Empiezan las clases

Esta semana empezaron las clases en esta zona. No me quiero mandar la parte, pero la Opinadorita salió en el noticiero local para envidia de vecinos y amigos.

Ya que estamos en el tema del sistema educativo, Elena me manda más de John Stossel sobre la libertad de elección en el sistema educativo, o el sistema de school vouchers, como se lo conoce en EEUU.

Vuelvo a repetir lo que decía la vez pasada. No existen las soluciones mágicas, pero como con todo monopolio, sería muy positivo introducir reformas promercado en el sistema. Deberíamos considerar subsidiar la demanda, no la oferta, con un sistema de vouchers:

This week's back-to-school ads offer amazing bargains on lightweight backpacks and nifty school supplies. All those businesses scramble to offer us good stuff at low prices. It's amazing what competition does for consumers. The power to say no to one business and yes to another is awesome.

Too bad we don't apply that idea to schools themselves.

Education bureaucrats and teachers unions are against it. They insist they must dictate where kids go to school, what they study, and when. When I went on TV to say that it's a myth that a government monopoly can educate kids effectively, hundreds of union teachers demonstrated outside my office demanding that I apologize and "re-educate" myself by teaching for a week. (I'll show you the demonstration and what happened next this Friday night, when ABC updates my "Stupid in America" TV special.)

The teachers union didn't like my "government monopoly" comment, but even the late Albert Shanker, once president of the American Federation of Teachers, admitted that our schools are virtual monopolies of the state -- run pretty much like Cuban and North Korean schools. He said, "It's time to admit that the public education system operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve. It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."