Common Core: Managed Corporate Monopolies for Education Reform

Monopolies are an enemy to liberty, whether those Monopolies are Corporate Monopolies or Government Monopolies.

Our constitution was designed to protect our liberties from the tyranny of government monopolies and the first government policies to "bust-the-trusts" were designed to check the power of a few corporations over the free market.

Today we are losing our footing on both sides, we are consolidating power in the federal government by moving more and more power away from states and local governments, and our federal government is hand picking corporations to provide government sponsored "services".

The Common Core Federal takeover of education is the worst kind of monopoly because it combines the principle of government monopoly with corporate monopoly. Don't be fooled by those who say the Common Core initiatives are "free market" reforms in education! There is nothing free about the federal government coercing states into a central system and making monopolies out of a small handful of companies like Achieve and Pearson to supply the educational products that schools are forced to use.

For example Achieve has a monopoly on the Common Core standards which are copyrighted. These proprietary standards when adopted can not be altered. Pearson will soon be determining what gets taught in schools across the United States with their Common Core aligned curriculum and media centered products. Where is parental or educational oversight? Not in the hands of the people.

Both Conservatives and Progressives need to wake up to the reality; America's free market is on life support and that's why our private and public institutions are failing. Common Core is the natural result of markets heavily regulated by Washington and centrally managed industries. Common Core is the educational counterpart: managed career paths, managed work force, managed markets!

True and sincere conservatives and progressives see the same sickness in America but have been diagnosing it with opposite treatments. Progressives often see capitalism as the sickness that is breaking down our institutions and look to government for the cure. Conservatives and libertarians see government meddling in the free market and heavily regulating business as the sickness and less government as the cure. Since we can agree that the nation is sick we can also agree that administering the wrong cure will be the death blow.

As a conservative I hope to convince open minded progressives to entertain the idea that the Capitalism they see today is not the product of Free Market Capitalism that propelled American freedom and prosperity. Capitalism has been corrupted by the power hungry in the government who seek to control the free market and the power hungry corporate moguls who seek corporate privilege via law. Thus both sides amassing great power and wealth by corrupting both government and business.

This central control of government and the State Capitalism it is creating are the most dangerous threat to our liberty. Capitalism is sick, but not because Capitalism was born that way, it is sick because it has been perverted and twisted by unholy power hungry alliances of big business and the government's compulsory power. Together they have created consumers forced to buy their products and now centrally groomed workers to meet their needs.

The solution in education is the same as the solution in government and markets — Free local and unique education markets! If Americans are to succeed in fighting off this latest "education reform" they must combine their efforts across the political spectrum. Tyranny is always more organized than liberty and the forces of tyranny are dividing our nation in order to conquer it. To save our children and the future of liberty in America we have to see the enemy to that freedom clearly, and that enemy is not the limited government our founders devised or the free markets they championed.

There will be no individual freedom, intellectual freedom, or economic freedom if Americans don't come together and oppose the central dangers of government sponsored monopolies. We must understand what Ayn Rand taught, this truth, "Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries."


For the visual learner: Economics 101: School Choice, why government monopolies are bad.