Tribute to Milton and Rose Friedman

Since 1996, the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice has worked to bring Milton and Rose D. Friedman's vision of educational freedom and choice to parents across America. On the tenth and final Friedman Legacy Day celebration (July 29, 2016), we pay tribute to the indelible legacy of the Friedmans on our hearts and our society. Thank you, Milton and Rose.

Source: EdChoice YouTube channel.  Learn more about their organization at www.edchoice.org.

Transcript:

So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear that there is no alternative way, so far discovered, of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.

They were intellectual giants. Champions of freedom. Advisers to presidents and prime ministers.

There are two quite different meanings of free, which tend to get confused and which is important to keep separate. The first is the freedom in the sense of the absence of coercion. The second is free in the sense of free lunch and the sense of absence of cost. The two meanings are very different, and there are few sources, few more important sources of confusion about the proper role of government in our society than the confusion between the two very different meaning of the word free.

Milton and Rose Friedman left an indelible mark on our society. There were very few people over the generations who had ideas that are sufficiently original to materially alter the direction of civilization. Milton is one of those very few people.

When it came time to select the issue that would bear their name and become their intellectual legacy for the last decade of their lives, they knew the future success of our economy and our society depended on one thing above all, to shift peoples' thinking away from a system in which money goes to schools to a system in which money goes to students. And to educate the public at large about the importance of this issue. Now more than six decades after Milton and Rose Friedman first introduced the idea of educational choice, and twenty years after establishing the Friedman Foundation, there are more than sixty programs operating in thirty states and the district of Columbia. Thanks to this one wonderful idea, millions of families across our nation are free to choose.

What we need to do is to enable parents, by vouchers and other means, to have more say about the school which their child goes to. A public school or a private school, whichever meets the need of the child best.

It is very nice to be here tonight with all of you, and especially with my very good friends Rose and Milton Friedman. They are not only my friends, but they are my heroes.

The Friedmans changed history. Thank you Milton and Rose Friedman. They gave is an intellectual legacy that will live on long after this day. Thank you Milton and Rose. The future of education. Thank you Milton and Rose. The future of society. Thank you Milton and Rose. Thank you Milton and Rose for letting me go to which school I want to go to. An idea that will stand the test of time.