dents pay the lion’s share of the taxes that run their schools—tornkeep out the failed or violent students from across town who arernconstantly clamoring for a free ride.rnOf course, if a town wants to abolish its school districts, itrnshould be free to do so. But there is a reason they do not. Districtrnborders work like fences between houses. They help keeprnthe quality of schools as high as possible, and land values stable.rnThat the advocates of school choice cannot understand thisrndemonstrates how completely out of touch they are with thernpresent state of education across most of the country.rnBesides, the question of public-school choice is appropriatelyrndealt with onlv at the local level. As the choice advocates beginrnto promote a federal effort to abolish —by force—school districtsrnaround the country, they can expect to be denounced,rnhated, and opposed by every middle-class parent, and rightly so:rnpublic-school choice is merely another name for busing, but onrnan unimaginably huge scale.rnVouchers have much in common with socialism. They bothrnrely on government plans, government-issued coupons, vast expense,rnand invasions of private space. We can even think of thernSoviet economy as having been fully voucherized. Officialsrnstole your money, told you what to buy, and issued tickets thatrnallowed “choice” among available goods. School vouchers dornthe same, and will work about as well.rnThe idea of vouchers originated on the neoconservative rightrnwith Milton Friedman, but increasingly the left has figured outrnthat vouchers represent their dream come true: special privilegesrnfor the poor, an expansion of the welfare state, the eliminationrnof exclusive admissions, and the destruction of anachro-rnLIBERAL ARTSrnHISTORY TODAYrn”CORE SEMINAR IN HISTORY: This course isrndesigned to provide first year doctoral students withrnan overview of the three tliematic areas emphasizedrnin our Ph.D. program: women, gender, sexuality,rnand reproduction; nation-state and civil society;rnand empire, modernity, and globalization.rnReadings will foeus on the evolution of key conceptsrnemployed by contemporary historians, suchrnas gender, class, nation, race, and modernity.rnBooks to be assigned may include: Thomas Laquer.rnMaking Sex, E.P. Thompson, The Making ofrnthe English Working Class, Benedict .Anderson,rnImagined Communities, Donna Harraway, PrimaternVisions, Steve Stern, The Secret Life of Gender, andrnAlbert Chandler, Scale and Scope. Students will alsornbe asked to read and report on a book written byrna Stony Brook faculty member tliaf deals witli onernof the three thematic areas.”rn—from the Fall 1998 Graduate Course Descriptions,rnState University of New York, Stony Brookrnnisms like schools that still teach religious truth. The result isrnan unholy alliance of big-government libertarians and equalityrnactivists of all stripes to rob us of what remains of our educationalrnfreedom, and to do so in the name of serving up everrnmore of our tax dollars to the underclass.rnMeanwhile, the advocates of vouchers are busy trampling onrndecades of conservative attacks on the “right to a quality education,”rna slogan of the left now recklessly tossed around by the Instihiternfor Justice and the rest of the Beltway cabal. Conservativesrnmust be aware that the language of voucher supporters isrndrawn from an alien tradition that has no regard for limitingrnpower or protecting property, and no appreciation for the nahiralrninequalities of social position that are an inherent part of arnfree society. True equalization of educational opportunityrnwould require yet another round of judicial activism to overridernneighborhood, town, and state jurisdiction, as well as the distinctionsrnbcKveen producers and non-producers, which is apparentlyrnwhat the leaders of the voucher movement advocate.rnThese days, we are almost never spared the tyrannies of thernjudiciary imposed on us by leftist egalitarians who think nothingrnof robbing us and abolishing our right to self government.rnMust we also suffer this fate at the hands of left-libertarians andrnneoconservatives stupefied by egalitarian fantasies of state-subsidizedrnracial uplift? Not if the people have anything to sayrnabout it. Proposition 174 in California, a model piece ofrnvoucher legislation backed by all the usual suspects, crashedrnand burned at the polls for the very reasons I have laid out here.rnBut now the activists are cheering on the courts to destroy privaternschools and what is left of decent public schools, at our expense.rnJust as bad, vouchers reinforce the twin evils of public education:rninvoluntary funding and compulsory attendance. AsrnMark Brandly of Ball State University has pointed out, compulsoryrnattendance laws not only violate parental rights, they allowrngovernment to define what a school is, and therefore to outlawrnsuch developments as small, informal neighborhood schools,rnwhere one uncredentialed mother would teach arithmetic andrnanother reading, and then switch places or take time off, helpingrnwith money instead. Such arrangements would surely takernthe place of homeschooling in a free market, since most mothersrnare not cut out for full-time teaching. Yet today, such alternativernschools are illegal. Vouchers do nothing to end that situation,rnand, in fact, they lead in the opposite direction: towardrnmore draconian regulation.rnThe free market always provides the most choice andrnparental satisfaction. But the real free market is not a phonyrn”competition” using tax dollars—which denies choice to therntaxpayers—but an educational market in which parents are responsiblernfor paying for their own children’s education. Thernfree ride at taxpayer expense has not worked in any other area ofrnsocial and economic policy. We should not expect anythingrnbut harm when the same theory is applied to education.rnUntil we get a real free market in education, conservativesrnneed to revisit an older agenda. Cet the federal governmentrnout of education. Decentralize all funding and decision-makingrnto the states, and then to the local level. Scale down schoolrndistricts to the neighborhood level, as they were in the 19th cenhiry.rnAs for private schools, including home schools and cooperativerngroups of homeschoolers, oppose any restrictions whatsoever.rnThis is a huge but urgent agenda. The push forrnvouchers is not only a distraction; it is destructionism masqueradingrnas freedom. <=rn26/CHRONlCLESrnrnrn