Education and Freedom - Essay Example

Education should function and left to thrive in a free society. Some of the remedies that have been proposed include educational vouchers, increased funding, controls to curb school based violence, extended academic year etc. However the only suitable solution is entire separation of school and state, thus allowing education to be bought and sold via a market system that is free. This therefore means that education that is financed by consumers must replace education funded by taxes. Public schools should be dissolved and replaced with educational enterprises.

De-monopolizing public educational institutions would ensure that standards are raised, students and teachers are better motivated, greater innovation would be allowed, costs would be brought down and specific needs of children would be met (Ayse, 2012).Public education is not consistent with responsibility and freedom. Public education in fact wears away personal freedom and that is why it should be replaced with market solutions, competition, and parental choice. Since parents are charged with their children’s education, then it means families would be best suited in a free market to decide which educational institutions are best suited for their children.

Education being an economic commodity should be bought in the marketplace dictated by valuation and preferences of consumers. Thus in an education market that is free, students and parents would be at liberty to make a decision on the basis of perceived benefits and costs of each available option. Essentially, education procurement does not vary from acquiring any other private commodity. Schools that are market-based have got incentives that provide quality education at a price that is competitive.

Thus the separation of education and state would reinstate academic integrity, intellectual freedom as well as individual accomplishment. The free market can best furnish the public with high quality education services. The finest school choice plan therefore is the one based on free market (Harry, 2013).Colleges should prepare people to be good citizens. The purpose of education has been debated world over by teachers, scholars, statesmen and several considerate men and women. There has always been one predictable answer; knowledge acquisition.

Even more complete is the utterance made by the Archbishop of York that “the true purpose of education is to produce citizens.” This statement sounds true not only the day it was uttered but also today. However in the modern day society, it’s a main challenge bringing up a good citizen. The fundamental responsibility for making good citizens rests with a country’s education system. Colleges and universities being the highest institutions of learning are tasked with this responsibility.

The mission of most colleges includes training graduates to take on their future as reasoning and mature citizens, who are able to understand their work, lives, interests and the needs of communities, country and the world at large(Amy,2014).Preparing students so that they can become citizens who are knowledgeable has been recognized as an objective of education throughout the history of US starting with Jefferson and beyond Dewey. American colleges and universities for instance have been called upon in the past few years to embrace their roles as members of society so as to model the necessary civic virtues hence becoming instruments of a functioning democracy.

It has become crystal clear that a democracy that is genuine should also be a learning society and the fact that good citizenship needs the ability to come up with a learning community with others. A college is one of the best places to practise habits of action and mind such as the continued aspiration to work toward accomplishing a common ground for the common good of everyone as well as understanding of the notion of public. There are 5 primary qualities taught at most colleges that make a good citizen and these include; respect, honesty, courage, responsibility and compassion (Harvey, 2001).

Work CitedAmy, Wan. Producing Good Citizens:Literacy Training in Anxious Times. New York: Pittsburgh Press, 2014.Ayse, Demirbolat Ottekin. The Relationship Between Democracy and Education. Istanbul: Bentham e Books, 2012.Harry, Schofield. The Philosophy of Education(RLE Edu K):An Introduction. New York: Routledge, 2013.Harvey, Kaye. Are We Good Citizens?:Affairs Political,Literary,and Academic. New York: Teachers College Press, 2001.