Skip to main content
Menu

Main navigation

  • About
    • Annual Reports
    • Leadership
    • Jobs
    • Student Programs
    • Media Information
    • Store
    • Contact
    LOADING...
  • Experts
    • Policy Scholars
    • Adjunct Scholars
    • Fellows
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Past
    • Event FAQs
    • Sphere Summit
    LOADING...
  • Publications
    • Studies
    • Commentary
    • Books
    • Reviews and Journals
    • Public Filings
    LOADING...
  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Sponsorship Benefits
    • Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving
    • Meet the Development Team

Issues

  • Constitution and Law
    • Constitutional Law
    • Criminal Justice
    • Free Speech and Civil Liberties
  • Economics
    • Banking and Finance
    • Monetary Policy
    • Regulation
    • Tax and Budget Policy
  • Politics and Society
    • Education
    • Government and Politics
    • Health Care
    • Poverty and Social Welfare
    • Technology and Privacy
  • International
    • Defense and Foreign Policy
    • Global Freedom
    • Immigration
    • Trade Policy
Live Now

Cato at Liberty


  • Blog Home
  • RSS

Email Signup

Sign up to have blog posts delivered straight to your inbox!

Topics
  • Banking and Finance
  • Constitutional Law
  • Criminal Justice
  • Defense and Foreign Policy
  • Education
  • Free Speech and Civil Liberties
  • Global Freedom
  • Government and Politics
  • Health Care
  • Immigration
  • Monetary Policy
  • Poverty and Social Welfare
  • Regulation
  • Tax and Budget Policy
  • Technology and Privacy
  • Trade Policy
Archives
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • August 2008
  • July 2008
  • June 2008
  • May 2008
  • April 2008
  • March 2008
  • February 2008
  • January 2008
  • December 2007
  • November 2007
  • October 2007
  • September 2007
  • August 2007
  • July 2007
  • June 2007
  • May 2007
  • April 2007
  • March 2007
  • February 2007
  • January 2007
  • December 2006
  • November 2006
  • October 2006
  • September 2006
  • August 2006
  • July 2006
  • June 2006
  • May 2006
  • April 2006
  • Show More
July 31, 2007 12:46PM

Happy Birthday, Milton

By Andrew J. Coulson

SHARE

Today is the 95th anniversary of the late Milton Friedman’s birth, and I’ll be celebrating his contribution to the school choice movement this evening in a presentation at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation in Washington state (to be available via live web‐​cast).


Here are some opening thoughts I have for that presentation:


In the spring of 1998, I was wrapping up four years of work on my book “Market Education: the Unknown History.” The publisher asked me come up with a list of prominent people who might be willing to write blurbs for the jacket, and so I sat down and mulled over the possibilities. The first name that came to mind was Milton Friedman.


I’d read Dr. Friedman’s 1954 essay on “the Role of Government in Education” and been deeply impressed by it. Of course, I didn’t seriously think that he would have the time to read a hefty manuscript by an author he’d never heard of, but, I thought, what’s the harm in trying?


In what still seems to me a minor miracle, Dr. Friedman decided to give the manuscript a read, and in doing so helped to launch my career in education policy. In fact, just weeks after I had contacted him, and before I knew what he thought of the book, I received a last‐​minute invitation to share the stage with him, along with his wife Rose and economist and columnist Thomas Sowell, at the gala launch event of the Milton and Rose Friedman foundation in San Francisco. Of course I was incredibly excited, not to mention moderately terrified, at the prospect.


Just as we were about to walk onto the stage at that event, Dr. Friedman leaned close to me and whispered “It’s a fine book,” but then added in a somber tone, “except where you run‐​down vouchers in Chapter 10.” He looked at me earnestly for a moment, and my heart nearly stopped. For a second I thought that my as‐​yet‐​unreleased manuscript was about to be carved up by a Nobel laureate economist in front of a live audience of several hundred people. Then he smiled and added, “but we can talk about that later.” And so we did, on and off, until his passing late last year.


Dr. Friedman was always quick to say that he was a monetary economist by profession, and that his interest in school choice was more avocation than vocation. But though he wrote only a few non‐​technical works in the field of education, he was a seminal force behind the modern American school choice movement.


To understand his impact on this field, you have to go back to the early 1950s. At that time, even more so than today, advocacy of limited government and individual liberty had been outside the philosophical mainstream. Not just outside it. Not just on the shore looking into the mainstream. But buried in the bushes entirely out of view of it.


Milton wrote of this period that “Those of us who were deeply concerned about the danger to freedom and prosperity from the growth of government, from the triumph of welfare‐​state and Keynesian ideas, were a small beleaguered minority regarded as eccentrics by the great majority of our fellow intellectuals.”


Consider that barely 20 years before Milton wrote his essay on “the Role of Government in Education,” the National Education Association had declared that the time had come for, quote, “the frank acceptance of the collective economy.” Not only did early 20th century education philosophers oppose the privatization of their own industry, they advocated nationalizing most of the others.


It was into this intellectual milieu that Milton ventured his modest suggestion: that the goals and ideals of “public education” would be best fulfilled though the private sector, with the government intervening, only if and as necessary, to ensure universal access to the independent educational marketplace.


Milton has passed, but that modest suggestion has become an international movement backed by an ever growing body of interdisciplinary empirical evidence.


Thank you, Milton, and happy birthday.

Related Tags
General, Tax and Budget Policy

Stay Connected to Cato

Sign up for the newsletter to receive periodic updates on Cato research, events, and publications.

View All Newsletters

1000 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20001-5403
202-842-0200
Contact Us
Privacy

Footer 1

  • About
    • Annual Reports
    • Leadership
    • Jobs
    • Student Programs
    • Media Information
    • Store
    • Contact
  • Podcasts

Footer 2

  • Experts
    • Policy Scholars
    • Adjunct Scholars
    • Fellows
  • Events
    • Upcoming
    • Past
    • Event FAQs
    • Sphere Summit

Footer 3

  • Publications
    • Books
    • Cato Journal
    • Regulation
    • Cato Policy Report
    • Cato Supreme Court Review
    • Cato’s Letter
    • Human Freedom Index
    • Economic Freedom of the World
    • Cato Handbook for Policymakers

Footer 4

  • Blog
  • Donate
    • Sponsorship Benefits
    • Ways to Give
    • Planned Giving
Also from Cato Institute:
Libertarianism.org
|
Humanprogress.org
|
Downsizinggovernment.org