EDUCATION NOTEBOOK:
Thankful for Freedom's Greatest Teacher, Milton Friedman
November 22, 2006
The world has lost a great teacher. Milton Friedman died last
week at age 94.
Dr. Friedman played many distinguished roles in his professional
life. He was an advisor to presidents and other world leaders. He
won the Nobel Prize in economics in 1976 and was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1988. But first and foremost he
was a teacher: a professor of economics at the University of
Chicago and, later, a bestselling author and commentator on the
national stage.
Friedman taught us many important lessons. His instruction on
sound monetary policy brought about the end of the destruction of
runaway inflation. He persuasively argued for an all-volunteer
military, helping end the draft.
He also taught us important lessons about freedom and the proper
role of government. In his bestselling books Capitalism and
Freedom (1962) and Free to Choose: A Personal Statement
(1980 with his wife Rose), Friedman developed and made the case for
an agenda of policy solutions based on freedom and free exchange.
Many of these policies have been implemented, and many others are
being championed by free-market advocates today. Ed Feulner,
president of the Heritage Foundation, called Friedman "one of the
most compelling advocates for human freedom the world has ever
known."
Of course, one of Friedman's most groundbreaking ideas concerned
education. In 1955, he published the essay "The Role of Government in Education," in which he
laid out a groundbreaking vision for education that would transfer
control from the government to parents:
Governments could require a minimum level of education which
they could finance by giving parents vouchers redeemable for a
specified maximum sum per child per year if spent on "approved"
educational services. Parents would then be free to spend this sum
and any additional sum on purchasing educational services from an
"approved" institution of their own choice. The educational
services could be rendered by private enterprises operated for
profit, or by non-profit institutions of various kinds.
Providing school vouchers directly to parents would create an
education marketplace driven by individual choice and consumer
preferences:
Let the subsidy be made available to parents regardless where
they send their children - provided only that it be to schools
that satisfy specified minimum standards - and a wide variety of
schools will spring up to meet the demand. Parents could express
their views about schools directly, by withdrawing their children
from one school and sending them to another, to a much greater
extent than is now possible.
More than fifty years after Milton Friedman first proposed
school vouchers, the idea is finally becoming a reality.
Unfortunately, this progress has been too slow and is much more
limited than what Friedman had in mind.
Today, seven states and Washington, D.C., have limited school
voucher programs. Seven states now provide tax incentives for
private education, a similar policy mechanism. By next year, as
many as 150,000 children will attend a school of their parents'
choice through programs inspired by Friedman's original voucher
idea. So far, the evidence from these school choice programs has
proven Friedman's theory right.
Unfortunately, no state has yet embraced Friedman's idea of
universal school choice. And so we have not seen what could be
possible in a true marketplace of education.
During the last years of his life, Milton Friedman dedicated
himself to the effort to implement school vouchers across the
nation. In 1996, he and his wife Rose created the Milton and Rose
D. Friedman Foundation to promote school choice. The past decade
has brought many important victories for parental choice in
education. Soon after Friedman's passing, Robert Enlow, executive
director of the Foundation, promised "the redoubling of our effort
to achieve Milton Friedman's vision."
We should be thankful for Milton Friedman and celebrate the life
of freedom's greatest teacher. As his ideas on education continue
to gain adherents, even more people - particularly students and
their families - will have reason to give thanks for Milton
Friedman's bold vision of freedom and determination to implement
it.
Dan Lips is an Education
Analyst at the Heritage Foundation www.Heritage.org.