Sheldon Richman on Separating School and State

Richman describes the state of public education in modern America, and talks about how to use competition to fix it.

Sheldon Richman

Sheldon Richman is former vice president and editor at the Future of Freedom Foundation and former senior editor at the Cato Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies. For 15 years he was editor of The Freeman, published by the Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York. He is the author of Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families; Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax; and Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State. He runs the Free Association blog at his website, shel​don​rich​man​.com.

Sheldon Richman is the editor of The Freeman (a magazine published by the Foundation for Economic Education), a senior fellow at the Future of Freedom Foundation, and a research fellow at the Independent Institute.

In this lecture from one of the Future of Freedom Foundation’s conferences in 1995, Richman describes the state of public education in modern America. He makes note of state education’s Spartan origins, and refers to Israel Kirzner’s work on entrepreneurship. Opening up public schools to competition, Richman says, would put the power to decide what and how their children learn back into parents’ hands.

This lecture is adapted from Richman’s 1994 book of the same title, available here: http://​www​.ama​zon​.com/​S​e​p​a​r​a​t​i​n​g​-​S​c​h​o​o​l​-​S​t​a​t​e​-​L​i​b​e​r​a​t​e​-​A​m​e​r​i​c​a​s​/​d​p​/​0​9​6​4​0​4​4722/