Your link is to a anti-corporate ultra-liberal activist who has his own ax to grind against public education. I am not naive nor mis-informed. I have read Dewey (Experience and Education) and numerous other sources on education. (I am a college professor of mathematics who has done course development work in mathematics eduation.)
Here, I submit, is a better impression of the origins and purpose of public education (this is adapted from E. D. Hirsch, The Schools We Need: & Why We Don't Have Them, Doubleday, 1996):
Thomas Jefferson encouraged the devising of a common curriculum in order that "the great mass of the people" should be taught not just the elements of reading, writing, and arithmetic, but also that "their memories may here be stored with the most useful facts from Grecian, Roman, European, and American history". Here is a quote from Jefferson:
Of the views of this [education] law, none is more important, none more legitimate, than of rendering the people the safe, as they are the ultimate, guardians of their own liberty. For this purpose, the reading in the first stage [of schooling] where [many] will receive their whole education, is proposed to be chiefly historical. History by apprizing them of the past will enable them to judge of the future. It will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it to defeat its views. In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate, and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the ruleers of the people alone. The people themselves are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree.
Horace Mann argued that democracy required a "common school" to provide all children equally with the knowledge and skills that would keep them economically independent and free. (Hirsch, p. 17.)
But you did not respond to my primary point -- that government support of science and science education is necessary for our national security.
"I am a college professor of mathematics who has done course development work in mathematics eduation."
As a college professor, I would expect you, of all people, to appreciate the fact that education should not be compulsory. Anything of true value in this realm will automatically be supported. But the compulsory aspect of it is what has brought the negative aspects of it to bear, such as the NEA and all the social programming that comes with it.
Since you have read Dewey, then you may be familiar with this quote:
"independent, self-reliant people aa counter-productive anachronism in the collective society of the future."
and this one in which he praises the Soviet school system:
"That which distinguishes the Soviet system both from other national systems and from the progressive schools of other countries is the conscious control of every educational procedure by reference to a single and comprehensive social purpose."
These quotes are not pulled out of context, they represent what he and many other preeminent educators of the time thought (Horace Mann was not as convinced of the need for compulsion -- he was more interested in persuasion, but he agreed with the collectivist ideals). The prominent educators were enamored with collectivist, statist ideas, as were most of the intelligentsia. Dewey and others from that era are the reason that schools started trying to shape the culture through socialist ideals instead of just teaching the basic subjects.
BTW, your quote from Jefferson is immaterial. Jefferson only supported voluntary education, and his idea was not to indoctrinate students. He instead believed that students should be taught critical thinking skills.
"But you did not respond to my primary point -- that government support of science and science education is necessary for our national security."
I agree, gov't should support science education for many reasons, of which the most important is national security.