Public schooling versus the 4th of July

"You could be forgiven," Neal McCluskey writes, "for thinking that first God created public schools, and then, seeing that they were good, let them create the United States."

The basic story is familiar: The pilgrims landed in the New World and set up schools to educate all children. Soon, everyone in America recognized the enlightenment of public schooling and erected their own systems, wiping out ignorance, teaching all children how to live in a free society, and giving even the poorest kids unprecedented upward mobility. Finally, as time went on and immigrants flooded in, the public schools not only taught all children the skills they needed for life success but gently melded disparate ethnic and religious groups into a unified, American whole.

The problem with that story is that it's false. Indeed, McCluskey writes, public schooling is inimical to the principles of freedom set forth in the Declaration. Public schooling is fundamentally un-American.

We are told that state schooling is critical to American unity and freedom. Nothing could be further from the truth. Voluntary, largely private education was the norm as the American colonies grew into a free, strong nation. When public schooling did grow, it sowed conflict wherever there was not already unity. Perhaps worst of all, its greatest champions have been driven by the patently un-American conviction that for adults to be free, they must be indoctrinated as children.

Thankfully, the most truly American value—individual liberty—reveals the way forward. We must have educational freedom today, or we'll have neither unity nor freedom tomorrow.