The property tax—in conjunction with leftist-controlled compulsory public education—is destroying Americans' essential independence, patriotism, self-reliance, and long-held Americanist values.

This national catastrophe appears to be, at least in part, by design—the predictable result of arranging unlimited tax support for state-mandated public education at the hands of secular “educational reformers” from the 1830s onward, culminating in a nationwide mind-control movement that was deeply entrenched by the early 20th century, thanks to the unsurpassed influence and eloquence of socialist philosopher John Dewey, an early supporter of the Soviet Union. (See David C. Engerman, John Dewey And The Soviet Union: Pragmatism Meets Revolution.)

Dewey, by the way, was arguably the most influential—and opportunistic—of the progressive “educational reformers” who gained control of the U.S. public school movement that was set in motion initially by “The Father of American Education” Horace Mann in 1837, a movement patterned after the Prussian “Common School” model of compulsory government-controlled education that was instrumental in causing the inhumane behavior exhibited by Nazi Germany during World War II. (See Ira David Socol, “The Prussian Model and the failure of personal ethics.”)

From the beginning of government-controlled education in America in the 1830s (which education soon included an un-American compulsory attendance requirement that Mann inserted in his home state of Massachusetts in 1852 in imitation of the most controlling feature of the Prussian education model), the American education system included reliance on a potentially unlimited system of STATE-MANDATED PROPERTY TAXES that were essential to the success of state-controlled education. (Consistent with this longstanding feature of Mann’s plan for funding government-controlled education, we should note, the local school district in the county in which we live typically takes about 70% of the county’s annual property tax revenues—a huge allotment for something so foreign to America’s values as compulsory government-sponsored schooling, a system that has arguably eroded the county’s naturally conservative values in this largely rural county in recent years, a trend influenced greatly by the creation of a secular public university not far from our home—an institution with a much more liberal character than anything else in this conservative part of our state, and 10 miles away from a well-known private university whose purposes are explicitly religious. The markedly liberal influence of this public university rivals that of the long-established public university 50 miles to the north that has exerted more of a secular influence on the state than any other university.)

It’s obvious that the elaborate growth of the state-mandated public schools throughout the U.S. and the reliability of state-mandated property taxes imposed to support them were factors meant to function together, and thus become reciprocally sustaining.

The result—from a conservative perspective—is a de facto “two-headed monster” in which both heads act as one, to the detriment of American society as it originally existed when our nation became Independent. (To appreciate the relationship between American public schools in the mid-1800s and their assured sources of public funding, see “Common School movement” on Google—an AI-generated entry at Google’s search engine. The AI entry states that “The common schools movement was the effort to fund schools in every community with public dollars, and is thus heralded as the start of systematic public schooling in the United States. The movement was begun by Horace Mann, who was elected secretary of the newly founded Massachusetts Board of Education in 1837.”)

“The most efficient instrument for the propagation of Atheism the world has ever seen”

By the late 1880s, A.A. Hodge—the principal of Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey—recognized the obvious defects of the un-American, mandatory secular schooling model set in motion by Mann, who imitated the Prussian model. Hodge wrote:

The prevalent superstition that men can be educated for good citizenship or for any other use under heaven without religion is as unscientific and unphilosophical as it is irreligious. It deliberately leaves out of view the most essential and controlling elements of human character: …that morals are impossible when dissociated from the religious basis out of which they grow; that, as a matter of fact, human liberty and stable republican institutions, and every practically successful scheme of universal education in all past history, have originated in the active ministries of the Christian religion, and in these alone. This miserable superstition [of the secular compulsory schools] rests upon no facts of experience, and, on the contrary, is maintained on purely theoretical grounds in opposition to all the lessons which the past history of our race furnishes on the subject….(emphasis added)

As a result of such irrationality in the schools, Hodge famously predicted in 1886:

It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from the public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter in how small a minority the atheists or agnostics may be. It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and wide instrument for the propagation of Atheism which the world has ever seen. (emphasis added)

