BIBLE BANISHED AT A SCOTTISH UNIVERSITY

I guess it's mainly a game for the kids concerned but it is intolerant nonetheless

A students' association has called for the Bible to be removed from more than 2,000 university rooms because it could offend non-Christians. Stirling University Students' Association (SUSA) wants the Gideons Bibles taken out of all student rooms. Students said providing the Bible in all university accommodation was "presumptuous" and offensive to different religions on the campus. The university would not comment until SUSA submits its request next month.

A motion to have the Bibles removed was passed by 15-1 at a recent student council meeting. Seven members abstained. The council said representing one faith was not in the spirit of equality and cited the Scottish Executive's One Scotland Many Cultures campaign. SUSA president Al Wilson said: "The one thing that students have brought up is the fact that they do have Gideon's Bibles in their rooms. "They felt that this was not really fair on those students who practice other faiths. And it was promoting one faith over others. So we are trying to encourage the university to still retain the Bibles within the buildings themselves but not necessarily in the rooms." SUSA wants other faith texts provided to create a campus of "great diversity".

A former chaplain at the university said it was wrong to remove a book from a bedroom in a place of learning. The Reverend John Munro, of Kinross Parish Church, said: "I think there is an agenda here, seemingly politically correct. There is actually a hostility towards faith by those who have none. "This is repeating the worst of our errors, where the Christian faith used to have an intolerant attitude towards people of no faith."

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THE BASIC PROBLEMS OF TAX-FUNDED SCHOOLS

The nonmarket organization of education has a serious but unappreciated implication for the financing of schools: people do not know what they pay. As Myron Lieberman writes, "None of us knows the costs of public education, from our own pockets or the government's. These costs are extremely diffuse and intermingled with others beyond identification. Even with the help of a supercomputer, it is impossible to ascertain what any individual is paying for education."

Generally, it is easy to tell what we pay for the various goods and services we buy. But when every level of government, taxing us in a variety of ways, puts money into the schools, how can anyone know precisely what he has been forced to contribute?

That lack of knowledge has further consequences. Most people will not undergo the arduous effort to find out how much they pay. Many people will shrug and think, "What's the point? I won't be able to do anything about it anyway?" That understandable ignorance and weakening of responsibility suit the authorities just fine. They would prefer not to have the taxpayers looking over their shoulders, closely watching their decisions. It gives them substantial rein to spend money and to experiment with any fad in education theory that catches their fancy. The system's inherent lack of accountability insulates the administrators from those who foot the bill and suffer the educational results. It also enables them to form close alliances with education professionals, who are seen as the experts who understand the "science" of education and child development, although there are excellent reasons for believing that those are bogus disciplines.

That mystification of financing creates fertile ground for bureaucratic irresponsibility. As noted in the Appendix, the financing of public schools has skyrocketed in recent years. It is unlikely that the taxpayers have even been aware of that fact. The system has been arranged to keep taxpayers in the dark. No, they are not prohibited from acquiring the information. But such acquisition is made so difficult that most people, busy as they are raising their families and making a living, will not have the time to navigate the backwaters of the bureaucracy. The division of labor, normally a blessing, is perverted so as to discourage people from exercising self-responsibility.

A related problem is that tax financing precludes market prices for educational services. Market prices do not only let buyers know what they are paying. They are the fruit of a complex communications process that encapsulates information about the relative scarcity of resources and conveys it to all participants in the marketplace. That information is crucial to intelligent planning by buyers and producers of services. It is at the very heart of market competition, which Nobel-laureate F.A. Hayek properly called a "discovery procedure."

We live in a world of uncertainty, an open-ended world in which perfect knowledge is denied to us. Discovery of new things and methods is always possible. But discovery is fueled by incentives. As economist Israel M. Kirzner points out, in the marketplace, the lure of profit creates incentives for entrepreneurs to find unsatisfied needs and to devise ways of satisfying them. Those incentives do not exist in government schools.

In the market, entrepreneurs are accountable to consumers; they face the constant threat of financial loss. The alleged accountability of officeholders to voters is a mirage. It bears not real resemblance to the accountability of the marketplace. If the shoe-store operator misrepresents his product, there is recourse in the civil courts. Offended customers can take their business elsewhere without notice. They do not have to persuade over 50 percent of the other consumers to join in the boycott. That power held by the individual consumer in the marketplace-sometimes called consumer sovereignty-is lacking in the democratic administration of services such as education.

The inherent insulation of school boards (and other democratic bodies) from real accountability aggravates a phenomenon known as the Iron Law of Oligarchy. The law says that in almost any group endeavor, a small elite will emerge as the most active in determining the activities of the group. Even in a neighborhood bridge club, two or three people will show the most interest in running the group - finding a place to play, determining the game night, and so forth. The Iron Law asserts itself because people tend to have busy lives, and few will find the activity of such importance that they wish to invest an extraordinary amount of time. Of course, in a bridge club the Iron Law is benign. But that is not true with things such as school boards. Even if people might like to spend lots of times studying every aspect of the school system, attending board meetings, and the like, most simply cannot do it. Besides, as mentioned above, the return on the effort will seem too small. Those who can invest such time usually have a special interest in doing so-members of the teachers' union, for example. In the end, school policy will be inordinately influenced by a small group of activists, not by the mass of taxpayers or parents..

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DC: Schools advocates to protest at ballpark opener "A coalition of advocacy groups, teachers and students upset about the disrepair of D.C. public schools plans to rally outside RFK Stadium Thursday, when tens of thousands of fans head to the Washington Nationals' home opener. 'It's not a negative action against baseball, but it is a statement about the city's priorities,' said Roger Newell, an organizer for the coalition, known as D.C. Public Schools Full Funding Campaign. 'It's a statement to say that if the city had the same enthusiasm for making repairs in the city schools as it did to get RFK Stadium ready for baseball, then 65,000 students would be in a lot better shape,' Newell said [Sunday]. Marc Borbely, another organizer, said the widespread public attention focused on Major League Baseball's return to the District is one reason the groups decided to hold the rally before and during part of the Nationals' first home game." They already get comparatively huge funding so the dissatisfaction shows that a total rethink is needed rather than more funding

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For greatest efficiency, lowest cost and maximum choice, ALL schools should be privately owned and run -- with government-paid vouchers for the poor and minimal regulation.

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