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This answer is an attempt to point out the possible economic and political benefits of leaving the EU.Initially a trade alliance, the European Union (EU) has evolved into a comprehensive legislative and governing body, a Confederation-Federation hybrid. As it grew, the EU's core functions changed dramatically. With every additional member state indoctrinated, a new structural layer formed, a new commission was created, and new procedures were added.Over time these changes accumulated, leading some to believe that the EU had become an inefficient, disorganized amalgamation of member-states each preaching cooperation while quietly championing their own self-interests. Greece, Spain, and Italy are modern testaments."nobody would have deliberately designed a government as complex and as redundant as the EU"- Tom Reid [1]Britain's main costs of participation in the EU stem from the EU's inefficiencies, the EU's anti-growth policies, and Britain's subsequent compliance.As a member nation, Britain must pay a "membership fee" numbering in the billions, a direct transfer payment straight from the British government to the EU coffers. Though this fee is partially offset by structural grants that the EU then pays to Britain, evidence demonstrates that the net costs are still substantive.In 2011, the country paid some €7.3 billion ($9.9 billion) more into EU coffers than it received back in the form of structural aid. [2]UK net payments to EU from 2005 to 2015 However, large membership fee is dwarfed by the cost of poor policy and its ensuing legislative compliance. Perhaps the most notorious example is the the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) "which implements a system of agricultural subsidies and other programs.... [and] has been criticized on the grounds of its cost, and its environmental and humanitarian impacts." [3](boldface my own)Of course, there are problems. Just to list a few: the EU's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is a waste of money that keeps food prices higher than they would otherwise be; its regional policy splurges money on unnecessary motorways; the EU often meddles in things that are best left to nation states – such as the hours people are permitted to work and how curvy cucumbers are allowed to be; the European Parliament seems like a travelling circus, shuttling back and forth between Brussels and Strasbourg; and EU regulations are sometimes heavy-handed. [4]The same goes for the Common Agricultural Policy. A huge proportion of the EU’s annual budget is spent on dishing out subsidies to European farmers, whose sales are protected by tariff barriers which effectively tax much non-European produce out of the market. On top of our direct taxpayer-funded subsidy, the CAP costs the British consumer an extra £5.3 billion on their food bills. [5]The EU’s policies on food production have been particularly disastrous. The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has had a horrendous impact economically, socially and environmentally. Almost 100,000 jobs have been lost in fishing and dependent industries, leading to increased social security bills in devastated fishing communities. Because fishing boats are banned from bringing home fish that exceed their quotes, even if they are caught accidentally, 880,000 tonnes of dead fish are dumped into the North Sea every year. With the fish supply reduced by these quotas and by the radical reduction of fish stocks, prices at the till are increased to the tune of £4.7 billion a year - £186 a year per family. [6]Though it may sound unimportant, this is not a niche issue. The right to fish was the main reason Greenland left the EEC (the EU's predecessor) in 1985. [7]Unfortunately, the problem is systemic and innate. The EU represents 28 countries and a total population of 500 million people, each with their own interests and needs. Any broad, one-size-fits-all policy will inherently fail to work in some places, causing undue burden and expense. As is the case in the US, legislation and problem-solving should be localized.There are numerous other examples of waste. The VAT system is so dysfunctional that it loses £80 billion of taxpayers’ money a year through carousel fraud. The EU’s libraries are so overfunded and underused that each book loan costs £570. A leaked copy of the secret report by auditor Robert Galvin that we published earlier this year revealed financial irregularities in the accounts of the majority of MEPs in the European Parliament . The list goes on. [8]The cost of legislation on Great Britain is more than just the cost of bad policy; it is also the cost of complying with it. Though all all analysis is subject to scrutiny and bias, this particular study attempts to isolate the cost of compliance.What about the advantages of free trade for members of the EU; that will offset some of the above costs, right? The EU is good for something, right?Yes... Sort of.Remarkably, even the EU itself has failed to produce any convincing figures to demonstrate the benefits of the organisation. Commissioner Gunter Verheugen estimated in 2006 that the cost of regulation to the European economy as a whole is £405 billion a year, while the Commission itself believes that between 1986 and 2002 the Single Market only brought benefits of £110 billion. Even after taking inflation into account, that means that the EU Commission itself believes the costs are three times larger than the benefits. [9]We must also remember that intracontinental trade is not limited to members of the EU. Switzerland, Turkey, and Norway each have strong, though not completely free, trade agreements with the EU despite being free from the most stringent EU policies. It is