Public School: Beneficial or Tyrannical?

By Nate Kreider

9/11/2020

Public schooling is much more of a contemporary institution than many imagine. In the year 1918, a law was passed which required all children to attend public elementary school. Much like the Amish nowadays, children were not required to do much beyond that, nor were they able to, seeing that many families needed their labor if they owned farms (since the Fair Labor Standards Act was not passed until 1938). In Christianity & Liberalism, Machen makes a very extreme, but very observant point towards the end of chapter one. He says,

A public-school system, in itself, is a deed of enormous benefit to the race. But it is of benefit only if it is kept healthy at every moment by the absolutely free possibility of the competition of private schools. A public-school system, if it means providing free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficial achievement of the modern times; But when it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument of tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated with the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective (12).

The Spanish Inquisition (1479-1834) was a judicial institution established to combat heresy in Spain. As you can see from the date about, it lasted almost 400 years. This was a 400 year span filled with executions and exiles due to people refusing to align themselves with the Roman Catholic Church. People were not allowed to practice religion in any way other than that which Rome told them to. Machen is saying that public school, though philosophically is a great charity to common man, if let loose, would turn into something worse than this. He goes on to say "despite [tyranny's] weapons of fire and sword they permitted thought at least to be free". This is the danger that I see with public schooling. Who (genuinely) is there to hold the governing authorities accountable, besides maybe a few good politicians? Little do most people know, the government already has a strangle-hold on public education, and even more so a death grip on homeschooling or private schooling. Why have we allowed the most influential, wealthy people in our society to decide what our children are fed with? They have already kicked religion out of the school system! They have fulfilled step one, which is to deconstruct the religious worldview, and are now fulfilling step two, which is to fill that void with secular humanism. Machen continues saying "place the lives of children in their formative years, despite the convictions of their parents, under the intimate control of experts appointed by the state, force them to attend schools where the higher aspirations of humanity are crushed out, and the mind is filled with the materialism of the day, and it is difficult to see how even the remnants of liberty can subsist." Therefore we must decide individually, and especially as a church, how beneficial really is the public school system?