Separation of School and State
Since 1985, The New American has covered important issues that affect Americans and the American Republic. The magazine’s motto is “That Freedom Shall Not Perish.” In September of 1986, longtime contributor and senior editor of The New American William F. Jasper wrote the following deeply perceptive article about the success of American education prior to the creation of public schools, the corrupt motives of the architects and engineers who forged the public-school system, and the accelerating failures of government schools. Although 35 years have come and gone, we are reprinting an abridged version of this article to document both the prescience of Mr. Jasper and the forward-thinking nature of The New American regarding the long, fraught history of public education in America. Then, as now, not only does the federal government have no business directing or overseeing any aspect of the so-called public-school system, but that governmental system should be phased out in favor of private alternatives.
“The American faith in education,” write professors David Tyack and Elizabeth Hansot, “did not originate with the common-school movement of the mid-nineteenth century, nor did widespread popular schooling begin with what we would now recognize as public education.”
In Managers of Virtue: Public School Leadership in America, 1820-1980, Tyack and Hansot describe education in our young Republic quite favorably:
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