Education in the Marketplace: An Intellectual History of the Pro-Market Libertarian Visions for Education in the Twentieth Century

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Notes

1. Currie-Knight uses the term “market libertarian” to mean “those who hold a political position that goods and services should be bought and sold in free markets as opposed to being provided by governments.” (Currie-Knight, page 12) The modifier “market” is intended to avoid confusion, since in the educational context “libertarian” can also describe “any system of education where the child has maximum freedom to direct her educational trajectory or experience. For purposes of this review, “libertarian” is used in the former sense.

2. Randi Weingarten, “School Choice – Past and Present,” American Federation of Teachers, July 22, 2017, https://www.aft.org/column/school-choice-past-and-present (“Make no mistake: The real ‘pioneers’ of private school choice were the white politicians who resisted school integration.”); Chris Ford, Stephanie Johnson, and Lisette Partelow, “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers,” Center for American Progress, July 12, 2017, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2017/07/12/435629/racist-origins-private-school-vouchers/; Diane Ravitch, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education (New York: Basic Books, 2010).

3. Currie-Knight, page 5.

4. This essay reached a much broader audience when a slightly revised version was included in Friedman’s 1962 book, Capitalism and Freedom.

5. Currie-Knight, pages 88–89.

6. Ibid. 90.

7. Ibid. 94.

8. Currie-Knight, page 119.

9. Milton Friedman, “Epilogue,” in Liberty & Learning: Milton Friedman’s Voucher Idea at Fifty, ed. Robert C. Enlow and Leonore T. Ealy (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2006), 156–7.

10. Frank Chodorov, “Why Free Schools Are Not Free,” in Fugitive Essays: Selected Writings of Frank Chodorov, ed. Charles H. Hamilton (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1980), 125–6. Cited in Currie-Knight, page 45.

11. Chodorov, page 125–6. Cited in Currie-Knight, page 46.

12. Chodorov, page 123. Cited in Currie-Knight, page 47.

13. Currie-Knight, page 27.

14. Nock’s pessimism that the United States had any institution capable of fostering widespread high-quality education was tempered only by his hope that a small “Remnant” would have the intellectual thirst, fortitude, and initiative to truly educate themselves.

15. After Lieberman’s passing, the Journal of School Choice ran a special edition in which more than a dozen researchers, academics, and public intellectuals paid tribute to his scholarship and legacy. (Journal of School Choice, Vol. 8, Issue 2, 2014).

16. Myron Lieberman, The Educational Morass (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007), page 273. Cited in Currie-Knight, page 139.