Brochure summary:

Delivered at a meeting of Harlem Parents for Vouchers, New York City

The quality of public education in America today in many places is deplorable. Dr. Friedman identifies (1) the increasing centralization and bureaucratization of the educational establishment, which inhibits educators from seeing and responding to the needs of their "consumers"--parents and students; (2) our altered view of the relationship between the individual and society--the shift from seeing the individual as responsible for oneself to seeing the individual as someone controlled by social forces. An obvious solution is to give power back to the parents. The voucher system is an especially effective means of exercising that power; it can foster competition among public and private institutions and incite them to offer us a better quality educational "product."

"In the nineteenth century, the schools, even in crowded cities and in urban cities, might not have been affluent, they might not have had the best facilities, but they had an atmosphere in which the individual was made responsible for his own development and learning... In the twentieth century, the concept has been that the schools are an expression of society's values and interests which should be imposed upon the child."