Give your reasons on why you agree/disagree with this video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swl8frWSNEQ

"The real reason our standards in education are falling isnt lack of money but a government monopoly.

Learn of the libertarian alternative that could save our children"

I disagree on the behalf that government is something wholly distinct from private enterprise and such behaves in such a different way in that a "government monopoly" is incomparable to a monopoly in the private sector.Also, there is no clear evidence that the private sector is more efficient concerning the General Welfare which does include education.

It's called Somalia.

I invite all Libertarians to move there and enjoy unfettered freedoms and no government intervention.

We're trying that privatization model in our military in Iraq and Afghanistan, and look how well that's turned out.

I would like to see the data to support that statement, and I would like it to be corrected for increases in "education" that are really increases in fuel costs, busings costs, increases in insurance for teachers, etc.

The red-baiting in the video is distasteful.

The outrage at a government having a monopoly on free public service is ridiculous - that's the whole point of governments, to serve the people. Other things the government has a monopoly on: the judicial system, roads, food inspections. There's a complete breakdown of logic at one point where they are slamming the government for providing services, and then complaining because kids are taught to serve the government instead of the government serving the people. Do they want the govt to serve us? They need to make up their mind.

Where I do see problems with monopolies are in textbooks, but that's a monopoly of private companies.

There's some critical misinformation in the video, such as claiming the government is making decisions for the parents of what will be covered in sex ed. In reality parents can opt out and they are always free to provide their own information ahead of or behind the school schedule for that class.

The section on teacher's unions is pathetic, and furthers the myth that unions exist primarily to protect the jobs of incompetents (rather than to protect the rights of employees), and insultingly suggests that teachers have no intrinsic motivation to be good teachers.

As for the free (capitalistic) market, that's what got us in the health insurance mess we're in. It doesn't drive down costs, as we've been taught to believe. What actually happens in the free market is that as one company accrues more and more capital, it gains more power, drives out mom and pop competition and pockets more and more profit.

I've taken a lot of grief on this forum for supporting public schools of choice, and have been called a lot of names because of my unrelentless critiques of traditional public schools. I found the video to be dishonest, filled with tortured logic and inaccurate comparisons, it blamed inequality on everything except the real reasons for inequality in the public school system, it used scare tactics (oooooh, Karl Marx!) and was generally offensive (sometimes poor people have families with lots of kids?!! Sounds like coded welfare-queen speech to me.)

...against public education. Fear-mongering used to defame public schools. JMHO...it's CRAP. :)