Free The School Revolution by Ron Paul Page A

majority of parents in the West have ignored the implications of thetransfer of funding for education to the church or the state. They have ignored the inevitable loss of responsibility that accompanies this transfer of funding. They have therefore also ignored the effects of the transfer of authority over their children’s education. They have been content to transfer both responsibility and authority for educating their children. In fact, they have seen it as anadvantage that another institution has offered to take over the educational function long associated with the family.
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    It is expensive to raise children. Parents are always looking for ways to cut this expense. Historically, they have resisted the idea that the church or state should actively seek to take over the expense of feeding, housing,and clothing children. Parents have seen this as an admission on their own part of being incapable of providing these services. For generations, there was a stigma associated with taking charitable donations. Men regarded it as a public admission of their failure to exercise responsibility for their families. But this sense of stigma has not been associated with the public funding of education. Parentshave surrendered direct control over the content and structure of their children’s education, and have even consented to laws that make state-run education mandatory. The combination of compulsory education and the offer of tax money to fund local education proved irresistible. The problem is this: Once the principle was accepted, state and then federal agencies intervened to make the same offerto local school districts that the school districts had made to the voters. They offered to bear an increasing percentage of the financial responsibility of the school systems across the country. Step by step, the centralization of education accompanied the centralization of funding.
    Parents have regarded the expense of private schooling as too great to bear, so they have consented totheir own removal as advisers in the public school system. There was a time when parents could mobilize and demonstrate at school board meetings. They could get their way because they had control over the ballot box, which in turn offered them control over the purse strings. But, with the transfer of partial responsibility for local school funding to state governments, and then to the federal government,parents lost their influence to shape educational policy at the local level.
    What I am proposing is a system of education in which parents regain control over the content and structure of their children’s education. They can do so by means of new technology, which makes possible distance learning. In the same way that e-mail replaced first-class mail delivered by the U.S. Postal Service,the Internet has now begun to replace the educational services provided in local school buildings but funded increasingly by state and federal economic grants.
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    Parents should understand that they are responsible for the education of their children. They should see it as a moral responsibility. Few parents do, however. This is one of the mostimportant challenges that opponents of the existing system presently face. The technology of the Internet is available to provide quality education to families at low prices or even free of charge. But parents’ willingness to adopt this technology has been limited. They do not seem to understand the potential of the technological revolution that has already taken place in the twenty-first century.They have failed to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities for education the Web offers.
    Parents worry that they are not capable of teaching their children the basics of reading and writing. The older their children get, the more parents fear they have not been trained to provide a quality education for them. They worry about their own mathematical skills. They worry about theirskills in the area of science.