Among the key features of Mann’s adaptation of the Prussian/German system, an adaptation that has served to increasingly enslave the minds of each successive generation of Americans, is that (1) young children were indoctrinated from the outset in such radical learning methods as the “whole-word” approach to reading (in place of a thoroughgoing phonetic understanding that would render students independent learners); (2) students were consistently trained in servile obedience to school and governmental authority in place of God-centered religious upbringing and character development that would help them become truly virtuous citizens of the sort that early Americans were taught to be (see the New England Primer) (3) a female-dominated learning environment early on supplanted the invaluable influence of mothers; and (4) the learning culture was regulated by clocks, locks, and bells, so that students might ostensibly be prepared for the “real world” (causing observant students to equate the school environment with that of a very real “prison”). Meanwhile, (5) the children’s parents were increasingly taught to be the equivalent of docile medieval serfs in the service of those who ultimately control American society, in consequence of an oppressive annual property tax system during the family’s entire existence (see “The feudal origins of America’s most-hated tax"—at the atlantic.com); and (6) young children were grouped by age levels called “grades” that served to create and reinforce “group-think” among similarly-aged youth, a phenomenon that is the opposite of true education, which centers in learning to think for oneself and to emulate a benevolent, trustworthy, perfect God—not other human beings.

Gen. George Patton: “If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”

John Adams: “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Understandably, this dual system of leftist-controlled, property-tax driven serf-like feudal roles for the entire family should be seen as thoroughly un-American (even hostile to America’s most basic values). Today, that is even more the case than it ever was, with the Marxists’ avowed “long march through the institutions” (see Renew.org and Wikipedia.com) gaining more ground every day, as evidenced by the latest destructive trends in the schools (as unprecedented “transgenderism” continues to take center stage, along with occasional school shootings at the hands of rebellious products of the schools).

Much of the above portrait of American public education comes directly from left-leaning Wikipedia’s lengthy, fawning description of the life and work of Horace Mann (linked above)—the influential “Father of American Education.”

As supportive of Mann as Wikipedia’s flattering portrait of him may be, however, Wikipedia’s description nonetheless stresses toward its end some unflattering facts that reveal Mann’s legacy to be less than worthy of general admiration.

Surprisingly, Wikipedia notes (in its reading instruction section on Horace Mann) that:

Mann's endorsement of "word method" for reading instruction made a lasting impression on other reformers of the period, and "by 1890 the alphabet method had virtually died out." Francis Parker and John Dewey used the "word method" as one of the features of the "Progressive" system of education. As Nancy Millichap notes, "Despite the enthusiasm of educators for their new methods of teaching, the illiteracy rate remained high. Among American soldiers enlisted in World War I, 24.9 percent proved unable to read or write, and during World War II approximately the same percentage of British servicemen [who were taught using the same method] were found to be similarly handicapped. In 1940, one-third of high school students were incapable of mastering reading and writing well enough to profit from textbook instruction, and one half of the adult population in the United States was functionally illiterate." (emphasis added)

The backlash against "word method" culminated in a 1955 book Why Johnny Can't Read by Rudolf Flesch, in which he condemned this method for "treating children as if they were dogs" and recommended returning to teaching phonics. Nevertheless, the "ill-informed, ineffective reading instruction" remains the norm in American colleges of education and, accordingly, in American elementary schools.

Add Wikipedia’s passing mention of Mann’s conversion to “Unitarianism” (widely considered a very liberal religion), and it becomes clear why Mann favored a largely secular form of public education that is today robbing America of its once deeply Christian origins (origins that were clearly evident in the colonists’ widely accepted and utilized “New England Primer”).

We should note that many assume that Thomas Jefferson’s stirring declaration affirming the God-given rights of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence would appear to contradict Jeffersons’ well-known support for tax-supported public education. But not so. Jefferson believed that compulsory schooling threatened Americans’ fundamental freedoms—differing with Horace Mann on the importance of freedom of choice in meaningful attempts at learning. (See Kerry McDonald’s article “Compulsory Schooling Is Incompatible with Freedom” at the Foundation for Economic Education—fee.org.)

