Gov. 1A-15: The Right To Teach

        With the advent of online schooling, many teachers are concerned about job security, and as always, they turn to the state for assurance. They call for the Department of Education to regulate education and protect teachers from competition with online academies, for the sake of the children of course. This outlook has a number of problems.

    The critical issue of protecting workers from competition is the idea that they have a right to the job. This is founded on a misunderstanding of the concept of rights and of the title 'worker'. A discussion of rights is beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say nobody has a 'right' to anything which is not his, including money. Employment is simply a voluntary arrangement between two entities in exchange for labor. If one was forced to pay or the other one to work it would become slavery. For instance, if a doctor agrees to treat someone and then fails to deliver on his promises the customer is free to go to his competition and arrange another deal. Even to discuss employment as legitimate we have to ignore the source of teacher wages, which is theft, but clearly, the public is not beholden to their alleged servants.

    One of the reasons people allege we must block online education is because we are told it must be inferior to a scientifically designed public education. On the contrary, nothing could be further from the truth. Rather, private online education is designed to conform to the needs of the consumer. To do this educators utilize the free market and prices. These mechanisms reward success, convey information about the demand for the product, and punish failure. Furthermore, prices allow the interests of the seller to be aligned with the needs of the consumer. The market also provides alternatives, when one curriculum fails to perform it receives a bad reputation and consumers are free to choose the best available deal. All together the free market is the best mechanism for ensuring the educator's interests are aligned with those of children and parents

    In contrast to the free market, state-employed teachers are ill-equipped to provide service to anyone. To begin with, a free market is by definition entirely made up of professionals. These professionals are only paid to meet the expectations of consumers and fill niches in the market. The state cannot match this by any stretch of the imagination. Even when education is designed according to 'science' this science comes from people hired by the state, the interests of the state are not aligned with the interests of parents, otherwise, the parents would voluntarily pay them for it and the state would not need to collect taxes. The state is reduced to employing experts to develop its curriculum, not free and accountable professionals, there is nothing professional about a state 'expert'. Even if an expert is competent in developing a curriculum it is just that, a single curriculum. Nobody can say for sure if this is really an effective program for every single suent in the country, and it most assuredly is not. Even if the Curriculum was perfect the teachers are also state employees and fallible human beings subject to the same problems as the expert. Nobody can hold teachers accountable besides the fallible 'experts' above them. 

    The whole problem of teacher employment is a joke of an enterprise. What is written here only begins to touch on the extent of the issue but the critical argument can be summarized here. Nobody has a right to a job, not your dentist, not an expert, and certainly not a teacher, anything else is a form of slavery. Everyone wants the best for children, and the market is equipped to provide it. Professional online teachers align their interests with the interests of parents and children, the state educator has no way to do this. Experts have no way of knowing what each child needs or wants out of education, parents and professionals can develop the most agreeable possible plan for education. To prevent online schools from operating, and parents from choosing them is ridiculous and assumes the state knows better, which it does not. A public school teacher is reduced to the employee of a bad company, and we are supposed to keep the company afloat by forcing everyone to use their services. The future employment of the teacher is out of the question, parents want educators, not bums on a dole.