entirely possible that Britain could negotiate a similar deal. Furthermore, Britain, is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and therefore possesses strong trade agreements with hundreds of other nations. It is by no means reliant on the EU's capricious desires.It is also worth noting that the EU controls all decisions of what can and cannot be sold and to whom it can be sold to. By leaving the EU, Britain would gain greater control over what and to whom it can forge an economic alliances.The EU acts on these by adopting a Common Position and where appropriate, an EU regulation directly applicable to member states is introduced. Where sanctions and embargo measures require more than administrative action to implement them, the UK introduces new or amends existing secondary licensing and enforcement legislation.The most frequently applied measures are:[10]embargoes on exporting or supplying arms and associated technical assistance, training and financinga ban on exporting equipment that might be used for internal repressionfinancial sanctions on individuals in government, government bodies and associated companies, or terrorist groups and individuals associated with those groupstravel bans on named individualsbans on imports of raw materials or goods from the sanctions targetFurthermore, by leaving the EU, Britain would regain control over its military exports, greatly increasing Britain's ability to engage in international conflicts and "say" in global affairs.All applications for licences to export military or dual-use items controlled for strategic reasons are considered on a case-by-case basis by the ECO. [11]The EU prioritizes negotiations of trade with nations it deems "most important" for the EU, not necessarily "most important" for Britain. If freed from the EU, Britain would have greater autonomy to forge its own relationships. For instance, because the U.K. exports a large number of cars, it may be beneficial to prioritize relations with Saudi Arabia, a wealthy nation likely to import fancy cars, even if the EU decries its human rights abuses.[12]Clearly, this issue is hotly contested and both sides have persuading evidence to support their respective positions. While it is indisputable that the EU as a concept has merit, the economic and political reasons for a Brexit are not at all unfounded. Furthermore, the British people's desire for freedom and self-determination is a valid non-monetary concern that may trump any economic incentives to remain a member of the EU.Footnotes[1] Page on wikipedia.org[2] In-Out Debate: What Britain Really Gets From EU Membership - SPIEGEL ONLINE[3] Common Agricultural Policy[4] Comment: In/Out Question - Why Britain should stay in the EU[5] EU 'costs Britain £118bn a year'[6] EU 'costs Britain £118bn a year'[7] Withdrawal from the European Union[8] EU 'costs Britain £118bn a year'[9] EU 'costs Britain £118bn a year'[10] Sanctions, embargoes and restrictions[11] Sanctions, embargoes and restrictions[12] Removing trade barriers for UK exporters

Thanks for the A2A, this is going to be a bit of a long answer.To properly answer your question, ill try to go over as many points regarding Islamism in the military and nuclear security as possible.The influence of Islamism within the Pakistan Army currentlyThe specter of rogue Islamist officers with Taliban sympathies has long been the favorite villain of Hollywood and Bollywood scripts. In all fairness to the screenwriters, this was a very real scenario back in the grim 80s during the dark Islamization era of General Zia when the clarion call for Jihad in Afghanistan resounded throughout our country and saw Pakistan become the launching pad for insurgents funneling into the North West to take on the world’s 2nd Super Power with the blessing of the new Holy Trinity: Saudi Oil Money, ISI training and CIA Stingers.The trend would continue well into the 90s. General Zia might have burned to death in the wreckage of that C-130 (possibly murdered by his own intelligence agency) but he had lit the fires of Jihadism that would be faithfully carried onward by ISI and Army officers who sought to replicate the success of the Afghan insurgency in Kashmir.This incredibly worrying period of our military history would end somewhere in the first decade of the 21st century.The De Islamification of the Pakistan Armed ForcesThe De-Islamification of the Pakistan military began under COAS General Musharraf and would continue under the tenure of COAS (2008–2013) General Kayani and COAS (2014 - present) General Raheel Sharif.Its mildly surprising to see how little this process of De-Islamification of the Pakistani armed forces is covered in the Indian and foreign press but has been widely reported on in Pakistan. I say mildly surprised because media speculation is often based around hype and fear mongering and news about a bunch of officers being forcible retired and new internal army regulations is considered too dull to report on.Nevertheless, just because it isn’t widely covered doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. I’ve seen several posts on Quora that are still stuck in the 1990s mindset regarding Pakistan because their knowledge about the country comes from reading one random article on the internet once a month.When Musharraf came into power and the 9/11 attacks occurred, there was an intense process of De-Islamification of the Pakistan military's higher command. Officers with beards and ultra religious views were demoted, retired, transferred and what not. With the end result that the prime concentration of Islamist officers was purged in the higher ranks and only found in the lower ranks. The assassination attempt on Musharraf by Air Force officers was carried out by the lower cadres