End the Public Library?

As I read a recent article from Fast Company entitled Best-selling Author: "Public Libraries Deprive Writers Of Royalties" I was reminded of a line from the movie Good Will Hunting:

See, the sad thing about a guy like you is in 50 years you're gonna start doing some thinking on your own and you're gonna come up with the fact that there are two certainties in life. One, don't do that. and, two, you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on a fucking education you could've got for a dollar fifty in late charges at the public library.

How many of the self made men of the past got their education from borrowed books and the reading room of a public library? Abraham Lincoln is, arguably, the American icon of such achievement. Frederic Douglas, Thomas Jefferson and Lysander Spooner also come to mind as mostly self taught men.

I know some -- maybe most -- publishers would like to do away with the lending of books and even eliminate the used book market. My anarcho-libertarian sympathies are on the side of letting them try. However, beginning in 1656 when a Boston merchant named Robert Keayne willed his collection of books to the town of Boston, the publicly accessible library has worked pretty well to help spread knowledge in this country. Hence, my conservative inclination is to preserve the institution even if I question the wisdom of supporting it through taxation.

H/T to Grant Cunningham and The Revolver Liberation Alliance

The Continuing Failure of the Tax-Supported School System

Officials: Most NYC High School Grads Need Remedial Help Before Entering CUNY Community Colleges

Nearly 80 percent of New York City high school graduates need to relearn basic skills before they can enter the City University’s community college system.

The above quote sums up the problem. Tax-supported education is failing the very people is was created to help. Despite the bleating of the Teachers Unions, a system that fail eight out of ten times is not generating a net benefit. It is a disastrous drag on the culture.

When future historians write about the history of 20th and Early 21st Century America, the tax-supported education system will likely be recorded as the single greatest mistake we made. That is if that horribly dysfunctional educational system we created leaves us a future that can afford the luxury of historians.

Public Education and Epic Fail

Jerry Pournelle, writing on the subject of Roman Warm, Dark Age Cool, Viking Warm, and I’m taking the day off has this to say about a "Dark Age" and Public Education:

What is certain is that something horrible happened in 535 which ushered in a long period of cooling, shorter growing seasons, plagues, tribal wanderings, and the real Dark Ages, if you define a Dark Age not as a time when you have forgotten how to do something, but have forgotten that anyone ever was able to do it. As with the US in education, where we have forgotten what we used to accomplish with the public schools, and now strive to achieve goals that would have been considered failure by most teachers over most of the period of the public schools.

When future historians write about the history of the United States, the idea of government controlled, tax supported education will rank among the worst ideas ever.

Assuming the looming Endarkenment leaves mankind a future that can afford historians.