Elena Gutierrez, Chapter 4, Question 3

In the beginning of this chapter Wheelan talks about monopolies. A monopoly can be anything from the only restaurant within miles that serves a rare delicacy to a single auto shop in a small town. A monopoly is "a service or commodity exclusively controlled by one party." (The Merriam Webster Dictionary 468) Wheelan gives some "food for the thought" in this chapter that intrigued me, and made me want to know and understand it more. Wheelan writes that public education is one of the largest government monopolies in the United States. I wondered how this could be, so I did some research on my own. The public education system is a monopoly because it holds a service that many Americans need: free education. The problem with the public education monopoly is that since the government funds the public school administrators, public schools can choose how to allocate those funds based on what they want, and not necessarily what parents want. If certain public high school decided to invest more time and money in the athletic and theater program, and not in the economic curriculum then perhaps certain graduated seniors who took economics would receive a below average education on economics.

I also wondered if the government cut public education funding, wouldn't public schools (out of their own rational self interest) hire fewer or less educated teachers? If my assumption that public schools would hire fewer or less educated teachers is true, then it would most definitely have negative effects on the future. Think of how many students attend public schools rather than private schools. Sadly if there aren't good teachers at public school then there would be an increase of poorly educated students (and later citizens) in society.