and there has been no Islamist plotting in the military high command during the 2002-2016 period.The trend continued into Kayani's term as COAS. Pakistani intelligence categorizes Islamist officers in its ranks on 3 categories. They're coded something like white, black and red. Whites are those that express sympathies publicly with Taliban factions. Blacks are those that show signs of brainwashing and can be potential recruits for the Taliban. Reds are actual, functioning operatives of the Taliban. ISI, MI deal with all 3 categories in the same manner: surveillance followed by possible abduction and interrogation. Officers who fall in any of the 3 categories are abducted, taken in for questioning, interrogated, assessed and depending on the degree of their Islamist leanings they might be a missing person for a few years or they might be "disappeared" for ever. A grim fate pretty much.Then there is the military promotion board. The promotion board is closely linked to intelligence agencies. If an officer ever develops a link or shows interest in Islamist tendencies, agencies quietly start maintaining a file on them. At promotion time, if an officer has a "file" on him, he is passed for promotion and prepped for early retirement.There are other methods employed by internal military intelligence agencies that i am not privy too but suffice it to say, they are very much present and in action.So as you can see, there are multi tiered firewalls to prevent Islamist infiltration. Most of the Islamist are filtered out by the promotion board and simply never rise up in the ranks. If in some rare case they develop Islamist tendencies after being promoted, they get caught by intelligence outfits.There has only been 1 case since 9/11 that i know of involving a senior officer with Islamist links. It was the Brigadier Ali case who had links to an outfit called Hizb -e-Tahrir. He is still in prison.1 case in 16 years is not bad. The fact that he was caught is even better. Also it is pertinent to mention that Brig. Ali was a regular army unit officer, nowhere even near the strategic program.2. If the Pakistani armed forces HAD Islamist Sympathies, they would have long plunged into civil war against each other and disintegrated like in SyriaHow is it possible for the Army to carry out major operations against the Taliban and terror factions constantly if it is infiltrated with so many Islamists. We would have long gone down the road of Syria's divided army if this had been the case. Its just another example of spicy, juicy statements rich for media consumption being thrown about.Under the Musharraf tenure, the Army carried out sustained, bloody operations in South Waziristan against Islamist insurgents. Under Kayani these expanded to the Swat agency and were re-ignited in the South Waziristan agency once the peace accord there fell apart.And under General Raheel, Operation Zarb e Azb and the National Action Plan which were launched after the Karachi Air port attack and the APS attacks back in 2014, even the untouched no go areas of South Punjab, North Waziristan and Karachi have become areas of operation for the army battling Islamists nationwide.How exactly, do you think the army was able to carry these grueling, intensive nation wide operations against Islamist terrorists and insurgents if the army was in leagues with them and sympathizing with them?Do people remember what happened in Syria when Assad turned his army against the people? Not just Sunni but Shia Alawite soldiers as well joined the Syrian opposition or fled the country and the once united army disintegrated and began fighting each other in a bloody civil war.The EXACT same thing would have happened in the Pakistan army had the army been full of Islamist sympathizers and terror sympathizers. Officers and soldiers would have abandoned the army in droves to join the fighting in Afghanistan and the Taliban controlled north west against the non-Islamist sections of the army. Entire units would have rebelled and joined up with the Taliban.NONE of this happened. People need to backup the claim regarding Islamist infiltration in the army with solid proof rather than throwing up random internet articles which claim the Army is full of Islamists because the consequences of that would have become readily apparent once the army began large scale operations against Islamists in Pakistan especially under General Raheel and Operation Zarb e Azb.3. The Afghan Taliban connection is because of Geo-Political maneuvering, not Islamist tendenciesA lot of the “Pakistan army is full of Islamist sympathizers or Taliban sympathizers” comes from the ISI’s links with the 90s era Lashkars and Tehreeks and factions that have waged insurgent warfare in Afghanistan and Kashmir.This logic has always boggled me. Agencies support Insurgents and foreign factions, primarily because they present an opportunity to exert influence and support interests in a hostile country.Does the ISI’s support for the Sikh Khalistan movement mean the ISI is in love with the Sikh religion? Does Indian RAW’s support for Sunni Baloch separatism mean that RAW has suddenly discovered the glory of Sunni Islam and wants to spread Sunni Islam all over the world? The Afghan NDS has links with the Pakistan Taliban (TTP) who are just one step removed from the Afghan Taliban factions their army is fighting against because the TTP provides the NDS an oppurtunity to exert influence in Pakistan’s North West.Intelligence agencies are incredibly opportunistic by nature and hold their self interests above all. If the ISI and the Army support Islamist factions because they were Islamist themselves, don’t you think we would be supporting the ETIM separatists terrorists in Western China (an allied state)? Don’t