Repeal Obamacare – but Keep Socialized Education?
During the recent Fox News and Google presidential debate, Ron Paul opined to the crowd, “You ought to have a right to opt out of the public system if you want.” Although he could have been drawing comparisons between Obamacare and European socialized medicine, the congressman was actually referencing America’s socialized educational system. It was a brilliant point. Just as the “public option” is merely a different term for socialized medicine, public education is simply a euphemized phrase for socialized education.
In the early 1900s, Horace Mann led a movement to replace America’s community and parent-controlled school model with Prussian-style public schools. He believed that free education was a right and demeaned religious institutions that already made education available.
Mann’s vision was originally met with strong resistance, as parents were reluctant to cede control of their children’s education to government bureaucrats. Ultimately, a compulsory attendance mandate was passed — not unlike the individual mandate found in Obamacare. Shortly afterward, private schools began to close.
Three-time New York City teacher of the year John Taylor Gatto notes that archetypal Americans like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Thomas Edison were leading productive, fulfilled lives by the time they were in their teens, and yet “[t]hey were too unpredictable and insufficiently pliable. What better way to (change this) than by removing children from the steadying influences of their families, and placing them instead in the hands of (free government) schools[?] Just in case parents were unwilling to comply, the powers that be committed school attendance into law.”
However, as we all know, “free education” isn’t free, but subsidized through tax levies on all citizens — even those with no school-age children and those who have chosen to educate their children privately. Herein lies the genius of the left: by dictating the funding of government-run education and health care programs, millions of families are left with few alternatives outside the government’s control. Although the right to enroll their children in private schools remains, this “right,” for all practical purposes, often cannot be exercised due to income limitations. The reality is that many middle- and lower-income families cannot afford to pay taxes towards our public schools while also sending their own children to schools of their choice. The same holds true for health insurance policies — thus, freedom of choice is suddenly available only to the elite and wealthy.
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Read More at American Thinker By Josiah Cantrall, American Thinker
