EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Since the beginning of the BSP's mandate, we have witnessed a constant avalanche of legislative projects and proposals. A huge part of them fall into the category of "harmful to individual freedom and the market economy." The latest proposal by the Minister of Education is definitely one of them.
This is about the idea that “[t]o completion of primary education, one textbook for each subject should be studied, and not, as before, choosing between three”. It is clear that the current system of approving textbooks and teaching aids can in no way be called “competitive”. In point 3 of the Amendments to the Law on Public Education we read: “The Minister of Education and Science shall approve by order the textbooks for the public education system after establishing their compliance with the state educational requirements under Art. 16, items 3, 7 and 9, but not more than three textbooks for one subject for each grade and for a period not less than that specified in Art. 14 of the Law on the Level of Education, the General Educational Minimum and the Curriculum.” The change desired by Minister Klisarova aims solely and exclusively at even greater control over the development of children.
In any case, three textbooks for one subject are a slightly better option than just one, but commenting on the arbitrary number of textbooks that a ministry will have the right to release is not at all the right focus of a discussion about education. When discussing this, attention should be paid to the structure of the supply. Otherwise, there is a very high probability that we will simply be discussing cosmetic changes, for example, whether 20 works by Vazov should be studied per year, or only 19. This rhetoric will in no way affect the final result - without systemic change, the product of schools will still be functionally illiterate young people, many of whom do not know what to do with their lives, who are almost entirely dependent on the state. In short, it is good to ask ourselves: "Do we need a violent monopoly body that even has the right to determine what textbooks our children should study?"
Education, by its very nature, is a service, and as such, the most effective way to provide it is in an unregulated environment, where institutions have the freedom to respond to the needs and demands of consumers; i.e., in a completely free market system. Of course, this is valid for the supply of absolutely all goods and services that can exist. The current mechanism, which is managed by the Ministry of Education and Science, which is not subject to anyone's control and serves only political interests, takes away the right to choose from children and their parents (who are the real consumers of education), by lowering educational programs and the monopoly right to determine which organizations can be called "schools". But, in order not to fall into blabbering and sophisms, let's see what other economic arguments can be raised against the state educational monopoly and the body that imposes it.
Back in the mid-20th century, Professor Ludwig von Mises described why central planning is impossible and inevitably leads to collapse – because there is a problem with economic calculation. In short, while government officials know exactly how much it costs to “produce” a twelfth-grader, they have absolutely no idea what to produce. In a free education system, the price mechanism reflects the preferences of children and their parents at any given time. Higher demand for computer specialists in the market, for example, attracts more people to the profession because salaries in the sector rise. This, in turn, increases the demand for computer teachers, which will also increase their salaries and redirect more people to those professions, rather than to professions for which demand is low.
In this way, the market reflects people's needs and resources will be redirected to meet the most pressing ones. The plans of the Ministry of Education are not influenced by a price mechanism – they are the result of the arbitrary whims of bureaucrats who have no motive to act effectively, because they are not part of a profit and loss system and their work is always guaranteed (unlike any private institution that goes bankrupt if it does not satisfy anyone's needs). Therefore, the educational program of the ministry can meet the needs of a child only by chance, and the probability that students are forced to study subjects that are not interesting to them and the knowledge from which they will never apply in practice is huge. In addition, the ministry is simply not capable of spending resources efficiently and its activities are in almost all cases ineffective and harmful. In practice, international education rankings show exactly this – schools here are factories for functionally illiterate future unemployed.
Let's look at the "economic argument" behind the change; namely, that "the state gives millions of levs for textbooks that go to private publishers. This year alone, the Council of Ministers approved 42 million levs for republishing textbooks." Obviously, Minister Klisarova is aiming for some kind of savings in the ministry. There are two points here: one is visible and unfeasible, the other - invisible and extremely dangerous in the long term. The visible part is the (hypothetical) saving of several million levs. Of course, when the state reduces the money it redistributes, this is good news. Alas, this good wish is largely unfulfillable. It is enough to look at the motives of the ministries to understand why. No ministry has a motive to reduce its expenses, because then it sends a signal that its budget has been exceeded; i.e. that it must be reduced for the next programming period (2015 budget). It is more likely that funds will be transferred to other activities than that spending will decrease.
Even if the scenario were to be implemented, there is no indication that economic welfare and activity would in any way increase. However, if the proposal to strengthen the state monopoly were to be adopted, the economic cost, which is invisible and incalculable at the moment, would affect future economic growth. Without structural reform aimed at eliminating the status quo, the system would continue to churn out functionally illiterate individuals who would have no place in the labor market because the ministry’s curricula have little to do with the surrounding economic and production reality. On the contrary, it can be expected that “closing the windows” to the world would lower the level of education; i.e. more and more graduates will have to look for jobs they did not study for (de facto thus rendering their education meaningless in general), will have difficulty gaining experience, will be forced to stay with their parents longer than they would otherwise have, and will be less productive than if they had the opportunity to study the subjects they themselves want in a competitive educational market. In other words – the political desire for greater control over the system today condemns us all to a less competitive and unproductive economy, lower economic growth and more unemployed people, especially young people, tomorrow.
Another philosophical argument cannot help but be raised against the minister's idea. Her plan for more centralization and a stronger monopoly, achieved through the introduction of one textbook for all students (because, in the minister's words: "If a child now transfers from one school to another, he or she must also change the textbooks, because they are different"), in practice means strengthening the equalization of children. This is detrimental to their future development and completely misses the point of education. Children do not enter school to come out the same. Each of them is a different individual with different needs and abilities. Moreover, the goal of education is to increase the qualification, respectively - the productivity, of the individual. That is, education is an investment in human capital, and not the opposite - the equalization of human capital to a single educational standard. There would probably be a great deal of truth in the assumption that Mrs. Klisarova herself does not send her children to school with the words: "Go and be like the others."
There is no reason not only to limit competition in the supply of teaching aids, but also to have a monopoly authority that has the right to determine what and how children learn. The change proposed by Minister Klisarova is an exceptionally good example of the fact that the only role of the Ministry of Education is to serve the absolutist fantasies of a small [1] clique of people who clearly yearn for complete control over the knowledge, opinion and future of all children.
[1] And counterproductive.
