The United States was founded upon a number of, for the time,
radical principles, one of which was separation of church and
state. It is written in the First Amendment that there will be
no established religion here, and no prohibition of the free
exercise of religion. There will be no religious test for
holding public office. No one will be compelled to attend church,
or to financially support any church. The Founders recognized that religious
belief, or lack thereof, was not a proper subject for the exercise
of state police power, but rather, was a matter of individual
conscience.

The Founders, well aware of history replete with abuses of comingled
church and state (see, e.g., the Inquisition), took pains to make sure
such historical mistakes would not be repeated here. In retrospect,
one wishes they had been as explicit with other freedoms, such as
medical freedom and education freedom. But, undoubtedly the Founders
felt other rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights
would be sufficiently protected by the Ninth Amendment and need not
be named in detail. Alas, this has not been the case.

Indeed, in the realm of education, the Founders probably had
little reason to be concerned with state control of schooling.
Government had little to do with education in the late 18th century.
Fast forward to today, and we see that government has everything to do
with education.

Government coercion impacts three aspects of education: compulsory
attendance, dictation of curriculum, and taxpayer funding. All
of these would be foreign to an American of the late 18th to early
19th centuries. Yet that is precisely the period of almost
universal complex literacy. A best-selling book of that era was
James Fenimore Cooper's "The Last of the Mohicans," which is
dense, difficult reading. If you recall the PBS series on the Civil
War, one thing that struck me upon hearing the excerpts of letters
and diaries of the period, was how literate those people were, when
the only formal schooling, if any, they received was in a one-room
schoolhouse.

In fact, the degree of literacy in America has declined in direct
proportion to increasing government involvement. Such empirical
results would appear to demand a separation of school and state. But
a compelling moral argument for separation can be made as well.
Certainly how to raise and educate one's own child is a matter of personal
choice and conscience, as much as religious belief is.

For an in-depth exploration of issues involving separation of school
and state, visit this website:

http://www.sepschool.org