas (DFW).

The brilliance of our Constitution is its federalist system, which allows states and localities to enact their own programs without foisting failures on the citizens of others states. And if an idea proves successful, other jurisdictions may follow the leader and copy it.

2. A Free Society Has Negative Rights
Positive rights require that an action be taken by one individual for the benefit of another. Thus, a homebuilder is obliged to house someone. A grocer must feed a person. A dentist is bound to examine a patient’s teeth. Without a direct government order to do these things, one’s property may be taxed so that these services can be provided.

But the Bill of Rights is negative in nature, restricting what the government can do to us. It cannot force us to pledge faith to a certain religion. Nor can it silence us. It cannot invade our privacy without “probable cause,” nor seize our belongings without “due process of the law.”

Positive rights necessarily intrude upon negative rights. In the U.S., the rights of one citizen end where those of another begins. A free society becomes a prosperous one when we proceed from there to voluntary exchange.

3. Taking From Another Against Their Wishes Is Wrong
We’ve all witnessed children take something away from a sibling by force. Without intervention from an authority figure, such behavior may continue into adulthood.

While obvious individual acts like larceny, assault and burglary are against the law, others have gained a level of favor if carried out “collectively.”

The first step in this progression (regression?) is to convince people, who live in one of the freest countries in the world, that they’re being held back by forces beyond their control: globalization, racism, sexism, “the rich,” etc.  Then, dangle the prospect of “economic security” to those unwilling to work, while at the same time hoping they put forth the effort to vote.

When that base of voters is in place, a person who craves adoration will make as many promises as necessary and run for public office. This person is called a politician.

Once elected, they can choose who to tax, and how much. Since it’s illegal for a citizen to reach into the pocket of another, this elected official can do it for them, armed with the power to fine or imprison, calling it minimum wage, paid sick leave, or the like.

When we become voting adults, we can either elect these politicians who dole out goodies, or those who would leave us to freely interact with each other on our respective “pursuits of happiness.”

4. People Have a Natural Right to Defend Themselves
his principle transcends the Second Amendment of the Constitution. When we asked our children what they’d do if they were being attacked, one said she might pull out her pocket knife. That could certainly be lethal, but in that moment, she’s fighting for survival as far as she knows.

The means used to neutralize an attacker are wholly irrelevant and not negotiable, particularly amongst our mentally or emotionally unstable compatriots, be they those who would use a weapon against us, or those who would limit our ability to counter such an attack. Our Founding Fathers were wise to disabuse any notion otherwise.

Life is complicated. But these concepts are quite simple and make right and wrong clear and straightforward. For those who prefer learning in silence, these principles are a good deterrent when confronted by those who choose to be loud in their ignorance.

This post Civics 101 for Flyover Country was originally published on Intellectual Takeout by Christopher E. Baecker and Scott K. Harris.

The post Civics 101 for Flyover Country appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

The legislature in New York passed a package of bills on Tuesday that make the state’s already strict gun control laws even stricter. Among the bills is a measure that bars teachers from carrying firearms in schools.

The legislation easily passed the Assembly, which has long been under Democratic control, as well as the Senate, which Democrats won in the elections this past November.

“It seems like every day we wake up to headlines of another mass shooting, another horrific gun crime,” said Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, of Yonkers. “The madness has to stop.”

The gun control legislation was the first approved in Albany since Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement Act in early 2013 when Republicans had control of the Senate. The SAFE ACT was passed just weeks after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut.

The latest round of legislation comes in the first month of Cuomo’s third term. Cuomo and his supporters have praised the legislation calling it “a core component our 2019 Justice Agenda. By empowering teachers, we make our schools safer,” Cuomo said on Twitter. 

“There is a solution, and we have six years of history to show that the planet does not stop spinning, people don’t lose guns, it doesn’t bankrupt an industry,” Cuomo said earlier Tuesday at a state Capitol news conference with anti-gun violence advocates.

Other pieces of legislation in the package of bills include measures that ban the selling or manufacturing of devices that increase the rate of fire of semi-automatic rifles such as a bump-stock and instate a municipal gun buy back program. The legislation will extend the waiting period for buying a gun from three days to 30 days after an inconclusive background check.

The bundle of legislation also includes a measure allowing law enforcement, teachers, parents, and school administrators to ask a judge to evaluate a child they see as a possible threat to them or others. The judge could then order a confiscation of the firearms in the place in which the child resides. This legislation is known a “red flag” bill.

