Education is crucial. Whoever controls education controls the future and the future of our freedom.
On April 29, the U.S. House of Representatives’ Education and Labor Committee heard witnesses concerning the potential reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act (Elementary and Secondary Education Act). Instead of allowing local governments to run education, the witnesses of the hearing proposed to centralize education in Washington D. C.--as far removed from the children as possible.
The alleged goals of centralization would be accountability and national standards. There are major problems with this. ‘National standards’ could open the doors for standardized curriculum tests and textbooks. Nationalized textbooks and curriculums are fertile soil for implanting political propaganda. This technique was used by Hitler and Mao Zedong and is alluded to by Marx in The Communist Manifesto.
Nationalized education is a serious threat to liberty because it removes the separation of Education and State. The State will always educate toward its own benefit, not the benefit of the people. History has shown that when the State controls education, politics will eventually take priority and Truth will be relegated to a secondary position (sometimes disregarded altogether).
Furthermore, the government cannot hold itself accountable. Government as a whole is supposed to be accountable to the people. It seems to me that by making schools accountable to the government that we have things backwards.
Much of my concern lies in how nationalizing education would affect private schooling, home schooling, and parents’ rights to choose an education for their children. There is still a great deal of unclarity as to how (and if) this would alter our freedom to choose private schools or to home educate. If national standards are created, will private schools and home schools be subject to these standards? Will educators be able to choose their own curriculums? Or will all of us be forced to accept an inferior (and potentially politically charged) ‘standard’? Will schools be forced to teach certain things and be banned from teaching other things?
The government cannot grant rights; it can only recognize them. Governments that refuse to recognize rights are tyrannical and a move to nationalize education might just open a Pandora's box of such abuses. Furthermore, Government always expands at the expense of freedom and these freedoms, once lost, are extremely difficult to recover. As President Reagan once said, “No government voluntarily reduces itself in size. So government programs once launched never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth.”
Having been homeschooled until college myself, I know what a blessing it is to have the freedom to choose my schooling. I don’t want my future children and grandchildren to grow up in a country where ideas are regulated in the name of learning. Freedom of speech cannot survive where there is no freedom of education. Let us ensure that the day never comes when Washington thinks it has the right to replace parents.
Please contact your congressmen and express your concern.
Visit www.congress.org for information on how to best contact your representatives.
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