In the ideal situation in any free state, public education should both be completely funded by the government and entirely free of governmental oversight (except in matters of physical and plant safety and health considerations). The reasoning is simple. A democratic/republican government requires an educated electorate for its maintenance, which must include the electorate’s right (and, indeed, its responsibility) to keep a weather eye on that government.
Of course this implies an internal contradiction - no government ever invented would willingly give up the power of oversight over the curriculum of the educational institutions for which it was paying. Yet as our more recent history makes utterly plain there is nothing more pernicious than legislative control over or interference with school curriculum.
There have been constant hollers from the right about 'indoctrination in our schools’, but the fact is that all education is to some extent indoctrination. The school choice movement is as much about which kind of indoctrination is practiced as it may be about educational quality.
If this country needs anything, it needs the possibility of taxpayer supported quality education for all, the curriculum for which should be utterly free of legislative interference or control.
This really is authoritarianism disguised as free speech. Like you mentioned it really is a reverse engineering of the administrations very ad hoc assault on the universities. This is really worth reading, thanks!
In the ideal situation in any free state, public education should both be completely funded by the government and entirely free of governmental oversight (except in matters of physical and plant safety and health considerations). The reasoning is simple. A democratic/republican government requires an educated electorate for its maintenance, which must include the electorate’s right (and, indeed, its responsibility) to keep a weather eye on that government.
Of course this implies an internal contradiction - no government ever invented would willingly give up the power of oversight over the curriculum of the educational institutions for which it was paying. Yet as our more recent history makes utterly plain there is nothing more pernicious than legislative control over or interference with school curriculum.
There have been constant hollers from the right about 'indoctrination in our schools’, but the fact is that all education is to some extent indoctrination. The school choice movement is as much about which kind of indoctrination is practiced as it may be about educational quality.
If this country needs anything, it needs the possibility of taxpayer supported quality education for all, the curriculum for which should be utterly free of legislative interference or control.
This really is authoritarianism disguised as free speech. Like you mentioned it really is a reverse engineering of the administrations very ad hoc assault on the universities. This is really worth reading, thanks!