(The following is adapted from the introduction to the author's new book, The Case Against Public Education. More information below.) During an 1839 debate in Britain's House of Commons regarding the establishment of government schools, the young Benjamin Disraeli objected: Wherever is found what is called paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery. Though Disraeli's pithy remark may seem startling in our age of universal public schooling, in fact he was merely stating the obvious. Government-controlled schooling, in all its variations, is essentially a tool of paternalism, i.e., of the tyrannical impulse. Such schooling was conceived and developed with a compliant and uniform citizenry, rather than an educated one, as its primary goal. Our civilization's moral and intellectual decline is primarily the product of the world’s...(Read Full Article)