Education: an Entitlement?
[part 2]

     So is education an entitlement - - something to which all Americans are entitled and which government must provide to all as one of its necessary functions? As we discussed last week in this space, it was never that way from the founding of our nation, and those who made it a provision of government did so for reasons that would not withstand public scrutiny today.
     The first American law requiring any schooling to be provided by any form of government was driven by religious requirements -- that children would be able to read the Bible. While perhaps many Christians today would not argue against teaching all children to read the Bible, they might argue about what version to use, and certainly many who worship another god would object. All education is religious by nature, but few would argue publicly for the government to continue to provide it in direct support of any particular religion, especially in light of most interpretations of the First Amendment.
     The second historical phase of government provision of education was also religious in nature, albeit one very different from Christianity. The Unitarians and the Owenite socialists saw in state-run education the tool of perfecting mankind through forced socialization and mass indoctrination. Marx's Communist Manifesto certainly agreed with that idea, calling for universal free education for all children in state-run schools. Only those who believed that the state had a vital role to play in cementing - - or eradicating - - religion, thus, wanted it involved in education. But by no means was state-run education ever thought of by most Americans before the late 1800s as something that they should get as a natural benefit from government.
     Marx also called for combining education with industrial production, and that was the next phase of government entanglement with what had started out being something that every family provided for itself as naturally as food and shelter. Rather than encouraging children to think and create, to become inventors and leaders, schools began to shape young students to fit into the mold of an industrial worker. This transformation of the purpose of education to fit the student to a predetermined need was intentionally designed, planned and paid for by the same international bankers and industrialists who colluded with political leaders to turn over the Constitutional responsibility of Congress for the coinage of our money to the Federal Reserve, a privately owned banking cartel. And ever after, the purpose of publicly-funded education in America was not to provide academic instruction to children but to make them loyal subjects both to their employers and to the government that created, trained and sustained them
     There are some things that government must do. According to our Constitution, they include the defense of our nation - our military forces. Mail service and roads are others, as are granting patents and copyrights. And, of course, the coining of money, something that Congress has given away (and must retrieve soon if our nation is to survive - a topic of another coming article.) But the Constitution gives no more power to any government to be involved in any part of the education of children than it does for the government to feed, clothe and house any citizens. And state constitution provisions for education were written after this anti-religious, pro-socialist meddling - after the Civil War and, in the South, as a tool of repression.
     Ah, but we have become so used to government "educating" us that it would be very difficult to cut loose of the government nipple!. Yes, if one has become accustomed to welfare, it is hard to get one's lazy body out of bed and to go out and earn one's own keep, but we do it because it is the right thing to do. Welfare is not kept around because it is actually necessary or helping its recipients; no, it is kept around because it is used as a political weapon to buy votes. Likewise, education is kept under government not because it is best performed there and not because it is actually educating American students to be the best in the world; no, it is kept there because it empowers certain politicians and moneyed interests.
     Now that the Supreme Court has deemed the education voucher permissible, the floodgates will open on legislation supposedly empowering parents to get some of their own money back to exercise educational "choice." Many good people will get hurt in the stampede before they realize that anything that the government pays for it must regulate. And meanwhile the argument that ought to be taking place - about why government should have anything to do with education at all, especially in light of the true history of that involvement - may not be heard because of many generations of intentional conditioning that makes many believe that education is something that the government is supposed to bed providing for us.

by Ben Graydon: published in The Times Examiner, July 17, 2002