One of their favorite arguments: “Why, we can’t trust the free market to educate our children – the very idea! The free market excels in many things, they say, but it does not guarantee educational” equity “for our children.

What are “fairness” public school apologists talking about? It means a guarantee that all children receive a “quality” education and “equal opportunities” to learn. “In the cruel free market,” says the public school bureaucrat, “the rich get the best schools, the middle class the mediocre, and the poor children are left in the dust.” That, they say, is not fair, it is not “fairness.”

But why not apply your theory of “equity” to food, clothing and housing? Shouldn’t all houses, food stores, and clothing factories also be owned and operated by the government to ensure “fairness”? After all, the rich eat better, wear warmer clothes, and live in fancier homes than the poor or the middle class. That’s not fair, is it?

That’s not fair.

In a free market, people who make more money than others usually make it. They risk more, work harder, work smarter, persevere more, make better decisions in life, or choose a profession that has a greater chance of earning wealth. Why shouldn’t they enjoy the just fruits of their work, of their character, of their life decisions?

Also, what financially successful people earn is not taken away from those who earn less. Is it the fault of the successful person that the less successful don’t work as hard, persevere as much, or make better decisions? If you are looking to blame for differences in people’s income, don’t blame those who are successful. Blame it on life, on human nature.

Nature makes all men and women different: different talents, abilities, strengths, and weaknesses. It has always been this way since human beings came out of the trees and started walking upright. To set foot on income disparities is to set foot in human nature, which is to set foot in reality.

If “equity” for all people is our goal, then for every “inequality” between the poor, the middle class, and the rich, whether in food, housing, health care, or education, the government must loot the people financially. more successful with taxes to remedy what they did not cause and what is not their fault. This notion of “fairness”, extended to all aspects of our lives, will turn the United States into a socialist or communist economic police state. In such a police state, the successful are punished and “leveled” with progressive income taxes, so that we all end up miserably equal and equally miserable.

But this is an old story, the story called envy. The unhappy who hate the happy, the unsuccessful who hate the successful, all seek to save their self-esteem by knocking down those who envy. The Soviet communists tried for eighty years. The result: a chaos of poverty, slavery, and failure.

“But,” say lovers of fairness, “why punish children? Is it their fault that their parents are poor?” No, it is not, but it is not the fault of those who are not poor.

Even assuming we wanted this “equity” for our children, have our government schools really given children equal opportunity and “quality” education during their 150 years of control? Jeanne Chall, in her book, “The Academic Achievement Challenge,” presents grim statistics that 70 percent of inner-city fourth-graders read below grade level, that a growing prison population is comprised of primarily by men whose reading and math skills are at or below the eighth grade level. These are just the tip of the iceberg of statistics that demonstrate the utter failure of public schools.

Public school employees may have the best intentions in the world. And that? What matters is the results. For all practical purposes, public schools, therefore, create only inequity for our children by providing them with a third-level education, especially for inner-city children. Our government-controlled public schools condemn millions of children to a life of failure, while school officials proclaim godly goals about creating educational “opportunities” for all children. Could our children be worse off if public schools were eliminated and low-cost, competent, free-market schools or tutors taught our children?

To ensure “equal education” for all children, it is necessary to create a massive public school system to enforce this guarantee. Once a government monopoly takes control of your children’s education, quality education for your children walks out the door. We demand “equity” in education and condemn millions of children to a miserable future.

On the contrary, if we allow children’s natural love of learning to flourish and the free market for education to flourish, even poor children, as generations of American immigrants have shown, will become middle class or even rich. Eliminate public schools and let school choice and open competition prevail, and most poor children will eventually get a quality education and reach their full potential.