Education Reform is a Free Speech Issue

School Vouchers or Tax Exemptions and/or Credits Must Increase Dramatically to Expand CHOICE … America has Become Divided BECAUSE of Public Schools.

See CRT Excesses at End of This Story

There’s a real danger in coerced belief by the government through public education to subject children to official political, racial, sexual, and antireligious speech.

And if public-school messages are so coercive against children, it is especially worrisome that parents are being pressured to adopt public educational speech in place of their own.

"It all starts with recognizing that our curriculum has gone haywire. So on day one, we are going to ban teaching critical race theory in our schools.”

- Republican gubernatorial hopeful Glenn Youngkin laid out his vision for reshaping the commonwealth’s education system, promising to establish “excellence” in Virginia schools.

Philip Hamburger, who teaches at Columbia Law School, recently offered a legal theory in a column in The Wall Street Journal that could dramatically alter the concept of public schools in America.

He pointed out that education consists mostly of speech to and with children. Parents have the right to freedom of speech in educating their children, whether at home or through private schooling.

Ultimately, Hamburger writes, families are constrained to adopt government's education speech in place of their own, in violation of the first amendment.

Therefore, public education is a benefit tied to an unconstitutional condition. Parents get subsidized education on the condition that they accept government educational speech in lieu of home or private schooling.

But most families cannot afford private schooling. So, parents should begin asking judges to recognize—at least in declaratory judgments—that the current system is profoundly unconstitutional.

Once that is clear, states will be obliged to figure out solutions. Some may choose to offer tax exemptions and/or credits for dissenting parents; others may provide vouchers, Hamburger writes in The Wall Street Journal.

Either way, states cannot deprive parents of their right to educational speech by pushing children into government schools.

There is absolutely no lawful government interest in displacing the educational speech of parents who don’t hold government-approved views, let alone in altering their children’s identity or creating a government-approved electorate.

THIS ADVOCACY PIECE WAS BASED ON A COLUMN IN THE OCT. 22 WALL STREET JOURNAL BY PHILIP HAMBURGER, WHO TEACHES AT THE COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL AND IS PRESIDENT OF THE NEW CIVIL LIBERTIES ALLIANCE.

LINKS EXPLAINING CRT EXCESSES

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