Isn't it interesting that the evils Madison predicts will happen if the government sponsors religion have all happened because the government DOES sponsor education. Little wonder this was an epiphany for you. Hopefully you can get 'Separation of School and State' into the national consciousness. Well said!....as usual.
Thank you for this article, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this series! I agree absolutely with the reasoning here, however I have a question: What are the rights of the child, and how are they protected? What recourse does a grown child have if his parents have given him an education that leaves him unprepared for adulthood, or worse, an education that is designed to leave him dependent? For example, homeschooling in Quebec is highly regulated in part due to a case where some children were raised in an isolated religious community and given only a religious education, not even being taught to read in English or French. The parents claimed that they were educating their children according to their values, but the (grown) children argued that they had a right to an education that would prepare them to live in Canadian society and the government agreed. In your view, what rights do children have in that situation?
My thoughts are that 1. children should be allowed to leave home and support themselves much earlier than they are currently legally permitted to do and 2. that a free market, free of the distortions and corruptions of the concept of education caused by government control, would provide many more options for teenagers and adults who wanted to improve their educations, such that this would not likely be as big of a problem as it would be today. I would love to hear anything you would add to my thinking about this issue.
Isn't it interesting that the evils Madison predicts will happen if the government sponsors religion have all happened because the government DOES sponsor education. Little wonder this was an epiphany for you. Hopefully you can get 'Separation of School and State' into the national consciousness. Well said!....as usual.
Thank you for this article, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of this series! I agree absolutely with the reasoning here, however I have a question: What are the rights of the child, and how are they protected? What recourse does a grown child have if his parents have given him an education that leaves him unprepared for adulthood, or worse, an education that is designed to leave him dependent? For example, homeschooling in Quebec is highly regulated in part due to a case where some children were raised in an isolated religious community and given only a religious education, not even being taught to read in English or French. The parents claimed that they were educating their children according to their values, but the (grown) children argued that they had a right to an education that would prepare them to live in Canadian society and the government agreed. In your view, what rights do children have in that situation?
My thoughts are that 1. children should be allowed to leave home and support themselves much earlier than they are currently legally permitted to do and 2. that a free market, free of the distortions and corruptions of the concept of education caused by government control, would provide many more options for teenagers and adults who wanted to improve their educations, such that this would not likely be as big of a problem as it would be today. I would love to hear anything you would add to my thinking about this issue.