Why they could do it a century ago, without big bucks and big bureaucracies, or sneaking privatization, is what we have to figure out. I have some ideas about this, but I haven't thought them through yet. It's a tough nut to crack.

Not really. It's one of those big questions with the simple answer that nobody likes, so we keep searching for complicated answers.

The methods used to educate children back then were simple enough that relatively untrained teachers could handle them, and they had nothing to do with whether the schools were private or public. The problem is that these methods would involve discarding a hell of a lot of liberal theories and pyschology about how children ought to be educated.

There are stories all over the place about some teacher that has snapped his or her students into shape using drills, discipline, intolerance of bad behavior, and the assumption that children can rise to meet a challenge--not that you have to lower the bar to meet their "needs."

Jerry Pournelle, an SF writer who worked at Boeing and Rockwell and started out in a one-room schoolhouse, has written about this a lot. He asks uncomfortable questions about "No Child Left Behind," the status of college education, and things like IQ and what's happening to the smarter kids. I wish it was all in one place to link to, but you can browse here.

"Our Nation is at risk. Our once unchallenged preeminence in commerce, industry, science and technological innovation is being overtaken by competitors throughout the world ... the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and as a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur -- others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments.

"If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves ... We have, in effect, been committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament."

--Glenn T. Seaborg, "A Nation At Risk: The Imperative for Educational
Reform," 1983

There is a major difference between big business and big government. Only one of these has a gun, and tolerates no competition. I can tell Bill Gates to go jump in the lake if I really want to. I can't even do that with the local building permit guy.

What this means is that business incompetence results in failure and competitors taking the business. Government incompetence can be potentially eternal.