After stressing that “Jefferson supported a decentralized framework of education and believed that government-controlled education would be a threat to liberty,” FEE's Kerry McDonald writes,

Despite Jefferson’s warnings, compulsory schooling laws were enacted and expanded during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mandating school attendance under a legal threat of [government] force. Some 20th century education philosophers and social reformers, like John Dewey, aimed to lessen the impact of forced schooling, striving to make classrooms and curricula more relevant to children’s experiences and more hands-on and experimental. (emphasis added)

What these well-meaning reformers often ignored, however, was the inherent conflict between freedom and compulsion in mass schooling. One cannot be truly free within a mandatory, coercive system of social control. [Fee.org]

The author Kerry McDonald adds:

In 1962, just over a century after the initial onset of state-controlled compulsory schooling, Paul Goodman wrote his scathing treatise, Compulsory Mis-education, describing the key failures of compulsory schooling. He wrote that “education must be voluntary rather than compulsory, for no growth to freedom occurs except by intrinsic motivation. Therefore the educational opportunities must be various and variously administered. We must diminish rather than expand the present monolithic school system.”

Even as social reformers ranging from A.S. Neill (Summerhill, 1960) to John Holt (How Children Fail, 1964; How Children Learn, 1967) to Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society, 1970) wrote about the serious problems with forced schooling, compulsory education laws tightened and expanded worldwide in the latter half of the 20th century. (emphasis added)

The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989 and ratified later by all UN member nations except for the United States) asserts: “The child is entitled to receive education, which shall be free and compulsory.” [Ironically,] According to the UN, every child has a right to a forced education, mandated by law and compelled by the state.

Under the subtitle “Empowering Parents,” McDonald continues,

Today, as compulsory schooling consumes more of a child’s life than ever before, beginning in toddlerhood and extending into late-adolescence for much of each day and year, many parents and educators are recognizing the disconnect between forced schooling and freedom. Increasingly, they are choosing – or creating – alternatives to school. . . .

A rising number of “free schools” and Sudbury-type democratic schools, like those promoted by A.S. Neill, are opening nationwide, enabling young people to direct their own education free from coercion.

Homeschooling is booming, and the philosophy of unschooling, or self-directed education, advocated by John Holt and others, is growing in popularity and influence. Lawmakers in some states are urging a repeal of antiquated compulsory schooling laws, and are re-empowering parents with more education choice measures. (See the link https://www.self-directed.org/# and watch its informative video.)

These are promising signals of a quiet exodus from mass schooling, as more people realize that freedom and compulsion make strange bedfellows.

From my and my wife’s DeeAnn’s point of view—as the parents of eight unique children we homeschooled “end to end” (meaning they never set foot in a public school except to vote)—the survival of the unique experiment in liberty called America is more important than the survival of America’s corrupt public school system, as currently operated, or the feudalistic system of property tax the U.S. adopted long ago primarily to fund such schooling, in imitation of the radical schemes of Horace Mann and his un-American colleagues in pre-Germany Prussia.

Additionally, as someone trained in English (but largely self-educated) who worked six years in individualized education at Brigham Young University in two self-directed “learning centers”—the first called the “Writing Lab,” run by the English Department, and the second called the “Multicultural Learning Center,” run by the Multicultural Department—I am well-versed in how to guide learners of any age in Montessori-inspired “resource-based learning” of the sort that I helped implement at the two “learning centers” above, whose methodology was far superior to the compulsory methods of America’s public schools in fostering learning.

One of my overriding interests is to use our family’s conservative news website RenewAmerica.com to teach our wide audience how to EDUCATE THEMSELVES and THEIR CHILDREN using self-instructional principles I am well-versed in, including helping learners learn from a variety of well-designed SELF-HELP RESOURCES they are free to choose from and letting them take as much time as they want in doing so.

