Sometimes I wonder about education. These are some of the questions that I find incredibly difficult to answer:

- Why should others pay for my child's education? Why should I pay for someone else's education?

- What gives the teacher the right to be the sole arbiter of what your child should and should not learn? Since when did parents lose this right?

- Why do politicians have to be involved in education at all? What makes my local school board member, legislator, or congressman a better decision-maker about my child's future than myself?

- Why do we keep spending more and more and schools, keep passing more and more legislation, and yet see poorer and poorer results?

- Why are seemingly backwards countries like Singapore and South Korea producing better educated children at a higher rate than the US?

Of course, the answers aren't all that difficult. We have just been trained, by public educators, no less, that these questions shouldn't be asked and that the answers aren't obvious, even to highly informed critical thinkers like us.

- We shouldn't be forced to pay for anyone's education--not even our own, anymore than we should be forced to provide shelter, food, or water for anyone else. Yes, we should be charitable, but we shouldn't legislate charity. Jesus told us to freely give, not force others to give.

- Teachers have only as much responsibility as we allow them to have. Those parents who give them too much responsibility reap the results. Those parents who hold on to their own God-given responsibilitys reap the results. The facts are clear: parents are the only people who can make appropriate decisions about education, and only for their own children.

- Government is never the answer to any problem. We have created limited governments to address certain, well-outlined needs. Note that in the federal constitution, education is never mentioned. Note that in many state constitutions, government is charged only with funding, not overseeing, education. We have long ago stepped over the limits very thoughtful people have laid down, and the limits we as a people agreed we would never step over.

- Politicians tend to make matters worse. not better. (See: Iraq War, Social Security, Welfare, etc...) Politicians are only exploiting us and our good kind hears for their selfish purposes. It is never in our interests to allow politicians to take responsibility for our problems, anymore than we should allow bank robbers to run our banks.

- "Backwards" countries like Singapore and South Korea are succeeding because they have put Adam Smith's and Milton Friedman's principles into practice. Both of these countries provide only a basic level of education. Parents are encouraged to go far beyond that level, supplementing additional education with money out of their own pockets. That's why they are better--they are using better principles to run their systems.

It's high time we took our schools back from the government, freeing it from the tyranny of bureaucracies and the black holes of state and federal budgets. Let's work together to implement key reforms to limit government's influence on this important issue.