Last week Senator Aaron Osmond wrote a post on the Utah Senate website arguing for the end of compulsory education in Utah. He focuses on the need to return the responsibility and right of educating children to parents:
First, we need to restore the expectation that parents are primarily responsible for the educational success of their own children. That begins with restoring the parental right to decide if and when a child will go to public school. In a country founded on the principles of personal freedom and unalienable rights, no parent should be forced by the government to send their child to school under threat of fines and jail time.
If education had only private benefits, then perhaps it would be common sense for it to be privately determined by the parents of students.
Education also has many public benefits. For example, it serves as the foundation for our democratic republic. And it requires each of us to study, play, and work with those that are different from us. Only through studying and playing with those different from us can we prepare for participating in a government of difference.
Witnessing our dysfunctional and gridlocked Congress should serve as a dire warning of what transpires when we and our elected officials choose to not work with difference. Public education is one of the few opportunities that we have to be with those that are different from us.
Senator Osmond titles his post “A Practical Argument for Ending Compulsory Education in Utah.” I have a practical argument for keeping it: the future of our government and nation.
