Getting the State OUT of Education

I have contributed to the June issue of the magazine Education World, arguing that there must not be any role for the State in either primary, secondary or higher education. The article can be accessed here.

However, one crucial para seems to have been left out. This is pasted below:

The problem we have to solve is that of the transmission of knowledge from one who has it to another individual, who wants to acquire it. The market alone can solve this problem. The State has no ‘collective pool of knowledge’. Indeed, the socialist Indian State is a naked propagandist, and all its attempts at securing a 'uniform standard' in education have only resulted in the uniform teaching of errors.

Anarchy – the complete absence of State control – is vital for knowledge. In an anarchic scenario there will be errors – but only of individual teachers and professors who will be exposed by other academics. And when knowledge is free from government control reputations will need to be earned. This is how errors will be gradually weeded out of teaching.