Commentary from the liberterrain…
Trent Kays, writing in the Minnesota Daily, got almost everything wrong about education, beginning with his article's headline, "Ron Paul's War on Education."
The correct headline should have been "Ron Paul's War for Education."
Paul advocates abolishing the federal Department of Education; however, Kays says "that is not the right way to solve education problems."
But once the concept of "education" is properly defined, abolishing FedEd is the only way to solve education problems.
Government, by definition, doesn't "educate." Government is force. Government consciously and purposefully "indoctrinates."
Had Mr. Kays studied history alongside journalism he might have learned how this came about.
He might have started with the Mackinac Center's "School Choice in Michigan: A Primer for Freedom in Education" by Matthew J. Brouillette, specifically the chapter entitled "The 1830s and 40s: Horace Mann, the End of Free-Market Education, and the Rise of Government Schools.
The Classics Illustrated version is that Horace Mann (the "father of American public school education") brought the Prussian system of state-controlled (and mind-controlling) education to America.
As award-winning educator John Taylor Gatto put it, the traditional American school purpose – "piety, good manners, basic intellectual tools, self-reliance, etc." – gave way to Prussian state socialism and its centralized schooling system designed to deliver obedient soldiers to the military, obedient workers to mines, factories, and farms, compliant civil servants to the government, subservient clerks to industry, and submissive citizens to the nation-state.
The results are all around us today.
Contrast this with another early German educational theorist, Wilhelm von Humboldt. Although he believed in "free and universal education for all citizens" (i.e., coercively taxpayer funded) Gatto notes his "brilliant arguments for a high-level no-holds-barred, free-swinging, universal, intellectual course of study for all, full of variety, free debate, rich experience, and personalized curricula."
So while Ron Paul advocates turning public schooling over to the states, thereby creating 50 little authoritarian indoctrination monsters instead of one big one, libertarians believe in free market education.
How will the free market answer Kays' objections of who will ensure that a standard of education is maintained, or ensure that poor children get an education, or who will give deserving students money for college?
One short article can't make up for years of government indoctrination. For that, Kays needs self-education. He could begin here and then keep on going:
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