Public schools grant the right to indoctrinate, not educate
Public schools teach kids a State-approved curriculum. That means kids get the State’s side of the story, while discouraging dissenting takes.
Nobody has “a right” to education. It’s one of the biggest myths ever sold to the public. It sounds noble and compassionate, but peel back the slogan and you’ll see what it really grants: the State’s right to indoctrinate your kids at your expense. Without your consent, mind you.
Education, in its truest sense, pursues knowledge and truth. Indoctrination conditions and demands obedience to a certain belief. Only one of those serves free individuals. Guess which one the State, which requires theft and coercion to exist, prefers?
The illusion of access
They’ll tell us that, without public education, the poor would have no opportunity. That’s emotional blackmail masquerading as logic.
Every year, Ohio spends over $15,000 per student. In some districts, it’s north of $20,000. You could easily provide a better, leaner education privately for half that, or less, if bureaucracy weren’t eating the bulk of it.
That money also goes to administration, pensions, union dues, and State-mandated nonsense.
The cartel of “certification”
If public schools are broken, why don’t more teachers leave and start their own schools? Because the State made sure that would be a tough act.
Licensing laws, zoning codes, and compliance hoops can box new schools out of the market. The system protects itself like a cartel. It limits entry, drives up costs, and punishes innovators who try to build something different.
The same teachers who could transform education are either trapped under a regulatory ceiling, or too afraid of losing their pension to escape it.
A deregulated system would unleash those teachers. Imagine hundreds of micro-schools competing for families, or tailoring lessons to real curiosity instead of standardized testing. The so-called “less fortunate” would actually have more options, not fewer.
The price of monopoly thinking
Public education’s failing because, since it has no accountability through market forces, it has no incentive to self-correct.
The State dictates the curriculum, decides what’s “truth,” and blacklists anything that contradicts its narrative. From history to economics to health, students don’t learn how to think, they learn what to think.
The “right to education” is really the right to conformity, enforced through attendance laws and social pressure. They’ll label parents who question the system selfish or extremist. And they’ll tell kids they’re “behind” if they resist.
Economic freedom builds better schools
Strip away the red tape, and education becomes affordable again. You’d see tutors, neighborhood academies, homeschooling co-ops, and private startups compete to deliver value. Prices would fall, and quality would rise.
Free markets reward innovation and punish inefficiency. The exact opposite of how public education operates.
Stop assuming your rights come from the State
The State doesn’t grant rights. It only recognizes them when it benefits from doing so. Education is no exception.
If we truly care about learning, we should tear down the near-monopoly, not fund it further. A society that equates education with obedience forgets how to think, and that sets up a dangerous precedent.
But what would a fully market-based education system look like? Step into the world of my YA fantasy series, Arcane Elemental Academy. At Arcane, Yote Diamondback sees this alternative system play out before her eyes with 32 schools competing for students.
It’s more than a shade different from what we see in our own world, and it might just bring out the best in Yote. But how did Yote end up at Arcane? Check out the first three chapters of Book I, The Arcane Prophecy, and find out.
