When our Founding Fathers advocated education for our nation's children, they likely had their own educations in mind: homeschooling, private tutoring, a very few years of one room schooling organized by local parents, Sunday schools, dame schools, apprenticeships, and private home-based academies to prepare the brightest ( who could afford it) for entrance into college as very **young** teens. And...All of it was likely faith based. I wonder if the word “secular” even existed in 18th century and, if it did, “secular education” would have struck our Founding Fathers as an oxymoron.
If government had never interfered with the free market in education I wonder what varied opportunities would now be available today to our nation's children, and , if by now, the free market would have weeded out the worst practices and rewarded the most effective.
Exactly. Education could be such a different field -- but government (and unions) are so heavily involved in the field that I think we have traveled quite far down the wrong path. A return to faith is the only hope this country has. "Government as god" has got to go.