July 18, 2011 10:38AM # The Frightening Philosophy of Public Schooling, in a Nutshell By [Neal McCluskey](https://www.cato.org/people/neal-mccluskey) --- SHARE From a [*New York Times* article](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/17/education/17charters.html?pagewanted=2) on wealthy suburbanites opposing charter schools in their districts: > Millburn offers Mandarin only in high school, fueling the arguments of those seeking the new charters. “Kids are like sponges,” said Yanbin Ma, a Hanyu founder. “There are so many things they can absorb and become good at, and I feel that our public schools haven’t done enough to take advantage of that.” > > > But to Mr. Stewart, a leader in a growing opposition that includes Livingston mothers who have helped collect more than[ 800 petition signatures](http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/nocharterschool/signatures?page=1), this sounds “selfish.” > > > “Public education is basically a social contract — we all pool our money, so I don’t think I should be able to custom-design it to my needs,” he said, noting that he pays $15,000 a year in property taxes. “With these charter schools, people are trying to say, ‘I want a custom-tailored education for my children, and I want you, as my neighbor, to pay for it.’ ” Could there be a philosophy of education any less compatible with a free society — or any society composed of unique individuals — than the one-size-must-fit-all, communal model championed by Mr. Stewart ? No way — yet that is exactly what we’ve got. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).