education — VOICES for REASON

My colleague Onkar Ghate was invited to take part in an online debate hosted by BusinessWeek.com. The question posed:

Public university students should stop protesting tuition increases. Cash-strapped states have no choice but to raise fees, and even with the cost hikes, state schools are a huge bargain compared to their private counterparts. Pro or con?

Onkar takes the “pro” side–but from a unique perspective. Read the whole thing.

stock.xchg / lusi

Under a 1975 U.S. law, school districts which fail to provide a “free and appropriate education” for students with disabilities can be (and have been) sued by parents for reimbursement of the cost of schooling those students privately. A new Supreme Court ruling will now allow parents to seek reimbursement for private school education even if their special needs child has never attended public school.

The ruling is significant not for the specific, narrow legal issue that it resolved, but because it brings back to light the perverse double standard inherent in the law guaranteeing such reimbursement. Namely, why are students without disabilities not afforded the opportunity for an “appropriate” education as well?

Read the rest of this entry »

Tell people you’re against the FCC censoring the airwaves and without a doubt, the next question will be: But what about the children? Shouldn’t they be protected from content that’s unsuitable for them?

My usual response involves pointing out that parents bear the responsibility of policing what their children watch or listen to–and that the need to protect their children doesn’t give them the right to control what others say.

Ayn Rand made this point in an interview she gave in the early ’60s. (See the new book Objectively Speaking, a fascinating collection of her interviews.) But she also raised an interesting aspect I hadn’t considered.

Read the rest of this entry »