you think sympathy for their “oppressed Muslim brothers who are being stopped from practicing their religion by evil atheist communist in China” would have lead an Islamist ISI to fully support the ETIM and Uyghur terrorists in China?Not at all. Agencies support assets they deem valuable to them and their interests, not because they sympathize with their ideologies. Shia Iran today is supporting Armenia (Orthodox Christian country) against Shia Azerbaijan, not because Iran is suddenly in love with Christianity but because they provide a useful buffer against Azerbaijan who are too closely allied with their competitor state Turkey.The only Islamist link there is with the Pakistan army are the Haqqani network and similar Afghan Taliban factions that have been sheltered or ignored by the military higher ups deliberately because they serve as useful proxies to counter Indian involvement in Afghanistan and Baluchistan. These terror factions are not tolerated by the army due to the army's Islamist leanings. They are tolerated because:a) There may be an Afghan peace deal in the future and attacking these factions might scuttle our chance for getting the deal signed and ending the war. It was Pakistan that bought the Afghan Taliban to the table. Also the Americans urge us to fight these factions while they themselves are trying to cut a peace deal with them. The hypocrisy is not lost on us.b) There is concern in Pakistan that Afghan NDS and Indian RAW are using Afghanistan as a platform to destabilize FATA and Balochistan in Pakistan.The factions aren't supported because of Islamist leanings in the army but shrewd geo political calculation4. Does the structure of the Strategic Forces permit rogue officers accessing the nuclear arsenal?Its always surprised me how few people know that its the SPD (Strategic Plans Division) and not the Army that is in control of the Pakistani Nuclear program and delivery platforms.The SPD is perhaps the least known military organization outside of Pakistan which is strange considering how powerful it is in terms of manpower, budgeting and intel capability.Seriously, read up on it. They have their own paramilitary forces, their own intelligence agencies, their own federal level secretariat and overriding authority over the 3 conventional forces (Army, Navy and Air force) in terms of military operations in strategic warfare. The head of the SPD are appointed by the top most authority in the country (the Prime Minister nowadays ever since the PPP placed the NCA under the Prime Minister’s control) and not the regular army although it is normally a member of the Army (General Kidwai served as a civilian head though and not a serving officer during the Musharraf and PPP tenure).The SPD is perhaps the most scrutinized armed force in the country with its members under surveillance by not only the SPD’s own intelligence but also the ISI, MI, interior ministry.A lot of people point to the AQ Khan smuggling ring as proof of Pakistan’s inability to control its arsenal but its always been suspected that the smuggling of nuclear materials was approved from the highest of levels due to the sophistication, organization and amount of assets involved.One has to keep in mind that nuclear tech was being traded for missile tech since this was back in 2004 when Pakistan’s medium and long range ballistic capability was still limited and we need financial and technical support from certain countries in order to build up the ballistic missile capability and the only countries willing to assist us in that matter wanted nuclear tech in exchange.Not once during the entire episode was there a hint of “loose nukes” since the primary components being smuggled were centrifuges (which are to put it in layman terms, spinning machinery used to separate concentrated amounts of isotopes) and not entire nuclear bombs.5. Clearly defined roles and separation of powersAlas, long gone are the good old days 60s, 70s and 80s of the strategic forces when we had to see such random attractions as Yahya Khan making President Ayub resign on gunpoint (rumored), the Artillery corp mining uranium in Southern Punjab and a deep state cabal of Corp Commanders, bureaucrats and scientists controlling the nuclear program.Today Pakistan is boringly efficient. There are clearly defined roles for everyone, separate organizations control separate aspects of national programs and you just cant get people to do what you want by putting a gun to their head (unless you’re stealing cellphones in Karachi).During the Kargil war, Musharraf, as Chief of Army Staff and the most powerful man in the country couldn’t even get the Air force Chief to launch air strikes in Kashmir. The Air Chief refused his request as this would be tantamount to open war with India and the PM had not signed off on such a mission.So if the COAS cant go rogue enough to have the Air Force Chief launch airstrikes in Kashmir, how exactly will lower rank cadres prevail on the SPD to launch nuclear warheads?Did Musharraf launch troops against the Air force headquarters and have his way? Nope. The Military doesn’t work like that, the Corp commanders would have effectively stopped him in such a contingency.And Make no mistake: officers with such roguish tendencies are long weeded out of the army before they make even Colonel rank, let alone Army Chief.The Army is extremely intolerant of dissidence as part of its organizational culture and officers are early retired or kicked out if insubordination is detected.6. Could a rogue officer simply take over a base or a launcher with nukes and fire them off?If an army unit went rogue, they would have to get through defenses belonging to other organizations (other army units, SPD units) before it could even have a chance at