Thus, if the U.S. public schools continue to decline in relevance or educational value, I know precisely what to recommend as a more reliable alternative: Montessori-based self-instruction of the sort I became professionally expert in (leading a colleague in the Writing Lab with whom I worked to confide in me on one occasion that he considered me the “foremost expert at [our] university in individualized education”—the wave of the future if America is to grow up intellectually and culturally.

Let me add that, as a result of such background (and my role in leading Utah county’s homeschool effort at one point, a role that fell unexpectedly into my hands), I and my wife DeeAnn and a couple of homeschooling leaders from Salt Lake City sat down together about forty years ago and launched what became the “Utah Home Education Association.” By then I had learned a lot about the public school bureaucracy from volunteering to help homeschool families resolve needless disputes with uninformed school officials in nearby school districts—an endeavor I undertook that was a bit risky, since our own homeschool family could potentially suffer retaliation from overzealous school officials who were annoyed by my activism. (But, to my knowledge, we as a family never suffered as a result, although I learned a lot about human nature and the excesses of the public school bureaucracy from my activism.)

As a result of this activism, I also succeeded in rewriting a phrase in the state’s compulsory attendance law to help avert such needless disputes in the first place—enabled by the help of two influential state legislators. To my knowledge, the above revision has long remained part of the law.

Since Horace Mann apparently homeschooled his own children (as noted by FEE’s McDonald), I assume he used his valuable experience teaching his children to guide him in his educational advocacy that resulted in a nationwide public school system. Because I understand what self-directed home education involves, I’m not worried about how my and DeeAnn’s current appeal of our property taxes in Utah might adversely affect a bloated state-by-state education system that needs to be simplified and downsized for the good of our country and its countless decent people.

Unfortunately, such compulsory public education in America is not only inherently un-American and corrupting, but UNCONSTITUTIONAL, I believe, since America’s government exists, above all, to “secure” Americans’ God-given rights, not diminish or tread upon those rights. Jefferson was apparently somewhat ambiguous in his views on public school methodology—and he thankfully disavowed the use of compulsion in teaching and learning—a critically important matter that deserves clarification, something DeeAnn and I hope to bring about as a byproduct of our current state property tax appeal.

Again, the most notable characteristic of America’s compulsory public education system is that it is UNCONSTITUTIONAL, because it violates the most basic premises of the Declaration of Independence—premises that center in the existence of God and the very essence of God-centered self-education that is summarized in the Declaration’s well-known phrase that lists the God-given “rights [to] life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”—a phrase that effectively describes the very essence of all God-premised education. By forcibly taking children from their homes during the best hours of their lives, and depriving them and their families of the fundamental freedom to pursue their own understanding of meaningful life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, in harmony with godly precept, this tyrannically imposed, godless counterfeit of education that is inherent in America’s public schools has no lawful place anywhere in America and must be declared unlawful, for it is directly contrary not only to the Declaration but to the prohibition of such governmental control by the text of the Fourteenth Amendment, which proscribes any such general usurpation of the transcendent rights and protections guaranteed by the Declaration of Independence (which the Constitution is meant to secure and protect) as a person seeks to educate himself (and his family) individually and by self-directed pursuit of biblically-defined ideals and methods. Until the compulsory attendance laws that favor public education more than family-centered homeschooling and private schooling are formally dropped as part of America’s unlawfully-devised government-controlled education, and until all legitimate forms of family-centered learning are legally protected, in principle, as at least “equivalent” in value to public education (see Wisconsin v. Yoder and Pierce v. Society of Sisters) in harmony with the liberating language of the Declaration, then all local U.S. schooling is being unjustly carried out in an unconstitutional system based on enslavement of all American citizens, young and old. The result, as it now stands, is that the U.S. public school system is therefore one of the “biggest child kidnappers in the U.S.”—and is therefore unworthy of generous public support by means of governmentally-coerced property taxes, for all the reasons stated and implied in this published argument.