This continues the series of posts on education.

What is the role of government in education?  The problem of central government power and corruption in relation to education is a cause of great concern for me.  I still remember learning that Abraham Lincoln was a champion of civil rights who wanted to end slavery, and that American exceptionalism defeated the aggressive Soviet Union.  I also now realize that there were gaping absences from my education, like the complete absence of any classes concerning philosophy, even as an introduction that scratched the surface, or any study of the decline of empires such as Rome whose glories I studied so intensely.

If there is any quick fix for the problems I am noting, it would be decentralization of power in respect to our education system.  This becomes more problematic on a daily basis, as more and more federal stimulus funds are poured into local education systems.  While the beltway political community often paints this as government helping small communities, I see the benefit of a temporary boost in funding being far outweighed by the cost of our central government grabbing more and more local power.  Education systems will, in the long run, be forced to either permanently entrust more of their budgetary matters to federal power, or suffer the pain of doing away with an infrastructure that big government created and, consequently, only big government can support.  Decentralization would help the education system of the United States to be more diverse as well, as different regions would certainly have different educational programs, and these programs could compete in the form of their graduates to show which programs had the best results.

However, no discussion of education in the United States would be complete without taking a look at the intent of our country’s founders.  Here I must thank Professor Jarrell for injecting this concept into the current discussion.  In a recent LFD post addressed to me and interested others, she wrote:

The Federalist Papers made it clear, to me at least, that our founding fathers believed that the government, our federal government in particular, should have nothing to do with educating the populace.

I realize it sounds a bit radical now, but I believe that any discussion of what is right and wrong about public education today must begin with a healthy debate about whether the federal government should be involved in public education at all.

Your thoughts?  Thanks!

In a very soon-to-come post, I will begin yet another discussion,  one that I hope will heavily involve Professor Jarrell and many others, about the original intent of our founders in relation to public education, and whether or not there is any hope of returning to their proposed system at any point in the near future.

by Elliot Engstrom