Linda Beigel Schulman and Michael Schulman were among the gun-control advocates at Governor Cuomo’s news conference. The Long Island couple’s son, Scott, was among the 17 victims in last year’s shooting in Parkland, Florida.

A former student with a troubled history at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was charged in the Feb. 14 shooting. Scott Beigel, a geography teacher and cross country coach at the school, would be alive today if Florida had gun control measures similar to New York’s in place before the shooting, his mother said.

“Parkland would never have happened if Florida had a red flag law,” she said.

A gun rights supporter called the legislature’s bill “disingenuous” and said it would only hurt citizens who adhere to current gun laws.

“It’s a violation of their Second Amendment rights and these are lawful gun owners who are not committing the crimes,” said Tom King, president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association and a National Rifle Association board member.

The post New York Passes Big Gun-Control Bills Banning Teachers From Carrying Guns on School Grounds appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

By Kody Fairfield

A controversial high school assignment is getting some attention from parents, who are calling it inappropriate and say it promotes racism, says WBTV.

One parent posted the assignment on Facebook, writing that it came from his son’s history class at Olympic High School, said WBTV.

The assignment is called the “Bomb Shelter Activity.” The scenario is that the President of the United States issues a warning of a nuclear attack, and the student’s family has access to a bomb shelter. The student can pick four strangers to go into the bomb shelter for safety.

The assignment has the student decide between different ethnic groups, said WBTV.

WBTV reports that according to the Facebook post, the choices are a “35 year old White male construction worker who is a racist,” a “40 year old Black female doctor who is a lesbian,” a “50 year old White male who is a Catholic Priest,” a “25 year old Hispanic male who is a lawyer and is wheelchair bound,” a “30 year old Korean-American female who is a former college athlete,” and a “20 year old White female who is pregnant, has a two year old son and is on welfare.”

“If you care about people it shouldn’t matter,” parent Mia Hatten said, per WBTV.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District (CMS) leaders confirmed Friday that the assignment came from Olympic High and said the controversial assignment was being pulled, said WBTV.

“The assignment was given in a class as an icebreaker about making decisions,” CMS spokesperson Brian Hacker said Friday. “It has been pulled and will not be given out again. The principal at the School of Math, Engineering, Technology and Science spoke with the teacher about appropriate assignments.”

The parents took issue with the idea of forcing to pick which lives to save based on their race and sexual identity.

“Every day more and more of our country is about separation and division,” parent Tom Denton said, according to WBTV. “And it seems like that’s kind of feeding into that type of thing.”

Hatten says her child’s classroom is filled with loud talk. The mother says it happens when students discuss politics and religion.

“She says they just go back and forth,” Matten said, according to WBTV. “They get into arguments about it. That’s just a mess to me. They should focus on things that matter in school and not politics.”

Parents say if the assignment was handed to their children, they would have informed the school and told their children not to do it, according to WBTV.

WBTV was told students did participate in the Bomb Shelter Activity, but felt very uncomfortable.

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By Rob Shimshock

Parents and residents of a school district where a 14-year-old girl was reportedly raped by at least one illegal immigrant expressed outrage at the district’s lack of action.

Members of Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) in Maryland shared their views with media outlets after a meeting with county school administrators and police Tuesday night. Reporters were not allowed inside the meeting, according to WTOP.

“I think if this was happening at one of my daughters’ schools, I would take them out and start home-schooling them,” Amy Waychoff, who has three children, one of whom is currently enrolled in a Montgomery County school, told reporters.

“We don’t have to have a welcome mat in Maryland and Montgomery County for everybody,” she said while holding two signs saying “Safety Not Sanctuary” and “Keep Maryland Safe.”

“It’s just gotten to the point where illegals are more protected than our own children,” said Patricia Spigner, a Gaithersburg parent who also held a “Safety Not Sanctuary” sign, as reported by The Washington Post.

“This little girl’s rape is the fruition of liberal policy in this county,” explained Sam Fenati, a second-generation Italian American whose grandchildren will enter MCPS. “I’m not against immigrants, but we came in legally.” (RELATED: Rockville Considers Declaring Itself A Sanctuary City Amid Immigrant Rape Scandal)

“I think it’s pretty important to know the whole demographics of your child’s community,” Debbie, who only provided her first name, told WTOP. “I think we all have a right to know who’s living among us, who our kids are spending 40 hours a week with every day.”

While some county residents were protesting across from the school during the meeting, attendee Elizabeth Plum addressed the nature of the interaction between school officials, police, and those who listened.

