Tweetable: Friedman on Think Tanks
I am not on Twitter. I don’t have the time for it. But if I were on Twitter, I would tweet the excerpt below from a 1995 interview with “father of school choice,” economist Milton Friedman.
I would tweet it not because I endorse Friedman’s ideas on school choice and what translates into the reckless bankrupting of American public education, but because what he says is funny.
In this excerpt, Friedman is observing to free-market publication Reason magazine senior editor Brian Doherty that the number of free market publications and organizations has grown. Friedman’s words start out as complimentary, but then Friedman keeps going:
Friedman: But look at the situation today. You have REASON magazine, you have Liberty magazine. You’ve got all of this stuff that spouts out from the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a half dozen other think tanks. In fact, I think there are too damn many think tanks now.Doherty: Why do you say there are too many?Friedman: You don’t have the talent for it.
Too many think tanks; not enough talent to staff them.
Now that’s funny.
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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of the ed reform whistle blower, A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education.
She also has her second book available on pre-order, Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?, due for publication June 12, 2015.
It is summer, and I am working on my third book, this one on school choice (e.g., vouchers, charter schools). (For those who might be concerned that I do not know how enjoy summer, I also lounge in the pool almost daily and intentionally schedule visits with friends so that I do not become a crazy, book-writing hermit crab.)
The late economist Milton Friedman is considered to be the “father of school choice,” and so, I am including information on Friedman my school choice book.
While working on my chapter on Friedman, I came across a 1995 interview that Friedman did with An Interesting Statement by Milton Friedman