From laissez-faire to vouchers: an intellectual history of market libertarian thought on education in twentieth-century America
Date
2014
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
This is a history of pro-market arguments about American education--the idea that we should reject the current public education system and replace it with a market in educational services that allows producers to offer competing schooling options and consumers to choose those that work best for them. I want to explore how and why libertarian arguments regarding education have changed over the twentieth century. The research questions I will answer are: (1) What did key twentieth-century market libertarians write about education in a free society? (2) How might the various defenses and visions of markets in education reflect the different influences on the intellectual advocating them? (3) How did market libertarian criticisms of state education, justifications for educational markets, and visions of what educational markets should look like compare with each other, and how did they change over time? Using the writings and biographies of several prominent market libertarian intellectuals, as well as works written by their contemporaries and predecessors, I will focus on how each crafted his or her argument for markets in education and how each imagined the proper role (if any) for governments and private actors in markets in schooling, as well as explain how their arguments might have been influenced by others.