Will SCOTUS end government-run, tax-funded schooling?

Steve, a great correspondent, made us here at TPOL aware of a Cato Institute commentary on an interesting Oklahoma case that the Nine Nazgul have agreed to hear.

In Oklahoma, the money to pay for a child’s education (K-12) is given to the parents who then can choose where to send their child to learn. BUT State laws – implementing federal laws – do not allow parents to pay for their children’s schooling if they sent their kids to a school that teaches the “four Rs” instead of the “three Rs”: just reading, ‘riting, and ‘rithmatic.

The fourth R, of course, is religion. As do many private schools – Catholic, Protestant, nondenominational, and even Jewish and Islamic. That is as much a no-no as a basketball coach leading a pre-game prayer or reading the Bible (or Torah or Koran) at your desk.

This secular and frankly regressive concept is based on the idea that doing these things is somehow an “establishment of religion” and violates the “separation of church and state.”

Now what is being stated in Oklahoma? First, that not only is paying the cost of teaching a child at a “religious” school NOT establishing a religion and NOT merging church and state. And second, the refusal to pay despite (State) constitutional requirements to do so, IS a form of discrimination. The Cato Institute summarizes it nicely:

The first part of solving the problem is to acknowledge what is, frankly, obvious when one thinks about it: Public schooling unconstitutionally and inherently discriminates based on religion. Currently, all people, including religious, must pay for schools that cannot be religious, establishing secularism and elevating atheist and agnostic people over religious. But make the schools religious, and you reverse the discrimination, elevating religious over nonreligious, with the added problem of favoring specific religions and denominations.

Thankfully, government religious neutrality is easy to establish: Funding should follow students to schools or other educational arrangements parents freely choose. Religious or nonreligious. Catholic or Muslim. Private or public. Government funds students, not schools.

Oh, ho! Of course, the Woke will immediately declare that by giving the money to the student (presumably via parents unless the student is of age), the government will lose control of education and what is taught. (Funny, eh? That Regressives (of ALL people) would forget that government money always comes with strings? One of the major reasons for lovers of liberty to oppose this “[government] funding follows the student” business.)

The reality of course, is that the concept that “education is essential for a free society” has been perverted so that the primary purpose of government-run, theft-funded schools is to indoctrinate students (children) with the idea that government is essential and always right. (Human, mandatory government, and always right only if it is a democracy.)

We here at TPOL agree with Tom Jefferson: “An educated citizenry is a vital requisite for our survival as a free people.” NOT an “indoctrinated” or “brainwashed” citizenry. And NOT as an “informed voter” and a cog in a “democracy.”

Still, a SCOTUS finding that government-run, theft-funded schools are unconstitutional might actually leave us with a system that might still be funded by theft (taxation) but is no longer 95% government-run. Indeed, it might start progress towards a free market for education. Where (as The Objective Standard states, “new schools would be created to meet the demand, resulting in a cornucopia of educational diversity.”

And NOT, as the ACLU demands, in the name of “racial justice,” that all students have equal access to … a diverse student body.”

Are we expecting too much?

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