Why Separate School and State?
Public education is a complete disaster. But it was predictable that this would be so. Relying on government to educate the next generation was always a fundamentally bad idea.
Great Britain, from which America sprang, was, and is, a monarchy. In 1776, Americans soundly rejected that form of government. Our wise forebears, all of whom were educated at home or in private institutions of learning, rejected King George III as our sovereign, and instead set up a republican form of constitutional self-government in which the people themselves, as a body, are considered to be the sovereign, under the ultimate Sovereign, Almighty God. All legitimate governmental power could only spring from God and the people. From now on, they said, the laws of nature and nature’s God, and our constitutions, framed and ratified by us, are to be the fundamental, supreme law of the land—not the whims of a tyrant.
“That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”—The Declaration of Independence
Under our constitutional system, elected officials are not, in their official capacities, the sovereign. They are merely government ministers. They are servants, who serve only within the clear boundaries set up by the sovereign people themselves, via our federal and state constitutions.
How foolish would a sovereign be to leave the education of his royal heirs to his hired servants, especially servants who have consistently proven to be unreliable teachers of foreign ideas that are destructive of the morals and principles of the kingdom?
Clearly, it’s time to separate school and state.
And the impetus for the separation must come from the people themselves.
To some degree, this has already occurred. Millions of families are now teaching their own children at home, using the modern tools that place vast quantities of information at our fingertips, at the click of a mouse.
Our federal Constitution provides absolutely no legitimate authority for the national government to involve itself in education, beyond perhaps the training of government employees and the provision of schools for the children of those serving on military bases.
Most, if not all, of our state constitutions do make some provision for the involvement of state governments in K-12 and university education. These provisions should be amended, sooner rather than later. The public schools have proven to be danger zones for our children—spiritually, morally, intellectually, and physically.
But, on a practical basis, bureaucracies don’t educate children anyway. The trillions of tax dollars we have spent on education have been either counterproductive or completely wasted.
What we need is true private, nongovernmental control of every school. And that control, whether exercised in the home, or in an organized local school setting, must reside firmly in the hands of the parents.
Tom Hoefling
President, Separate School and State
