Why Religion and School Choice Seem So Tightly Connected: Human Minds and Souls

Neal McCluskey“If I’m not happy with my public park, should I get a voucher for a country club?”“If I don’t like the highways, should I get money for private roads?”“What if I don’t like the fire department? Should I get taxpayer dollars for my own fire service?”If you ’ve been involved in the school choice debate for very long, you’ve almost certainly seen these objections to choice. Basically, we would never “voucherize” these things – that would be crazy! – so why should we let people use public funding for private education?The obvious answer, as I ’veexplained before, is that education is about far more – for some people,infinitely more – than where you take a walk and have a picnic, or lay asphalt. It is about nothing less than shaping human beings, which inescapably involves deeply held, diverse convictions about the goals and meaning of life, and the very nature of the world and universe. It encompasses beliefs that no gover nment should be in a position to decide can – or cannot – be taught with the education tax dollars that all people must pay.That education deals with nothing less than the formation of human beings is why religion has been so central to the choice movement and debate, as one can see in ournew School Choice Timeline. Arguably nothing is more intertwined with the meaning of life, and how one should live, than religion, and it is a  major reason that public schooling cannot be squared with a free an...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - Category: American Health Authors: Source Type: blogs