My brother, Dan, has often made points to me about how people and organizations often if not always do a better job with social and educational "service" to a nation's people. One of the biggies is in terms of public education. David Gelernter of the L.A. Times writes that it is time to phase public schools out as painlessly as possible.

What gives public schools the right to exist? After all, they are no part of the nation's constitutional framework. Neither the Constitution nor Bill of Rights requires public schools. And in one sense they are foreign to American tradition. Europeans are inspired by state institutions. Americans are apt to be inspired by private enterprise, entrepreneurship, choice.

The wealthy or upper middle-class are always going to have the option to send their kids to a private school if their local public school is insufficient. However, if we are truly concerned for the impoverished, it's past due-time that we give them a choice of schools. If nothing else it will make the public schools raise their standards in order to survive. Update: David Gelernter is a Yale professor of Computer Science. The Java programming language is inspired by some of Gelernter's own code, "Linda".