“I’m not satisfied,” Plum said, according to reports. “They were asked specifically whether they would admit students with criminal records and the answer is ‘yes.’ And would they be monitored? The answer is well, if they had a probation officer, maybe, or if they had an ankle bracelet, maybe.”

“So in other words, the school apparently doesn’t take any responsibility, even if they know the student has a criminal record.”

Plum told WTOP that while the school at which the 14-year-old girl was raped had cameras, those cameras were not monitored live; school officials examined the footage following the rape’s report.

At least one of the rapists, 18-year-old high school freshman Henry Sanchez-Milian, had entered America illegally from Mexico. The other rapist, 17-year-old Jose Montano, who is also a freshman, has not had his immigration status disclosed because of his age. (RELATED: Jose Montano And Henry Sanchez Charged In Rape Of 14-Year-Old Girl)

While Montgomery County indicated that it would cooperate completely with ICE, the agency lists Montgomery County as a jurisdiction that inhibits full cooperation with the bureau.

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The post ‘Safety Not Sanctuary’: Parents Protest School Where Illegal Alien Raped A 14-Year-Old Girl appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

By Rob Shimshock

A school superintendent’s secretary resigned and multiple teachers were punished following a video showing school staff naming other teachers and students whom they would like to marry, have sex with, or kill.

WATCH:

The Bangor Public Schools system in Michigan suspended two teachers following the incident and verbally scolded four more, as reported by Fox 17 News. The two suspended teachers will be on probation for five years and monitored closely. Children with special needs were also reportedly named in the game.

Parents are insisting to know whether the school knew about the video prior to Monday, since it was recorded a month before that date.

“It’s disturbing to know that these are our educators,” Jennifer Prentice, a parent, told Fox17. “They are in charge of protecting our children, keeping our children safe, and the fact that they just blew that out of the water shows their character and shows that maybe they’re not right for this job.”

Robert Hubert, Bangor Schools’ attorney, said that no further penalties would be imposed on the staff members concerned.

“It was heartbreaking,” said Amanda Reprogal, the parent of a student named in the video. “My heart sank, and I was disgusted.”

“You teach your kids to respect authority, and then how do you respect authority figures when they behave like that?” Ronnie Booker, a father, told Fox17.

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When I was a freshman in college, I was in a research-based writing class that consisted of a very small student-to-faculty ratio and allowed us attendees, a roster that barely broke the double digits, to personally interact with our teacher and have meaningful conversations and debates rather than simply sit back in a huge lecture hall and be talked down to. I much preferred this downsized format, as the smaller, more localized execution of college courses tends to breed more interaction and discourage straight-up lecturing. And as the research shows time and again, whether it be at the undergraduate level or even at the level of highly specialized graduate programs, the discussion model (also referred to as “cooperative learning”) crushes the lecture model every single time in areas of retention, enjoyment, and intellectual stimulation.

As a result, many colleges and universities (especially the private, autonomous ones) have been shifting their class structures from the giant lecture halls to the more intimate seminar rooms, and “student-to-faculty ratio” is now one of the boxes for every who’s-who college to tick in their profile on U.S. News and World Report. It’s something colleges strive for. And it proves that in an educational setting, smaller, localized, and more controlled management breeds the best results.

So imagine my surprise when, upon overhearing a conversation between myself and two other students discussing the political merits of (at the time) presidential candidate Dr. Ron Paul, our class teacher decided to butt in and loudly proclaim for the whole class to hear that Ron Paul was a naive, silly choice for a candidate because he “wants to abolish the Department of Education!” Seeing as how I could tell this was a sore subject for her (my teacher), and my grade was important to me, I didn’t press the matter much further. But looking back on that moment, I wish that I had.

I wish that I had taken my teacher to task and asked her, in front of everyone, to describe for us what she believed the Department of Education actually did. And I wish I had made it a point to ridicule her almost certainly incorrect answer in a constructive way so that everyone there might have actually (it was a classroom, after all) learned something. This woman, taking advantage of the decentralized, downsized format in her own classroom, was advocating against that same approach being applied to the public school system in America. Why? I almost certainly knew the answer: She, like so many others, was under the impression that the Department of Education somehow equated to “education” itself.

“Education” — this monolithic thing that we all talk about but barely understand (and thanks to neuroscience, are on the cusp of completely revolutionizing). Yet almost everyone seems to agree on two single points:

1)  The public school system is failing
2) Whatever we do, we must not abolish the Department of Education.

