Click here for Part 1, Part 2,  and Part 3

Part 4: It’s Broke, so let’s Fix It

Secularization of Public Schools

While the Progressive Protestants did get the generic Protestant education implemented in the public schools, it was clear that this arrangement could only be temporary. There was no way that the increasingly heterogeneous United States founded on the Enlightenment Era principle of separating Church and State would allow the State sanctioned public schools to be de facto cathedral schools of the Protestant denominations.

By the 1940s, the writing was on the wall. The increasing secularization of the school materials had reached a pinnacle. The Supreme Court was about to step in and begin cleaning house of this “non-sectarian” Protestant bias that inherent in the public schools of the 19th century. The case was Everson v. Board of Education, and the issue was public funding of transportation to religious schools. While the case came out in favor of these reimbursements, the precedential concept of a “wall of separation between church and state” was set, and would never be undone. A waterfall of cases followed, including Zellers v. Huff in 1948 (religious teachings banned in public schools, including religious garb and other religious assistance), Engel v. Vitale in 1962 (prayer in public school banned), and Abington v. Schempp in 1963 (Bible readings banned in public school). By the 1970s, the public school system in the United States was unrecognizably secular, a complete turn from the results of the Bible Wars in the 19th century.

The Modern Landscape

The Progressive Protestants rigged the system to beat back the temporary immigration of Irish, Italian, and German Catholics, only to have it predictably backfire. To this day the conflict still rages, the ideological progeny of the 19th century Progressive Protestants, the Social Conservatives, still fight tooth and nail for those last few scraps of religiosity in the public schools. Whether it’s prayer at the flagpole, a banner with a Bible verse, or a prayer before a football game, these Social Conservatives are motivated to fight the same losing fight, trying to keep the Church in power over the schools despite the State’s administrative authority.

The other, more secular, and eponymous descendants of the 19th century Progressives are the ones who wield the power of the State over the School these days. With this control, they are attempting to revive some of the methods of the past. Public schools were and are seen as a place to mold the children of America, pulling them away from the habits and beliefs of their parents, and integrating the children into American society. However, with the growth of charter schools, private schools, online schools, and homeschooling, it is not as simple to impose a worldview as it was to Protestantize the immigrant Catholics of 125 years ago.

To this end, however, there are public policy murmurs of again requiring public school education. Articles have floated the same ideas of the past such as “If You Send Your Kid to Private School, You are a Bad Person: A Manifesto” and “Banning Homeschooling does not Violate Rights: U.S. Attorney General’s Office”, both published in 2013, along with an article from the Washington Post that focused on Warren Buffett’s idea to solve problems in urban education: “Make private schools illegal and assign every child to a public school by random lottery.” Even President Obama recently weighed in with a mild rebuke of private schooling, saying “Those who are doing better and better, more skilled, more educated, – luckier – having greater advantages are withdrawing from the commons. Kids start going to private schools, kids start working out at private clubs instead of the public parks, an anti-government ideology then disinvests from those common goods and those things that draw us together.”

Perhaps today’s Progressives have taken a page from Martin Luther’s playbook. Perhaps they are attempting to use today’s public schools to establish their worldview as the dominant one in modern American society, much like Luther used the German schools to solidify Protestantism as the dominant religion of Germany. Does this imposition of worldview fit in a modern post-Enlightenment nation as well as it fit in 16th century Europe? Do laws such as the bill proposed in Michigan that requires social worker (or other authority figure) supervision of homeschooled children go too far, especially in light of alleged abuses of similar supervision in New Jersey?

Where to go From Here

It strikes me, almost two years after most of these words were written, how predictable the response from the Left is to any critique of their little pet. Also predictable are the results of the ever-growing public education system. The ire of the do-gooders may have shifted from poor Irish and Italian Catholics to poor Blacks, but the same impulse is there. They must grab the children and indoctrinate them for their own good. To allow the children to escape from the grasp of the Leviathan is unacceptable, and every dirty trick in the playbook is fair game. To let a child learn in a private, charter, or homeschool setting is akin to letting a slave escape the plantation.

This is the quintessential libertarian issue for the next 50 years. If we were to focus all of our efforts on freeing children from the yoke of public education, it wouldn’t be enough. You cannot have a free society, a liberty-loving nation, when generation after generation is inculcated from age 5 (or before) in the ideology of the State. Liberty has no hope in a country where the Republicans are beholden to the religious faction of the Progressive Party and the Democrats are beholden to the secular faction of the Progressive Party.

I also must mention the perversion of the relationship between the State and the Family. It is not an unforeseen consequence that the family has collapsed over the past 50-70 years. This was an express goal of the Progressives who designed the modern public school system. See, when the school has complete control over a child’s every move, their family can’t impart icky views on them.

Libertarians should prioritize this issue for the sake of future liberty. Only unyielding activism in this area will give children the hope of escaping the yoke of the State. To reiterate something I wrote in a comment a while back, this issue really gets me going because I can’t stand child abusers!