Today, the Supreme Court ruled that educational tax credits can't exclude religious schools. Despite my atheist tendencies, this was clearly the right decision. In fact, I already tried to explain this.
I am proudly pro-education. Out of my concerns for educational rights, I keep my eye on threats. In particular, I periodically look at content produced by the two most powerful anti-educational organizations, the NEA and AFT. These sources are actively pushing their propaganda right now, so I'm going back to this topic.
Before I go any further, let me explain a difference in terminology. I have not been a fan of referring to government-run schools as public schools. When I encountered someone online comparing these schools to parks, I decided to move further away from that terminology. Public parks are open to the public. So-called public schools are off limits to the general public. They are closer to prisons than parks, but nobody ever talks about public prisons. For that reason, I prefer to think of them as government-run schools.
Government-run schools are and always have been a complete disaster. A vast majority of students are being served horribly by the process. School choice has been one of the more popular approaches to help suffering children. Government-run schools have countered with a complete defiance of common sense. They insist that attempts to help children out of these schools are misguided because 90% of children attend the government-run model. That is a horrible way to counter concerns that it's too difficult for children to get out. Both the NEA and AFT used this absurd argument to criticize the Supreme Court ruling.
As I've already stated, I'm not religious. That said, I am open to children attending a religious school, especially if they have limited options to escape the government-run model. If I had to choose between paying for a religious education or paying for a child to be indoctrinated by government workers, I wouldn't hesitate to side with religion.
The concerns we have seen with religious schools relate to the First Amendment. Americans have guaranteed freedom of religion. One component of this freedom is separation of church and state. The government can neither establish nor promote religious beliefs. However, they also can't prohibit citizens from pursuing their religious beliefs.
We are all paying into the schools in one way or another. Tax credits are rather insignificant when it comes to funding for government-run schools. Even if we went with vouchers, where taxpayer funds are legitimately involved, I'm not sold on prohibiting the use of religious schools. Families are forced to fund schooling. We are insisting that by involving taxes in the process, the government can effectively force families to strip religious pursuits for their educations in order to get their funding back. Separation of church and state should not be interpreted as the use of state to separate families from religious pursuits. This is an absurd interpretation of the First Amendment.
I'm not going to go into the details of how this victory defeated a law that was legitimately created for the purpose of religious discrimination (just look up Blaine Amendments). I do want to add another wrinkle to the religious freedom debate. There is no consensus on what qualifies as a religion. Government-run schools have taken on roles such as preaching their views on morals. Some are even known to inject lessons about spirituality. Teachers frequently refer to their jobs as higher callings, strongly implying that a higher power chose them for the role. Heck, teachers want to be worshipped as though they are gods. A legitimate argument can be made that our government-run schools have evolved into a state religion. If we are truly concerned about taxpayers funding religion, perhaps it's past time to completely defund government-run schools. By the way, I have a post in my queue to further explain how schooling has become a religion.
Here's the bottom line. The response from the teachers' unions have made something far more clear than they would like. If a child manages to escape their control, they don't want that family's money to go to the child's education. They want to siphon funds from families and children to line their own pockets. For those who didn't already know, this should be the proof that you need. Teachers don't care one bit about what's best for children. They only care about themselves.
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