National History Standards

"The falsification of history has done more to impede human
development than any one thing known to mankind"
Rousseau

FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 9, 1998
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
The separation of school and state

In response to my Aug. 28 column, which dealt with this year's first day of school in Jonesboro, Ark. (scene of last spring's well-covered schoolyard shootings), "Teacher in Texas" wrote:

"I noticed in your column that you were quick to point out what's wrong with the educational system, but offered no solutions. Any ideas, or just blowing off some steam?"

I replied:


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I thought I made it pretty clear: If you're talking about how we can reform the current government-run, socialist/redistributionist, public-employee-union-dominated school system, to make it "work better," then there are no "solutions" -- because you are seeking an answer to the wrong question.

The Constitution grants no authority for the federal government to be involved in education. Therefore, freedom from government interference in education is an individual right, under the 9th amendment. Under the 14th amendment, it became illegal for any state to deprive any United States citizen of such a constitutional right. Therefore, all government interference in education (federal OR state) is unconstitutional, as well as extremely dangerous to our other freedoms (since it exposes our children to 12 years of pro-big-government propaganda, in some of their most crucial formative years.)

If you doubt this, find me a public school classroom where equal time is given to the theory (I would argue it's an easily established fact) that Franklin Roosevelt was a dangerously unprincipled opportunist who thoughtlessly embraced state socialism, thus violating his oath to defend the Constitution -- a public school classroom where a common exercise is to stage a "mock trial" of Mr. Roosevelt, in which the children decide whether he should have been impeached and hanged as a usurping tyrant.

The very "unthinkableness" of such a lesson being taught in today's government schools (while "mock trials" of John D. Rockefeller, for the "crime" of unrestrained capitalism, are seriously recommended in the proposed new "National History Standards,") reveals just how "objective" they are on any subject which bears on the legitimacy of the bureaucracy.

The "solution" is obvious -- a complete separation of school and state, similar to the wise and beneficial separation of church and state which has long been an American ideal.

Existing school facilities should be auctioned off to the highest bidders -- which, in many cases, would turn out to be new companies, offering free-market education.

Based on what's happened when other government monopoly "services" have been privatized, I estimate tuition costs would eventually drop to one-third of what the government collects and allocates per student -- meaning that parents would actually pay less in school tuition than they now pay in school taxes, DESPITE the fact parents today are "helped" by the unwilling "contributions" of the half of the population who send no children to the government schools.

In these new private schools, violent troublemakers would be expelled immediately. The ban on government interference means any parent suing (based on the notion that his or her child's violence and failure to allow others to learn constitutes a "disability") would be told to take a hike. The right of private contract and association would return to primacy.

Like any other aspect of socialism, the underlying crime of the current system is disguised by its very intricacy. But all first graders, fresh from their mothers knees, know that the funding method for their schools is a crime.

Sit them down and ask them: "If a a man comes to your house with a gun, and sticks it in your daddy's face, and demands $100, is what that man is doing right, or is it wrong? What if the man promises to spend half the money on medicine? What if the man promises to spend most of the money on school books? Does it make any difference what kind of uniform the man has on?"

From the mouths of babes, you will hear a unanimous vote that "taxes" (men in uniforms with guns taking our money against our will, while promising to use most of it for some "good cause" or other) is theft, and is wrong.

It takes a good 12 years of propaganda to convince them otherwise -- the major current function of the government schools.

"But the nation would collapse if the schools closed down; all our kids would grow up illiterate!" cry those who have been stuck in this prison so long they can no longer imagine sunlight.

In fact, de Tocqueville reported nearly UNIVERSAL literacy in America when he toured this nation in the 1820s -- 25 years before the founding of the first tax-funded, government schools on the Prussian model, in Massachusetts.

If anything, 150 years of government schooling have vastly REDUCED the average literacy of Americans, while generating enormous systemic socio-pathologies.

A whole movement has grown up to "offer these solutions." I recommend John Taylor Gatto's fine little book "Dumbing Us Down." Then, contact Marshall Fritz at the Separation of School & State Alliance, 4578 N. First, No. 310, Fresno, Calif. 93726; tel. 209-292-1776; email Sepschool@psnw.com.


Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com.
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