Kill This Bill

The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill has just been passed in the upper house of parliament. Even its title makes no sense.

How can a “right to something” be “compulsory”? I am firmly opposed to allowing our confused The State the “right to use force” on kids who hate school. Cadres of education inspectors will go about terrorizing kids who work in homes, tea shops and garages.

And all this for a State-approved “education” that is delivered by the “ideological apparatus of The State”: the School Boards. This is NOT education; this is Socialist Propaganda. It is harmful for minds exposed to it. Ask me – for I came out of The System myself.

Actually, this Bill gives The State the right to use force on private schools. There is a lot of Misuse of Force contained in this Bill.

As I have consistently maintained, our The State should have NO ROLE in education. A free market for all kinds of knowledge is best, delivered by competing businessmen. So a poor kid might try and learn English in 6 months from a private institute.

Further, and this applies especially to poor kids who need to enter The Market early, a broad generalized education lasting 10 years is quite useless, and also a waste of precious Time.

To flourish in The Market a kid needs to know just one thing well: the division of labour implies the “fragmentation of knowledge” (Hayek). A bartender, a waiter, a cook, a street-food vendor, a musician, a dancer, a receptionist, a plumber, a carpenter, an artist, photographer or painter, a butcher, an electrician, a mechanic, a sweeper, a taxi driver – all survive with a separate fragment of knowledge entirely their own. In no case is a long, broad and generalized “education” useful. Those who stick to it and go on to “higher education” have access to only some careers – they may become lawyers, doctors, managers, accountants, engineers, bureaucrats. The Market is much bigger than that. And India must think big if she is to reap the benefits of a predominantly young population: the so-called “demographic dividend.”

Education is a purely “private good”: those who do not pay can be excluded. The Market allows those who possess fragments of knowledge that other people want to sell this knowledge for a fee. The key question, then, is this: Does our The State possess any knowledge at all? Knowledge, that is, that other people want. And, if so, why are they so keen on using force?

No siree. The State at the “commanding heights of the economy” is bad enough. Let us not have the same The State at the commanding heights of education.

Kill this Bill.

Recommended reading: My "Liberate education from The State," available here. There is another related column, here.