Ron Paul on Education

It bears reiterating that I do not and will not endorse any candidate for political office because I do not believe that Christians should participate in civil government. I feel it necessary to restate that whenever I quote a politician approvingly on matters of public interest. In view of both my longstanding and more recent problems with the state of American education, I feel it is appropriate to once again quote from Ron Paul's Liberty Defined. He offers these interesting (if somewhat underdeveloped) thoughts on American education in America's recent history:

…up until the mid-twentieth century, education was the responsibility of the church, the family, and the local community. In the past sixty years especially, the federal government has become very much involved in financing and directing education at all levels. There is no evidence that quality of education has improved. There is evidence that more people go to college and that the cost has skyrocketed. At the grade school and high school levels, where local schools and parents have ever less control over the curriculum and administration of schools, there’s definitely been more violence, more drugs, and more dropouts associated with more centralized control.

Perhaps a return to a localized education system is our best hope as a society for properly educating future generations. Certainly I don't expect to achieve this at a national level as a formal institutional goal. Instead, it appears to be up to individual families to become frustrated with and ultimately abandon a disinterested, disconnected, and dysfunctional public education system.