These are actually contradictory positions to hold, because the latter is largely responsible for the former. And instead of actually informing ourselves of what the Dept. of Ed. truly does in practice, we have allowed our fears of the ever-creeping illiteracy we face (i.e., a regressive march to a less educated past) to be cultivated into this hysteria that helps no one and obfuscates the very truth that might very well save us from this impending failure of our charge to educate and empower our younger generations.

The Department of Education, in essence, distributes funding. That’s the biggest function it currently serves. What if it didn’t exist? Or at the very least, what it were significantly downsized? Would the funding go away? Would schools disappear? Would our children be deprived of the opportunity to learn? Well, no, of course not. The funding would still occur, but it would simply be distributed at the local state and county levels rather than through the top-down, centralized mechanism the Dept. of Ed. currently functions as. Much in the same vein as with the downsizing and localizing of the creation and execution of college classes, the downsizing and localizing of the function of funding our public schools stands to put the power back into the hands of the administrators, teachers, and even the students. Why? Because when centralized planning leads to the kind of misaimed funding, wasted opportunities, and failing retention rates that the Department of Education has over the decades, only a madman would fight to keep such a system in place when the evidence in a related field shows very clearly that the opposite approach leads to better results. In other words: if downsizing works in higher education, why would it not be at least worth trying in K-12?

Enter the likes of people such as Dr. Paul, whose policy proposals on education I touched upon at the top of this article. He wasn’t the first or the last person in congress to propose such an idea as to do away with the Department of Education and redistribute funding to the states, and yet every single time a new guy comes along with a similar proposal, the headlines are always the same: “Evil Republicans Threaten to Get Rid of Public Education!”

Okay, I’m exaggerating, perhaps– but only a little. The point is that the full story is never told, and the department itself is almost always written as synonymous with its namesake. And this is more than sloppy reporting; it is factually incorrect.

The latest ridiculousness has happened, as of this writing, as a result of Congressman Thomas Massie’s recent bill proposing to abolish the department. Once again, the headlines encourage hysteria, and the American people oblige.

But Massie himself in a recent interview with The Blaze made his case very plan and clear: “It’s ten words,” he said when describing the contents of his drafted proposal. “I hope my colleagues can bother to read ten words.” When probed in the interview to respond to all the fears that abolishing the Department of Education would amount to abolishing “education” itself, Massie responded very succinctly: “The Department of Education has no classrooms, and no teachers … it has roughly 4,500 bureaucrats making around $105,000 apiece a year, dictating to states what the students will learn and how they will learn it.”

Exactly.

The idea that a handful of politicians with their own personal biases can dictate who gets what amount of money, what textbook, etc., based on arbitrary whims– this is the sort of thing we as Americans concerned for our children’s educations should be rallying passionately against, not in favor of. And yet, to let the headlines tell the story, people like Massie are just evil schemers who want to wreck our kids’ futures. Why they want to do this? The leftist media can never explain that. But they don’t have to– in their world, all Republicans are bad, and all “true” liberals are good. And that’s a shame, because we miss out on one of the Republicans’ few brilliant ideas actually becoming a beneficial reality as a result of such fear mongering.

This latest proposition will likely come and go as always, but if by some miracle it does get passed, I want to inform my liberal friends that that sky, despite all the hollering and pointing, will not fall. And your kids will be grateful in the end.

The post Dear Liberals: Dissolving The Dept. of Education Would NOT End Public School appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

A recent podcast by The Blaze correspondent Matt Walsh was recently posted alongside a related article semi-transcribing its contents on The Blaze website The title read as follows: “This is very simple: if you can’t afford college, don’t go to college.”

Within the body of the article (a paraphrasing of the podcast’s content itself), the following crack was made:

“Bernie Sanders suggested this week that college graduates should not only have their student loans erased, but they should be provided with “affordable” houses on top of it. This can go along nicely with the free birth control and free health care they require. Now is there anything else we can get them? Free massage chairs? Free foot rubs? A lifetime supply of roast beef sandwiches from Arby’s?”

This really was a pretty funny observation. Prior writings of my own reflect a similar view on the utter ridiculousness of the Bernie Sanders generation’s seemingly privileged idea of what they deserve in the world simply for being born. And the “free stuff” joke isn’t wrong, for the most part. Having said that, the sentiments given in this podcast by Mr. Walsh were cutting, funny, and bold… They just happened to miss the mark a bit when it comes to the particular issue of the state of college costs the U.S. today. And I aim to explain why below:

For starters, I disagree with the headline. I think anyone who wants an education should go get one. Period. In any way they can. And to the modern college student, I have this to say to you: Don’t let the people who call you moochers stop you. The reason why college costs so much these days isn’t your fault; it’s the fault of the federal government and its ridiculous promise to essentially subsidize college yearly budgets by guaranteeing loans in place of student money when tuition is beyond the students’ own means. Prior to this, Ivy League schools were affordable to people with middle class incomes. Inflation doesn’t account for how fast tuition rates have shot up in just the past few decades.

