Save the Children, Save the Future

   As comes another September, so too does another season of clamor regarding “values” in the nation’s government schools. Sadly, all the effort and passion devoted to this debate will not only be completely ineffective at infusing the schools with virtuous character, it will actually be counterproductive, as it serves to divert the attention of parents and tax payers from clear thinking about the government education industry.
   Parents who care about the culture in which their children are indoctrinated, or tax payers concerned about the kind of influences on future neighbors and voters for which they are paying should face the inconvenient truth that satisfactory respect for liberty and high cultural standards will never flourish, or even abide, in government schools. Not only are such schools inherently socialist, being founded, financed, and administered through socialist processes, they quite properly reject a formal adoption of or respect for any particular world view. They ARE coercively funded, and it would be utterly wrong for them to formally promote any particular creed, values, or perspective. As Thomas Jefferson said, 
“To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical.”
   Thus, such schools are incapable of offering an institutionally virtuous environment to which parents might commit a ...