CRAIGforCONGRESS
Missouri's 7th District, U.S. House of Representatives

 

 

 

Congressional Issues 2006
MORALITY AND CULTURE
Education

The 109th Congress should

  • identify and list all federal education programs;
  • abolish all programs and agencies (including the Department of Education) not provided for by the Constitution;
  • return education to the state, local, and family level;

  • devolve responsibility for special education to the states,

  • eliminate federal regulations that waste resources and pit parents against teachers, and

  • refuse to turn the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act into an entitlement for state governments.

Every honest American, regardless of religion, should demand the separation of school and state. Every politician who takes an oath to "support the Constitution" should get the federal government out of education, because the Constitution gives the federal government no power over the intensely personal and local act of educating children. Bureaucrats do not educate children as well as parents. Schools do better the more they resemble a family and the less they resemble a government institution.

But most important, government should get out of education because education is inescapably religious.

America's Organic Law on Public Schools

If most politicians ignore the irreplaceable role played by families in education, they seem hell-bent on ignoring the most fundamental purpose of schools: to teach religion and morality.

Politicians take an oath which the U.S. Supreme Court has said indicates an affirmation of America's "organic law." One part of America's Organic Law makes a stunning declaration about the purpose of education. In his concurring opinion in Engel v. Vitale, 370 US 421 at 443, the case which removed prayer from public schools, Justice Douglas admitted:

Religion was once deemed to be a function of the public school system. The Northwest Ordinance, which antedated the First Amendment, provided in Article III that 
Religion, morality, and knowledge 
being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, 
schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

Those who try to keep religion and morality separated from education violate their oath of office. Not a single person who signed the Constitution believed that education could or should be "secular" and that public schools should not teach "religion, morality and knowledge." Nor should we.

Because education is intensely personal and inescapably value-laden, government coercion is inappropriate. Atheists should not be taxed to provide Christian education, and Christians should not be taxed to provide secular education.

Most social problems can be traced to graduates of government schools who lack honesty, morality, virtue, integrity, and personal responsibility, and are tempted to engage in theft or fraud because they lack the income potential that comes from being able to read, write, and calculate. America's Founding Fathers recognized the connection between ignorance and tyranny. Why don't we?

Capitalism and Education

Education is no more a governmental function than selling groceries.

The grocery store you go to each week is a miracle of capitalism. Billions of people in this world would be in awe at your grocery store. Aisle after aisle of clean, conveniently packaged items, all of highest quality in the world, at the lowest prices in the world. The credit goes to "greedy businessmen" and capitalists, not the government.

Why should we not have education provided by "greedy businessmen" as well? Parents would then have the choice of a wonderfully helpful selection of educational systems, with a variety which can help all the various and unique needs of individual children, with an appropriate emphasis on music, math or sports, as parents see fit, not as some government bureaucrat, responding to special interests, sees fit. Children would experience the highest quality education in the world, at the lowest prices -- far lower than inferior government monopoly education costs today.

Any parent who deprives a child of food is subject to criminal prosecution.
Any parent who deprives a child of education is also subject to criminal prosecution.

Surely it is worse to starve a child to death than to neglect a child's education, yet we trust parents to get their kids fed. Nobody suggests that because the neighbor next door feeds her kids too many Hostess™ Twinkies®, that all grocery stores should be nationalized, and government grocery stores should only sell one brand of food, which should be placed into consumers' shopping carts in appropriate amounts by government-credentialed "nutritionists." But that's how the government runs education.

Give parents full choice over their children's education, just like they have full choice over their children's diet, and watch capitalists help parents give their children the highest test scores in the world.

Not to mention honesty, morality, and Christian character -- which is what a majority of parents want for their children.

See also:

After federal intervention in education is eliminated, we should work for the complete abolition of government interference in education at state and local levels. Kevin Craig supports the separation of school and state.

Virtue 101- character education in schools

Culture (independent.org)

Teaching Captivity?
Discover the Reality of the Gay Agenda in Public Schools

Bush promised that his No Child Left Behind Act would permit children to transfer out of dangerous public schools. But states defined "persistently dangerous" schools to insure that almost no children can escape violence. A Colorado school with a thousand students could have more than 150 homicides in a single year and still not be classified as dangerous.
—James Bovard, "Bush's Top Ten Farces"

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