reaching those nukes.And then what? A nuclear warhead is just radioactive material. You need to find the triggering mechanism, you need to find the missile warhead, you need to mate the triggering mechanism with the missile warhead and then mate the nuclear material with the missile.You then need to fuel the missile. You need to put coordinates into the missile. You need to track and correct missile trajectory.Need i mention that nearly all of these components are kept separate and away from each other and are not concentrated in spot alone? Knowledge of their whereabouts alone is hard enough, taking them over is another story.I mean just finding the darn things is hard enough, let alone launching them.Exactly how many thousands of support staff and troops do you think you’ll be able to control and get together to effectively coordinate such a complex launch? And all this under heavy fire with rapid reaction forces converging on your position.And i haven't even mentioned how little the possibility is of an ENTIRE army unit going rogue and effectively mounting such a complex op. Military base security is incredibly tight these days ever since the Mihas and Kamra base attacks. You have multi layered defenses, surveillance from multiple platforms, rapid reaction forces, perimeter scanning, intelligence operative in surrounding areas and what not.Good luck with this plan.7. Since the AQ Khan episode, Pakistan today ranks higher in terms of nuclear securityIts a fact that Pakistan's steps to secure its nuclear arsenal since the AQ Khan smuggling ring scandal have been acknowledged at the highest level by the US administration.US admits Pakistan takes security of its nukes very seriouslyWe are also currently in negotiations to enter the NSG after receiving positive signals from the US administration. Whether or not this goes through remains to be seen as China’s blocking of India’s entry into the NSG may either block Pakistan’s entry as well or may have no effect on our application. This remains to be seen:Pakistan submits formal application for NSG membershipThen there’s the factor of our nuclear security ranking in the NTI Nuclear security Index. The NTI Index is an authoritative index based in Washington which ranks country’s by their nuclear security.In 2016, Pakistan and India are ranked 22 and 21 respectively with only a small score difference between them (India 46/100 and Pakistan 42/100).So in effect, our nuclear security level is almost the same as that of India. In fact, in recent history it was India that was involved in a nuclear materials smuggling racket:Smuggling racket involving atomic minerals bustedI'm not even going to go into how little attention was paid to this act of nuclear smuggling compared to how much light was thrown on Pakistan's nuclear smuggling. I have long tired of talking about discrimination in the media.ConclusionWhen the Soviet Union collapsed and their command and control capabilities over the nuclear arsenal deteriorated significantly, not one nuclear weapon fell into the hands of a rogue group.Throughout the cold war when military nuclear activity was high and the US military made quiet a few blunders with its nuclear arsenal, not one nuclear weapon fell into the hands of a rogue group.When the Taliban were a few kilometers away from Islamabad during 2008–2010 period or when the GHQ was prepping nuclear weapons into hot states during the 1987–1993 tensions with India, not one nuclear weapon fell into the hands of a rogue group.Its just not as easy or plausible as it looks. Nuclear weapons are just too damned hard to find, acquire, maintain, transport, detonate etc.We should be more focused on PREVENTING nuclear war between two nation states than wasting time and resources on scenarios that have a low chance of occurring. Pakistan and India launching nuclear warheads at each other during wartime escalation is a more realistic and grim scenario than loose nukes in the subcontinent. That should be the scenario we are trying to prevent.

Significantly mixed.The overall impacts of charter schools are in some ways quite positive, and in some ways extremely negative.Separating Good Schools from Bad SchoolsIt’s important to first note that a charter school is not the same as a private school. Charter schools are public schools; they cannot charge tuition, are subject to church-state issues that parochial or private schools are not, cannot require entrance exams, and must participate in required state testing where private schools do not.However, there is incredible variability to how charter schools are organized, run, held accountable, funded, accept students, create and use curriculum, and more.I have a friend who works for Etude High School, a public charter school in Wisconsin. It’s a great learning environment that very much differs from the rigid sit-and-learn methods of traditional schools. It’s a project-based learning, discovery-focused model that allows a lot of work-at-your-own-pace education and challenges students to apply cross-disciplinary skills in every aspect of their education. It’s doing some incredibly innovative education, and it’s been quite successful. My friend has been there for six years and loves it. His students have gone on to be quite successful.Other charter schools fail spectacularly. A recent study found that many online-based charter schools fail to graduate even half of their students. Numerous charter schools have closed mid-year and without warning, leaving students, parents, and even teachers stranded in the middle of a school year with limited options.What divides the two?Largely accountability, organization, and effective resourcing.Some charter schools are “schools within a school,” or otherwise organized under the main