This truly isn’t an exaggeration; The University of Pennsylvania (stylized these days as the iconic UPenn), an Ivy League institution that charges about what one has come to expect from such a school these days, remained affordable for most people as recently as the 1980s, as this data from the school’s official records shows:

Undergraduate Schools:

College, School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS), the Wharton School, the School of Nursing, and the School of Allied Medical Professions (SAMP)
Tuition and General Fee: $6,000

Full-Time Graduate Groups (Ph.D.):

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences: 
Tuition: $5,920
General Fee: $380

Education: 
Tuition: $5,920
General Fee: $380

Fine Arts:
Tuition: $5,920
General Fee: $380

Full-Time Graduate Groups/Professional Schools and Programs (selected non-Ph.D. programs):

Dental Medicine: 
Tuition: $10,320
General Fee: $295

Law: 
Tuition: $6,005
General Fee: $295

Medicine: 
Tuition:8,320
General Fee: $295

Veterinary Medicine: 
Tuition:9,530
General Fee: $295

Social Work: 
Tuition: $5,920
General Fee: $380

Annenberg School:
Tuition: $5,920
General Fee: $380

As we can see, nothing goes much above $10k. Still a premium price tag for a premium school, but nowhere near the nearly 5x cost that Penn and its siblings in the “Ivy Plus” tier of schools charge today. And if one pays close attention to exclusively the undergraduate yearly tuition cost, we can see that the average tuition rates have soared to being closer to 10x the cost today. That is much too fast of an acceleration to be accounted for my inflation. And indeed, as the tuition prices have risen, the number of people able to afford attending a good school out-of-pocket has just as swiftly dwindled. Following the provided link to Penn’s archives and going back just a couple of decades before 1980 will make one’s jaw drop as to how cheap an Ivy League education used to be for just a generation or two removed, so things were already starting to accelerate even by the 80s. But prices certainly got ever worse in the decades since.

So, what causes this, if not inflation? Is it just institutional greed of most universities? Well, yes and no. It is certainly excessive for universities to charge as much as they do (as I will explain in a moment), but the idea to charge ungodly amounts of money in the first place would have never entered school administrator’s heads had it not been for that ever-destructive yet often well-meaning group of overreaching nutcase in D.C.

Government loan guarantees (which correlate with the rise in tuition price) incentivize universities to inflate their budgets and charge whatever they want in tuition. Because, under this brave new world of big pockets from big brother, even if the student can’t pay it, Uncle Sam will. So the sky, essentially, is the limit for these places. They get their shiny new libraries, and students just get served ever0-mounting interest rates.

Prior to this, as we have already seen in the UPenn example, schools were affordable for most people. And for the truly poor off financially, when even the few thousand yearly was truly too much, loans were worked out between the institutions themselves and said students. This was especially the case with the Ivies — they have been around so long that their endowments (from private alumni donations) that plenty of money already existed in the bank for them to loan to the poorest students who still had the potential to succeed. So, in theory (at least in the old days), if you were good enough to attend Harvard, you got to go to Harvard. Even if you were poor, Harvard itself could and would help you attain an education via purely internal methods. Now, that dynamic has completely shifted, and since government involvement has (no surprise) fouled up yet something else that was already working, nobody can afford college anymore. And that is not the fault of the student. And with all respect to Mr. Walsh, in today’s ever-automated job market, college degrees are never bad investments. So the issue is not to just avoid college and hope for the best; it’s to recognize the reality of the situation going in. Scraping by and working double shift to pay one’s own way will be required for many people, but for those who truly want that diploma, nothing will stop them. And nothing should.

However, the tuition problem is also very real, and it needs to stop. The universities need to be weaned off of the red white and blue teet. They need to be cut off from daddy’s seemingly bottomless bank account. They need to be forced to be frugal, sensible, and affordable once again. And guess what? That is exactly what would happen were government loans ended tomorrow. Why? Because universities need students in order to stay in business. So if there is no other way students can afford attending but through their own means all of a sudden, then the college in question will either lower its tuition and cut its superfluous investments, or it will be forced to close.

Which option do you think most colleges will choose?

The post Dear Conservatives: College Tuition Rates Really ARE Unfair to Students appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.