Norse mythology included the concept of Valhalla. Valkyries flew down to earthly battlefields on winged horses to transport the worthy fallen to that Asgardian great hall of the honored dead. If there were a school choice version of Valhalla, the newly arrived fallen heroes would expect to see many greater thinkers and leaders. You may not have expected to find yourself drinking mead in the afterlife with the likes of John Stuart Mill and Daniel Patrick Moynihan and a great many in-between, but it turns out that death is full of surprises!
In this reimagining of Valhalla, the clear-eyed Milton Friedman replaces the one-eyed Odin in presiding over the hall of heroes. Friedman, whose birthday was July 31, 1912, died in 2006. If he were observing our current efforts from a school choice Valhalla, what would he make of us? Just how many Valkyries would he be sending down over the next couple of decades? A recent piece from Ann Marie Miller of EdChoice provides an answer that rings true:
As we celebrate this milestone and we set our sights on reaching 2 million children, Milton would argue that we’re just getting started and that we need to kick it up a notch.
“I think the headline is very simple: It’s progress but not fast or good enough,” said Robert Enlow, President and CEO of EdChoice. “Milton said that to me 1,000 times. He would say, ‘It’s good progress, but it’s not good enough. Not fast enough, not good enough. We need to go further, farther, faster in order to improve the quality of education and our society.”
“We have a society that can’t read, a society that doesn’t understand history, a society that can fall apart if it’s not capable of holding its citizenry together through democracy’s work. You have to be educated to be democratic. So, we need to improve the quality of education in order to improve our society”, added Enlow.
Milton Friedman was a happy warrior who played a large and rapid role in ending conscription and a slower but steady role in making education more pluralistic and humane, among other things. As you fight the horde of choice opponents, you would do well to remember Friedman’s tenacity and optimism. There is always more room for heroes in the hall.