public district, and overseen by the district’s publicly elected school board.These can vary from entirely separate “alternative schools” that follow specialized or experimental educational structures, such as Etude, to specific, isolated programs that operate in the same buildings as the regular schools.For example, a nearby city to where I grew up operates an alternative school for students who might otherwise drop out due to teen pregnancy, disciplinary issues, work schedules, and more. The dedicated building is open longer hours (7am to 7pm,) with teachers that operate more on shifts than a traditional school. The school has built-in child care for single teen parents. It is focused on a traditional high school diploma and not just a GED. It doesn’t generally offer extracurricular activities, though students can enroll in those with the main school. (Most don’t.)In contrast, a friend of mine from college who taught English for a number of years was tapped to run an isolated, dedicated program within her school that she created from the ground up for at-risk students who just couldn’t operate in a traditional educational framework. She was essentially her own principal, though she officially reported to the principal of the high school on the organization chart. (She’s been incredibly successful and recently was a presenter at a multi-state regional conference on educational innovation.) This program co-ordinates with traditional classes, replacing most entirely, but still operates within the same school.Both of these charter schools are funded by need. They receive state aid per pupil like public schools, but they also receive grants for specific programs and specific activities. Etude works with a number of local manufacturers who sponsor various projects, extracurricular activities, and courses that work in conjunction with their businesses where students learn to apply their school work to real-world applications.Both of these are accountable to the local public school board. Their books are public record and overseen by the district administration.Other charter schools are privately owned, for-profit organizations, and operate on a contract with local districts. These receive public funding, but are not directly overseen by the public school board. These schools receive grants, local, state, and federal, ranging from the standard state aid per pupil to specific grants for technology, curriculum, or personnel, to undedicated blocks of straight cash to be used as the school sees fit.Some of these are successful. There are numerous privately-run for-profit Montessori schools that operate on contracts with districts to ensure that program graduates can easily transfer right into the public school’s curriculum, and many of these are very successful.Others are essentially nothing more than get-rich-quick schemes or other criminal enterprises by organizers, just as they are in higher education. The fact that they operate on contracts with sometimes little or even no oversight from the public also opens them up to incredible waste, fraud, and abuse. Over a six-year period spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations, the Federal government alone investigated 53 charter schools that resulted in 21 indictments and 17 convictions.Steven Cox, a former insurance executive and the founder of the now-defunct California Charter Academy, at one point the largest chain of charter schools in the country, was indicted on 56 counts of misappropriation and theft for trips to Disneyland and stealing $42,000 from the school to pay his personal income taxes. Eleven years later, Cox’s case still has not been resolved as he continues to use his fortune to litigate it. Horizon Academy in Cincinnati essentially operated as a front for an immigration fraud ring for several years as the founder used it to get work visas for Turkish nationals with absolutely no background in education. The CEO of Philadelphia Academy Charter School admitted to stealing approximately a half a million dollars from the school in part through raiding its vending machines.These schools operate on loose contracts with little to no accountability to the public other than being required to publish graduation rates and test scores. They can often operate for years bilking the public before closing, sometimes abruptly, and absconding with the funds.Positive Charter School Models and OpportunitiesWhere schools are effectively resourced based on demonstrated need, and are publicly accountable just as the traditional public school, charter schools may be quite effective. They can be testbeds for new educational practices and reforms, or offer alternatives for students who need different educational models from their peers.Charter schools might be a great way to differentiate education or provide specialized educational applications, such as in-depth vocational education. Imagine if a student graduated high school ready or significantly far along the track to becoming a journeyman carpenter or a licensed electrician. While requiring specialization through tracked education may not be practical or even desirable (look at me, I was going to be an astrophysicist when I started undergraduate,) offering the opportunities might be quite beneficial.Offering this kind of differentiated education is already a goal of most public schools. However, a charter school with a specific mission, as opposed to the more general liberal arts education of a traditional K-12 school, could provide a more focused differentiated education that goes in-depth on a particular area, rather than more broadly on several disciplines.There are positives and negatives to this. A more well-rounded education has proven itself over time to benefit a person over