One of the reasons public schools get away with educational failure, year after year, is because they are run by school officials who passionately believe in what they are doing. As the great English writer CS Lewis wrote: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. Those who torment us for our own good will torment us to no end, because they do so with the approval of of his own conscience.”

Public school true believers often fall into this category: For over a hundred years, education “experts” have been tormenting our children with public schools, supposedly for the benefit of children. Like all true believers, these people believe they know what is best for our children and society, and they seek to force their beliefs on parents.

From the 1850s to the 1920s, public school activists such as Horace Mann and John Dewey worked to create a public school system like the one they admired in Prussia, Germany. Mann and Dewey viewed public education as a religion, with a sacred mission to shape children and society. Simply teaching children to read, write, and do math was too common a goal for them. Mann and Dewey wanted schools to have complete control over children’s lives. This meant removing the influence of parents over their children. Mann put it this way: “We who are committed to the sacred cause of education have the right to hold all parents hostage to our cause.”

Dewey also had a utopian vision of America, and he wanted the common schools to achieve his vision. To create a socialist America, public schools had to mold generations of children into the habit of obedience. In his 1897 Pedagogical Creed, Dewey wrote: “Every teacher must realize that he is a social servant set apart for the maintenance of proper social order and the security of proper social growth…”.

Public schools expand their control over our children

By the turn of the 20th century, public schools had expanded their roles into areas unsuspected in the 1850s. Schools took on the role of social agencies, with nurses, social centers, playgrounds, school showers, kindergartens, and programs of ” Americanization” for immigrants. Public schools became an important agency of social control.

Unfortunately, today’s public schools are living up to the socialist vision of Mann and Dewey in spades. There is almost no area of ​​children’s lives that school authorities do not press to control or manipulate. Politicians and public school advocates in many states are now pushing programs that would make kindergarten mandatory. Public schools now also spend billions of dollars on counseling, school lunch programs, parenting welfare programs, special education classes, bilingual classes, early childhood programs, drug and sex education classes, as well as as programs for millions of “kids at risk” or “with special needs.”

This government-knows-best philosophy is the deeper reason why public schools get away with educational murder and it can never be fixed. Many public school advocates believe that their children’s education should be dictated by local governments and school authorities. By implication, they believe that parents are at best a nuisance and at worst a danger to their children’s proper upbringing. That is why the true believers in public schools will never voluntarily relinquish control of our children. They see themselves as noble idealists who know what is best for our children. That is why these “idealists” despise the rights of parents.