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Reforming education: Choice is the key
Slowly, blessedly, the public school monolith is being chipped away by grass-roots reformers.
Charter schools, private schools and experimental schools offer millions of smart consumers -- parents and their children -- genuine alternatives to the broken racket we euphemistically call "public schooling."
One example is the Chesterton Academy in St. Louis Park, Minn. It's private, Catholic and one-room small. So far it serves only 11 ninth- and 10th-grade students.
Its backward-looking yet timeless curriculum emphasizes not computer literacy or self-esteem but the core knowledge and values of Western civilization.
And its ambitious mission -- to rigorously educate the mind and "train the soul" -- makes it a revolutionary affront to the standardized pap and pabulum of government-controlled pedagogy.
Chesterton Academy -- school choice in action -- is education reform from the bottom up. It might succeed beautifully. Or it might fail for lack of money or lack of interest and ultimately disappear.
But unlike your nearest public school, Chesterton's future depends on how well it serves the needs and wants of its patrons and customers -- patrons and customers who attend by conscious choice, not government command.
A brave act of entrepreneurship in an education "market" rigged against it, Chesterton is just one of the endless options a private market in education would "magically" provide if a truly free one were allowed to exist.
