Author Biography
I was originally trained as an Architect. I subsequently created, owned, and managed a small consulting company for fifteen years in which I had to deal with government agencies, bureaucrats, and their regulations on a daily basis. As a result, I gained first-hand knowledge of the problems that government regulations cause businesses of all kinds.
After selling my consulting company in 1991, I became a full-time writer. My first book, published in 1996, was The Welfare State: No Mercy For the Middle Class. In this book I touched on the subject of education and public schools, but realized this subject was so important that I would write another book on this vital subject at a later date.
I have been a libertarian most of my adult life. That means I passionately believe that government is best that governs least, and that the protection of our individual rights and liberties is the bedrock foundation of this country, and government's most important function. That means that government should be out of the education business, totally. Also, I believe that the best way to guarantee that our kids get a fun, quality, low-cost, individualized, and rewarding education is to turn education completely over to the free-market. Parents should be able to choose from a supermarket of education choices in a vibrant, fiercely competitive education free market. Every parent should be responsible for their own children's education, free from any government interference. In short, I believe that public schools should be scrapped.
I was also very much affected by a 1992 movie with Robert DeNiro and Jane Fonda, "Stanley and Iris." It is about a man whose life is miserable and humiliating because he cannot read, and his heroic struggle to learn to read with the help of Jane Fonda's character. It brought home to me the terrible consequences of illiteracy, and it made me even more angry at how public schools are turning millions of bright, innocent children into semi-illiterates, into millions of "Stanleys."
As a result of my preliminary research, I became angry and concerned about the third-rate, mind-numbing education public schools were perpetrating on our children. My new book, Public Schools, Public Menace was the result of over three years of intensive research on public schools and education. As part of that research, I became a reading volunteer to first-grade children in New York City's public schools for almost six months. As a result of that experience, I unfortunately confirmed first-hand the truth of many of the facts and conclusions I reached while researching my book.