A reader from South Holland, Illinois asked me why, in view of the clear and known flaws in state education, it hadn’t yet been abolished. In Illinois, the voters approved a new constitution on Dec. 15, 1970, and it says in Article X, Section 1 “The State shall provide for an efficient system of high quality public educational institutions and services. Education in public schools through the secondary level shall be free. There may be such other free education as the General Assembly provides by law. The State has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education.” In addition, this Constitution claims to be the voice of the people of Illinois. In that Article, it says “A fundamental goal of the People of the State is the educational development of all persons to the limits of their capacities.”
Well, state education begins with this power structure and goes from there. But even prior to that, it begins with the faulty idea that somehow a mass of people can rightfully or lawfully tell you what to do and make you do it if they hold a vote and endorse a constitution. A democratic, or republican, or constitutional state is basically a combined mass of individual powerless people, lacking in any natural or God-given or humane right to oppress anyone, who become powerful in the embrace of the state or as the state and then claim rights to do almost anything. In this embrace, the value of each person, which should be paramount and which necessarily includes that person’s freedom, is suppressed and replaced by the value of the state. State education hasn’t been abolished yet because most people value the state above the person. They’d rather have the state be paramount, even if individual persons are thwarted and crushed.