their whole life. I had a poster up on my wall when I taught that had a picture of scientists running away from dinosaurs that read, “Science will teach you how to clone a T-Rex. Humanities will teach you why it’s a bad idea.”Now, a charter school could have a liberal arts education that is still focused on a certain topic. A charter school focused on churning out STEM educated graduates, for example, may have just as much focus on literature and art and music, but from an engineering perspective. The band students might take more time to learn acoustical physics or metallurgy for better instruments. The literature may focus slightly more heavily on technical documents and scientific literacy, but also include fiction geared towards engineering types. The math might be more practical-application-based.The Perception of Failing Public Schools and The Rise of ConsumerismJon Stewart hosted educational reformer Diane Ravitch several times on his show. Ravitch noted on multiple occasions that the majority of U.S. adults have bought into the narrative that public schools are failing. International benchmark test scores continue to fall for U.S. students, for example. Advocacy documentaries such as Waiting for Superman paint the public schools as a broken system where teachers’ unions continue to drive a status-quo at the expense of children, and charter schools as the revolution in education that would shake up the industry with competition and reform that public schools lack, but limited by lottery systems leaving the unlucky trapped.Yet, Ravitch also noted that on the whole, most U.S. voters surveyed also believe that their local public school is good and successful.Jon Stewart: These areas, so the families in these areas, because this gets into another issue you bring up in the book [Reign of Error]. The families in this area are rightly concerned with the performance of some of the public schools in their area. These schools can be dilapidated, they can be poorly performing and these types of things. There is this movement and the charter movement that says ‘what’s wrong with giving choice to those kids in those areas?’ because the schools around them are not are not serving their needs. What is wrong with that in your mind?Diane Ravitch: Well, what’s wrong with it is that there, it is part of, I believe, a purposeful effort to create a consumer mentality around education. Public education is the public responsibility. Whether you send your children to private schools, or to a religious school, or you home school them, that’s your right. And if you have no children at all, you’re still obligated to support public education. What they’re trying to do is to say that public education is not public, it’s a choice, it’s a consumer choice. They’re trying to destroy the sense of civic obligation so the next time there’s a…JS: So, turn it into a marketplace?DR: Yes, a marketplace, exactly. So, the next time a bond issue is up, you will say ‘well, I don’t have a child in school. I’m not going to vote for the bond issue.’ We’re going to destroy public education that way. . . . I think it’s all wrong. I think that the idea of you look on your school, you go shopping and you pick your school the way you pick your shoes or your automobile, that is wrong too. People should have a good neighborhood school in every neighborhood. One where they are very happy to send their kids because they know the teachers are terrific. The funny thing is if you look at poll data from Gallup, what it shows is if people are asked how is American education doing, they’ve heard thirty years of American education is broken, it doesn’t work, it’s obsolete, so they say ‘oh, American public education, no good.’ How is your school, how is your neighborhood school? ‘Oh, my neighborhood school is terrific. My teachers are great. I love my teachers.’JS: But it is like Congress, you could look at that, too, the same way. Oh, my Congressman is okay, but the institution – it does have issues… [laughter].The increasing narrative of “school choice” around charter schools continues to create a false premise of the consumer mentality towards education; we pay for the educational system, and so we ought to get what we pay for. And if we don’t like the results, we ought to buy something else.Yet, public schools are not allowed in many cases to compete on the same level playing field as private schools or even charter schools.Public schools are reliant on taxes, and obviously, few people really like paying more in taxes. They see their property tax levies as directly funding the schools. They often don’t think about those taxes also funding police, fire, and EMS services. So, when the municipality suggests raising taxes again, adding another bonding bill to the budget, passing another referendum, it gets voted down, often by those who no longer have children in the district.This happens because we’ve bought into this business-consumerism model of education rather than funding it as a public trust for everyone. It used to be that we all understood it was a public trust; even if you didn’t have kids in the school, it was important to fund it for everyone because it makes the public better off.As John Green notes:Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.Consumerism takes the approach that whatever is good for the individual is good for society. This is the absolute worst approach to something like education, and really even good governance or society.Civic Responsibility and Pride, and How That Impacts Government - Including Public EducationEducation is one of the great equalizers of humanity, and it was for that precise reason that the United States was one of the earliest innovators in providing a free, public education to every