2nd
The Old Schooler :: Socialized Education in America (or, I Bet You Didn’t Know You Were a Socialist)
During the presidential campaign process there has been a lot of talk about universal healthcare and socialism. And it makes some people really mad. And sometimes scared.
Technically the USA has socialized a number of our social sectors.
The recent financial bailout of several banks and lending institutions was in a sense at least a soft-nationalization of some of our countries largest financial corporations.
Controversy surrounding Blackwater as a corporate para-military for hire and a contract-policing force, stands as a reminder that we’ve socialized our police and military industry.
Even public school education in American is one of our most over-looked successes in national socialism.
I say this as someone with several family members who work for the government—our government’s national socialized education system. My mom, one of my aunts, two of my brothers and both of their wives all do (or have until recently have) worked in the public school system. Though they work in the socialized education system, I doubt any of them would self identify as socialists. And they’re not.
Now personally I’m a huge fan of the public school program in America (I know a lot of smart people and most of them are the product of public school education). Funny though, because I hardly got to take advantage of it myself. Though I lived at the same address from age 2-17, I went to seven different schools (Pinewood Elementary, Saint Bernard’s Catholic School, Druid Hill Public School, Word of Life Christian School, Pinewood Elementary, Bethany Christian School, Bellevue Christian High School and Northwest High School for driver’s education).
I sometimes wonder what social impacts moving around so many different schools may have had on me. And I’m impressed that my folks pulled it off. Back in the day when I was in school the government forced (yes, the government told us what to do…) you to go to the schools assigned to you by your zip code. Today, at least here in Omaha, you now have a choice which public school you can send your children.
And, in America we even get more choices. If you’re not a fan of public school education you don’t have to send your kids—in fact, you can educate them at home or pay to send them to a number of private schools.
I think a lot us would basically agree that education in America is one of the things we do well. When living overseas, I was surprised that in some of the world’s poorest countries, education is privatized and if you can’t afford tuition, books or uniforms you may not be able to go to school.
That’s really, really sad.
When living and traveling overseas there was something else that surprised me. The USA is the only Westernized country that doesn’t have a form of socialized healthcare (ironically, we also have shorter life-expectancy that nearly every country with socialized medicine). And just like overseas, if you can’t afford school you don’t get to go, I know people here who can’t afford insurance and so they don’t have access to very basic healthcare and medical attention.
That’s really, really sad too.
I’m thankful that Phileena and I have insurance. And I wish everyone had it. But when we use to live in Kentucky we had to pay almost $600 a month for us to have a really, really basic (that means bad) insurance plan that we hardly ever had to use because we were young and healthy.
That was a problem. And I think here in the America we’re smart enough to figure this out.
But I think we’re afraid of the government controlling us. We don’t need to be afraid.
What we need to be afraid of is how much higher insurance premiums might go and how much higher health costs could get.
Growing up it was hard for my parents to find ways to pay for private school for me and my brothers and sisters. But with hearts full of love, the hope of our potential realized through the best education they could afford, and their generous sacrifices, my mom and dad often worked extra jobs to pay for private tuition—even when there were free public schools available. Of course, my siblings and I benefited from this and are grateful to this day. And strangely, side note here, even though the private schools cost so much more, teachers who worked in them got paid so much less than the socialized public school teachers.
Anyway, in some of the other places I’ve visited overseas where they have socialized medicine, they’ve also allowed a privatized version of healthcare—if you’re a doctor and you want to open a private clinic or if you want to make more money that what the government pays, you can. The practioners are free to work in socialized or privatized hospitals and clinics, and the general public has access to free healthcare or can pay a little more for private medical attention if they want.
Sounds like a great idea to me. Socialism and free-market privatization holding one another accountable. Public schools and private schools co-existing. Government run clinics and private clinics co-exisiting.
The people still get a choice. Competition fuels excellence in the system. And the costs are accountable and under control.
