In this section, I address questions and comments about the Winterhill concept. Send me an email if you would like to provide feedback on anything that has been written here.

1. Should the learning accounts be able to be 'topped up'? If individuals are allowed to use their own additional funds to pay for education, will this be fair to those who have less money?

Individuals should be able to top up their learning accounts and yes, this would be 'equitable' for the following two reasons:

Reason One: More important than worries about peripheral spending, the base amount all young people would receive would finally be equalized. As things stand now, funds allotted for school expenditure are based on local tax collection and therefore range greatly across the United States. As Matt Miller points out in his New York Times Op-ed 'Nixon's the One — to Imitate on Education', local funding for education worked before suburbs, exurbs and the like created income stratification because families of varying means used to live in closer proximity. Secondly, even when we have formal structures in place to provide educational aid for the needy, the 'rich' elbow their way to the front of the line: "Many families now use high-priced financial advisers to maximize their eligibility for financial aid," reports Tamar Lewin in 'Big Test Before College: The Financial Aid Form'. The Learning Account outlined in Winterhill would actually render unnecessary this financial aid for education and provide far more equality than currently exists.

Reason Two: The second point is that more money beyond a base point has not in any case proven to provide a 'better' education. So, if rich parents want to spend more on providing 'experiences' or tutors for their children, they should go ahead and do so because it will not diminish equality. In fact, the rich might start learning from the poor the lesson that too much money - and indulging one's children too greatly - actually works against a young person's education.

2. Is this not the 'privatization' of education? Would private operators not benefit from this 'public good'?

In Essay Four, 'The Hypocrisy of the Public Good' I debunk the myth that schooling even provides us with the public good but if the issue has more to do with private operators receiving public funds, this is being done every day and in every way in other areas of our economy.

'Private' beneficiaries receive government funds - funds directly from us - for road and infrastructure building, research, healthcare, farm subsidies and directly in the form of food stamps and childcare vouchers. And recently, as we all know, auto manufacturers and large private banks have received government money with little regulation or oversight attached to these hand-outs.

The term that many of us are now using, and one that must come back into the conversation so we don't slip back into the negative effects of educational moral hazard as I discuss in Essay Three is simple but powerful. We must restore the term 'parent/learner regulated'. When funds are directed to parents/learners, they are the regulators and once this 'culture of learner responsibility' is reclaimed from the system, all but the very needy few will indeed regulate well their own and their children's education.

Please see 'Voucher Revisited: The Prospect for Education Vouchers in the Eighties' presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association where is was stated that, "Other support for the voucher system has come from James Coleman and some prominent civil rights leaders who suggest that educational vouchers are an attractive alternative for black families." (Page 1 and 8)

3. Young adults are too immature to 'let them loose' in the way Winterhill suggests. Maybe it's a learned dependence, but could society function if we gave young adults and children so much control over their own lives?

If young people are found wanting these days all evidence does indeed point to this being a drastic case of learned and regressive dependence, one that we - the older adults - have fostered. Please see Robert Epstein's book, The Case Against Adolescence: Rediscovering the Adult in Every Teen, for the definitive word on how great can be the accomplishments and maturity of young adults, when we allow them to 'show their stuff'.

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©copyright Kate Tennier, 2009