Tragedy and Hope in India

Ninety children are now reported to have died in the private school fire in Kumbakonam, India.

The government is vowing a regulatory crack-down on private schools to ensure that they meet fire and other safety codes. And so they should. As long as the codes are on the books, and citizens are assuming they're being enforced, it's unconscionable that schools, public or private, be allowed to flout them.

But if the best interests of Indian children are to be served, the government will stop there. Any further regulatory encroachment into the curriculum of private schools, particularly those that do not receive government subsidies, would be disastrous to children's futures.

India's public schools, whose curricula are designed and overseen by the state, are a shambles. Unregulated, parent-funded private schools have consistently been found to be academically superior despite far lower per-pupil expenditures.

As a NYTimes article on this story concludes: "residents said they would continue sending their children to private schools because they had no choice. They said a proper education was the one gift they could give that would make their children upwardly mobile."

Public policy, both in India and in America, should be designed to make that education readily accessible to all, while preserving the freedom and market incentives responsible for its superiority over state monopoly schooling.