“you’ll get it in the public schools”

should be

“you won’t get it in the public schools”

Our current system is already tilted. If you’re committed to giving your children a relgion-based education, you’ll get it in the public schools. So you decide to send your kids to a religious private school, or to home-school them. You’re still forced to pay, with your taxes, for the public school that you don’t want.

Atheist/secular people often argue that religious people are a menace, because they force their values on others. In this case, though, the religious parent is the one who wants their family to be left alone to educate as they choose. The atheist/secular people are more apt to advocate forcing these parents to, at the least, pay for the public schools in addition to the education they really want. At the worst, some on these forums advocate denying the religious parents the right to teach their own children, perhaps forcing them to send kids to public schools (in addition to forcing them to pay for it).

Uh, no.

Let’s say a government says “everyone must get an education!”. Fine, first principles. As I said, silly and redundant, but whatever; makes people feel good.

Then a government may say, “every school run by the government must meet certain criteria!” No problem.

What the government cannot ethically say is “everyone must [[either] attend government-run schools! [or] everyone must follow the criteria we have laid out for our government-run schools!]”.

They can do the first (symbolic) thing without necessarily implying the third one follows logically. They can do the second likewise without necessarily implying the third.

That is a common belief in libertarians who haven’t actually thought through the implications of their belief system. If they accept that a nation has the right to legislate education at all, then they must accept that the state has the right to set the guidelines on what defines an education and what the minimum standards of an education are…otherwise any given school can teach zero and take the tax money.

That might satisfy radical libertarians, but it sounds distinctly wishy washy to everyone else.

What I do have a problem with is a person or group of people arrogating the authority to dictate to others what an education should or should not contain. Society is free to come to a majoritarian consensus about what should or should not be taught, and these decisions ought to be reflected in whatever curriculum exists in the government-run school system. But society is not free to compel people to agree with its dictates beyond requiring people to directly harm one another or their property, and hence there needs to be a right to take one’s ball and go home.

I agree that almost any expert will have some degree of bias towards their respective field but the alternative seems to be to choose someone who has no interest or understanding of what they’re mandating children should learn and may still be biased against an area of study. I know which version I prefer.