From the Advocates for Self-Government:

Education: Too Important to Be Left to the Government

Jeff Jacoby, award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe, has written another wonderfully devastating column calling for the separation of school and state. And, as previously, he cuts through to the essence of the issue.

Here are some excerpts:

Americans differ on same-sex marriage and evolution, on the importance of sports and the value of phonics, on the right to bear arms and the reverence due the Confederate flag. Some parents are committed secularists; others are devout believers. Some place great emphasis on math and science; others stress history and foreign languages.

“Free men and women do not entrust to the state the molding of their children’s minds and character.”

Americans hold disparate opinions on everything from the truth of the Bible to the meaning of the First Amendment, from the usefulness of rote memorization to the importance of teaching music and art. With parents so often in loud disagreement, why should children be locked into a one-size-fits-all, government-knows-best model of education?

Nobody would want the government to run 90 percent of the nation’s entertainment industry. Nobody thinks that 90 percent of all housing should be owned by the state. Yet the government’s control of 90 percent of the nation’s schools leaves most Americans strangely unconcerned….

In a society founded on political and economic liberty, government schools have no place. Free men and women do not entrust to the state the molding of their children’s minds and character. As we wouldn’t trust the state to feed our kids, or to clothe them, or to get them to bed on time, neither should we trust the state to teach them….

Education is too important to be left to the government.

Jacoby, it should be noted, is one of the most influential columnists in America. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Boston Globe is the largest newspaper in the New England area, and the 15th largest-circulation newspaper in America, with over 600,000 readers. His column is carried by other publications as well, and widely disseminated on the Web.

Source: “Big Brother at School,” by Jeff Jacoby