citizen, even mandating compulsory attendance. We were one of the first countries to achieve a >90% literacy rate.We did so because of the idea of civic responsibility for one another: that if we all contribute to the public good, we all receive back something greater than we put in.Education lifts millions out of poverty by creating a skilled workforce. That skilled workforce put a car in every driveway, a computer in everyone’s pocket, and a man on the Moon. The space program alone yielded innovations that dominate our daily lives ranging from memory foam to LASIK to infrared ear thermometers. It would not have been possible without a broad, skilled workforce, the product of public education.Whether it’s vocational education, professional education, or even general education, public education creates opportunities for every single person in the country to contribute to society. It was that kind of public access to education that turned the United States from a backwater rural agrarian society to the largest, most prosperous industrialized superpower in the world.And we took pride in that. We created state university systems that we wanted to become the envy of the world, publicly available to every citizen. We would produce the finest scientists and inventors and the world’s greatest artists. We would take pride in fostering the world’s greatest economy and the world’s greatest culture.We did that by investing in our people. Collectively. Public institutions would be cathedrals of civic pride. Public buildings such as schools and courthouses were marble and granite, built to last. They were also the centers of civic activity. The school was often the heart of the town, where meetings and debates and festivals and elections were held. The courthouse would be where critical matters of government would be decided and administered. These were buildings of respect, and everyone took pride in that. We built that.We don’t teach that kind of civic mentality anymore, not in our homes and not in our schools. Hell, we can’t even teach that in our schools anymore, because teachers would get fired for politicizing in the classroom.The school is not the center of civic life, because honestly, we no longer have a civic life.Consumerism has replaced that sense of civic responsibility to each other to make the nation better overall. Ayn Rand’s idea of selfishness as a virtue has become the guidestar of the nation: screw you, so long as I got mine.We no longer care about investing in society, trusting that we would reap the benefits. Instead, we only care about consuming from society; if we are not personally benefiting, then it must not be valuable.This is why, I firmly believe, it is so easy for certain people to believe in the idea of a “moocher class” of “welfare queens” who just exist to live fat off the public trough: it’s what they would do if they were allowed to. Why? Because they live from a mentality of consumerism, and not civic engagement.If we start from the premise that public schools are a public trust which we are all responsible for, the whole conversation changes. No longer is it about requiring education to fix itself by forcing it to compete over increasingly limited resources. Instead, it’s a matter of coming together as a culture to improve education. Every stakeholder has some degree of obligation, then.Some of it might be more funding. Maybe people without kids decide to invest their time in coaching. Maybe businesses do more joint ventures with the schools.Most of it is just shifting from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control.And that’s eminently evident in the overall impact of charter schools. The impact of charter schools is that they continue to further the mentality that other people are responsible for making a product that we want to buy and we’ll just keep demanding alternatives until we get what we want, rather than civic ownership of that product and collective work to improve it. If others are responsible for the quality control, then we as a society don’t have to have any responsibility for the outcomes.But if we are responsible for improving that product, that has a whole host of rather difficult implications for us. That’s going to require work.Look. If you want a better country, you have to be better citizens.That starts with understanding that in a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, the people are what make the difference. All of the people. Everyone is responsible for the public good. Everyone has to contribute and work at it.Charter schools are a cheap cop-out to avoid that responsibility. They continue to further an external locus of control that takes away the need for self-agency to work to improve the situation. Someone else can clean it up.Oh, we’ll pay for it. Grudgingly.So long as we don’t actually have to do anything.In BriefCharter schools do provide some valuable alternatives to traditional models of education, and testbeds for educational research. They can be excellent ways to differentiate student learning and provide unique opportunities for some students.They can also be incredibly detrimental to student outcomes and perpetuate a flagging sense of civic responsibility and a consumerist society that abdicates personal responsibility and self-agency for “more choices” and personal satisfaction.It’s difficult to say which of these impacts has the greater weight. Every situation in every place charter schools are implemented is different.Caveat emptor.Your mileage may vary.This is long and I didn’t add any pictures. Here. Have a baby raccoon.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, et cetera and BNBR violation and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly.Thanks for the A2A, Habib.