The idea is to fund parents instead. Let state legislatures decide the going rate for the education of a K-12-aged child, and then let the parents decide where that child should be educated and how that money should be spent. It’s called school choice.
A radical idea? No doubt. But this is a radical idea that will directly empower parents, which is something that defunding the police will not do.
Will some parents abuse their power and misuse the money? No doubt. Will the result be a plethora of schools grounded in religious denominations? Perhaps.
Defenders of the status quo tout the virtues of a public education with uniform goals. Once upon a time, those virtues were real and those goals were defensible, not to mention uniformly agreed upon. But today?
Public education has long been a target of the left and its “long march through the institutions.” That march began in the 1960s. It has continued without serious challenge—and with parental acquiescence—since then. Such a challenge is long overdue.
There was a time when our public schools were bastions of unabashed Americanism, thorough civic education, and a vague Protestantism; today they are transmission belts for a political agenda that features such “isms” as multiculturalism, environmentalism, secularism, and anti-Americanism.
By Chuck Chalberg|July 20th, 2020