The opening of my latest column at EveryJoe:
“Many people complain about how education has become so expensive. Mostly, they are wrong.
“Schooling has become more expensive, but consider the cost of the following awesome education resources:
- Khan Academy for learning math: Free.
- Louvre Online for experiencing and studying art history: Free.
- Google Translate for learning dozens of languages: Free.
- Wikipedia on almost any subject: Free.
- Massive Open Online Courses by top professors: Thousands for free.
- Project Gutenberg‘s collection of classic books: Free.
“For almost all of us, the cost of information has declined dramatically. So if one doesn’t know much about history, biology, or the French one took, that’s a choice …” [Read more here.]
Previous column in The Good Life series: Comparing North and Latin American Economic Performance.
Marvellous article. Politicians and bureaucrats are not renowned for their ingenuity or for encouraging independence of thought, imagination and creativity. Why then should they be making the key decisions about our children’s education? For many it seemed like a good idea, but I don’t see public education as the answer to desirable goal of an educated citizenry, including one able to carry and defend the torch of liberty. State funded schools mean state funded ideas, above all: Statism. I would prefer our tax dollars be returned to us, either directly or in tax credits, and we make our own decisions on these matters.