Public Education and the Public

Frederic Bastiat, in his treatise The Law, brilliantly outlined how socialism corrupts all things, including the judgments of the culture that embraces it. According to Bastiat, socialism, the imposition of law to take from some to give to others is “legal plunder.” Bastiat advises that you discover legal plunder by seeing “if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” Bastiat warns:

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. . . . The present day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

This system becomes a delusion and a perversion of justice, causing a culture to confuse injustice with justice.

Bastiat brings this judgment to bear on public education:

You say: “There are persons who lack education” and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in itself, a torch of learning which shines its light abroad. The law extends over a society where some persons have knowledge and others do not; where some citizens need to learn, and others can teach. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in this second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property.

It is not my purpose in this editorial to champion the elimination of the legal plunder of public education. The system is so engrained in our public consciousness that to do so would truly be quixotic. Indeed, it is engrained in the very Constitution of the state of Missouri. While it would be a worthy goal to change this system, it is a goal beyond my simple effort here. Rather, my purpose is to show how the system of legal plunder that is public education has caused a situation in which injustice is declared justice.

The Article IX, Section 1(a) of the Constitution of Missouri declares,

A general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence being essential to the preservation of the rights and liberties of the people, the general assembly shall establish and maintain free public schools for the gratuitous instruction of all persons in this state within ages not in excess of twenty-one years as prescribed by law.

Every taxpaying citizen pays for these “free public schools” through their taxes. I, as a land owner and producer of income, pay for the “gratuitous institution.” However, since I have home schooled and privately educated all three of my daughters, my children never directly benefitted from these “gratuitous institutions.” I have simply benefitted from the “general diffusion of knowledge and intelligence” within the culture. But do I not have a right to directly benefit from these “free public schools?” Should my decision to home school my children prevent my children from directly benefiting from such a “gratuitous institution?” The answer should be obvious on its face. The answer is no.

However, the actual practice is otherwise in Missouri. Extracurricular activities, such as sports, are a significant part of the free public school education, and we see home schooled and privately schooled children in Missouri systematically denied access to these programs. Why is that? Why is it you must be a student registered at the school to take part in the sports programs? Is it because, in order to access part of the “gratuitous institution,” you must take the whole of the “gratuitous institution?” Is this justice or is this discrimination? Is there something in home schooling or the private schooling that disqualifies a child from the “free” education of the state that I pay for but do not completely engage? If the system is truly “gratuitous” should it not be gratuitous to those who seek to take a part but not the whole? It appears that what was originally designed as a “gratuitous institution” has become an exclusive club to which others may not apply.

We have seen in the last decade that the state of Florida has provided some justice within this system of legal plunder. Tim Tebow, the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner from the University of Florida and NFL quarterback of the Denver Broncos, was home schooled during high school. Tebow had the opportunity to play football, at least in part, because Florida permitted him to participate in the public school football program at Nease High School in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida. Tebow has become a spokesman and an excellent example of the value of home schooling and the justice provided in the state of Florida.

Other states have undertaken to rectify injustice within their states. Wikipedia reports that both Alabama and Kentucky have bills, referred to as the “Tim Tebow Bill” which would grant access now denied to home school athletes to play for their local high school teams just as Tebow did in Florida. Missouri has a similar bill that has been introduced by state Senator Jim Lembke. SB 37 is known as the “Students First Interscholastic Athletics Act.” SB 37 would provide equal access to public school sports programs to all children of high school age that meet certain health and academic qualifications, whether in public, private or home school.

This is now the third year that Senator Lembke has introduced his bill. There is no reason not to pass this bill into law. Justice requires that these “free” “gratuitous” institutions grant access to their programs to all citizens of the state without regard to the source of their other academic education.