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And every single communist and socialist has believed in public, government schooling.

And apparently so did the founding fatehrs of our country.

Thomas Jefferson State of the Union Address December 2 1806 Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers 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. . . . An amendment to our constitution must here come in aid of the public education. The influence over government must be shared among all people.

Thomas Jefferson on Virginia public education I think by far the most important bill in our whole code, is that for the diffusion of knowledge among the people. No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom and happiness.

Thomas Jefferson "I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it."

John Adams, 2nd U.S. President, 1785 “The whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”

John Adams "Laws for the liberal education of youth, especially of the lower class of people, are so extremely wise and useful, that, to a human and generous mind, no expense for this purpose would be thought extravagant." Noah Webster “In despotic governments, the people should have little or no education, except what tends to inspire them with a servile fear. Information is fatal to despotism . . . In our American republics, where [government] is in the hands of the people, knowledge should be universally diffused by means of public schools.” He believed that “the more generally knowledge is diffused among the substantial yeomanry, the more perfect will be the laws of a republican state.”

James Madison “its rapid growth and signal prosperity which is now providing for the State a Plan of Education embracing every class of Citizens, and every grade and department of Knowledge. No error is more certain than the one proceeding from a nasty and superficial view of the subject: that the people at large have no interest in the establishment of Academies, Colleges, and Universities, where only a few only, and those not of the poorer classes can obtain for their sons the advantages of superior education. It is thought to be unjust that all should be taxed for the benefit of a part, and that too the part least needing it. If provision were not made at the same time for every part, the objection would be a natural one. But, besides the consideration when the higher Seminaries belong to a plan of general education, that it is better for the poorer classes to have the aid of the richer by a general tax on property, than that every parent should provide at his own expence (sic) for the education of his children, it is certain that every Class is interested in establishments which give to the human mind its highest improvements, and to every Country its truest and most durable celebrity.”

The Public Land Ordinance of 1785 provided that "There shall be reserved the lot N 16, of every township, for the maintenance of public schools, within the said township."

The Northwest Ordinance (1787) said that "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

Jefferson in 1779 proposed a public education system for Virginia, though such a system was ultimately not adopted until considerably later. (The University of Virginia was founded in 1819.) In 1780, the Virginia legislature donated land seized from British loyalists for the purposes of establishing a "publick school."

The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 said that "it shall be the duty of legislatures and magistrates, in all future periods of this commonwealth, to cherish the interests of literature and the sciences, and all seminaries of them; especially the university at Cambridge, public schools and grammar schools in the towns."

Benjamin Franklin started an alternative to the Latin-based grammar schools by creating the American Academy in 1751 in his hometown, Philadelphia. This was the beginning of high school as we now know it, with instruction primarily in English. (The Academy later became the University of Pennsylvania, the first modern liberal arts college in the country.) He served as its president for the first five years; Franklin also started the first lending library of its kind in Philadelphia.

Benjamin Rush, another Pennsylvanian, was considered the father of public schools since he was the first to advance the idea of free public education – education for both boys and girls, a radical idea at the time. Although by profession a medical doctor, he wrote the first American chemistry textbook and took part in the public debate on many issues.