Handschooling.com

Because it is about kids, public education has managed for more than a century to dodge its true identity as welfare state socialism. As Barack Obama drives the United States economy off the cliff into unsustainable debt, almost suddenly we realize: Duh, all that money that went to public schools is drying up.

Like Paul Rahe, I find optimism in this. Rahe writes in a recent article:

The simple truth is that the welfare state is bankrupt. The money that earners pay for Medicare does not come close to covering the costs. This year, Social Security will pay out more money than it takes in.

Ever so slowly, education is showing up in this conversation — though Rahe does not mention it in his excellent article. Yet when the welfare state is bankrupt there is no money for public schools.

Replacing public schools has been off the table for reasons that have been hammered into our thinking since our grandparents and theirs were children. School is eagerly anticipated by little children. Teachers are to be deeply admired and protected. The senior prom is one of life’s great moments. The public schools are a great American achievement. How many of those and the many other preconceptions of schooling were true for most of us? How many for the newest generation of American kids?

Obama has now lifted his chin and resolved to make education better by 2020. What he has proposed is to spend billions of federal dollars, many of them given to the states with the proviso that the receiving states not reduce their own k-12 spending.

As the states run out of money and the federal deficit falls off the cliff, public schooling will be broke.

History is full of surprises. Who would have thought that the sacrosanct public schools would close because they became unsustainable? The education blob that has resisted reform for decades would melt away because there was no more public money to throw into it?

And the kids? Here is the most stupendous surprise in the history of human learning: Each kid will learn anything and everything from the device in his or her hand. The cost is miniscule — less to provide handschooling for every kid in American than say cover the Chicago public schools expenditures for a year or two. The generations that will rebuild the future will not be stunted by public schooling. There is something to be optimistic about!

And we have Obama to thank, because by ripping away the veils to reveal the socialist core of public education and speeding the nanny state bankruptcy, he is going to cause real learning to emerge in our children’s hands long before 2020.

When will the money run out for public schools? Watch this: