Education

Why Educational Freedom Is the Best Choice

by Laurence M. Vance October 13, 2021

Thanks in large part to state and local government responses to the COVID-19 “pandemic,” enrollment in public schools has dropped for the last two school years as more and more parents have turned to homeschooling. This decline in parents’ use of public education coincides with the conservative backlash against public schools for what they see as the promotion of ...

Is School Choice the Answer to Critical Race Theory?

by Laurence M. Vance July 9, 2021

Following the lead of lawmakers in Tennessee and Idaho, my state of Florida has become the latest state to ban the teaching of critical race theory in its public schools. As adopted by the Florida State Board of Education, the amendment banning the teaching of critical race theory states in part: Examples of theories that distort historical events ...

Three Libertarian Principles for Education

by Laurence M. Vance February 22, 2021

Although the presidency and both Houses of Congress are now controlled by Democrats, some conservatives still think that they can have some influence on the federal government’s education polices. A case in point is a new report by Michael Q. McShane of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), “Where Conservatives Should Lead on Federal Education Policy in 2021.” ...

What Is Good for Students Might Be Bad for Taxpayers

by Laurence M. Vance September 28, 2020

The federal Department of Education was created in 1979 by Jimmy Carter and his Democratic-controlled Congress. It was established by the Department of Education Organization Act of 1979 that split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into the departments of Education, and Health and Human Services. It began operation in May 1980. Conservatives generally opposed the creation of this ...

State-sanctioned Family Abuse in England

by Richard House May 12, 2020

Note: This article was written by Richard House and Jonathan Swann. The State will tell us how to teach and what results to aim for, and what the State prescribes will be bad. Its targets are the worst ones imaginable, yet it expects to get the best possible results. Today’s politics work in the direction of regimentation, and it will ...

Gun-Toting Cops Endanger Students and Turn the Schools into Prisons

by John W. Whitehead February 20, 2020

"Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning.”—Investigative journalist Annette Fuentes Just when you thought the government couldn’t get any more tone-deaf about civil liberties and the growing need to ...

Compulsory Education – The Bane of Learning and Freedom

by Christine Smith February 10, 2020

Approximately 50-million students, bound by state compulsory attendance laws, are trapped in what is essentially a prison of their bodies and minds. Most Americans never question school compulsory attendance laws itself but instead focus on what occurs inside the classroom. Public schools, which can also be called government schools, are notorious for a wide array of problems. From class size ...

He Who Pays the Piper Calls the Tune

by Laurence M. Vance February 7, 2020

Public education has survived another National School Choice Week. Since 2011, National School Choice Week (NSCW) has been celebrated the last week in January. During NSCW “schools, homeschool groups, organizations and individuals plan tens of thousands of independent events” to “raise public awareness of the different K-12 education options available to children and families while also spotlighting the benefits ...

The Libertarian Angle: Busing and Public Schooling (video)

by Future of Freedom Foundation July 16, 2019

Government and schooling--what could go wrong? FFF president Jacob Hornberger and Citadel professor Richard Ebeling discuss the busing programs of the 1960s. Go to the podcast.

Charter Schools Are Still Public Schools

by Laurence M. Vance June 17, 2019

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has issued his “Thurgood Marshall Plan for Public Education.” His ten-point plan addresses the serious crisis in our education system by reducing racial and economic segregation in our public school system, attracting the best and the brightest educational professionals to teach in our classrooms, and reestablishing a positive learning environment for ...

The Ongoing Destruction of the Minds of Children

by Gary D. Barnett March 1, 2019

There can be no greater stretch of arbitrary power than to seize children from their parents, teach them whatever the authorities decree they shall be taught, and expropriate from the parents the funds to pay for the procedure. — Isabel Paterson Compulsory schooling is a travesty. To call it education is absurd. Real education is lifelong learning as an individual, while ...

Criminalizing Childhood

by John W. Whitehead September 6, 2018

“Every day in communities across the United States, children and adolescents spend the majority of their waking hours in schools that have increasingly come to resemble places of detention more than places of learning. From metal detectors to drug tests, from increased policing to all-seeing electronic surveillance, the public schools of the twenty-first century reflect a society ...