From the News-Topic:

Michael Barrick, a former school board member, expertly identifies the layers upon layers of bureaucratic control of public schools in “A key factor to consider in the BOE race” (Aug. 26).

“A multi-headed monster” he calls it.

How ironic — that control of schools would have moved so far away from parents and communities. For that is opposite the intent of the foremost early champion of tax-funded education:

“If it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the governor and council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience.” (Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph C. Cabell, 1816)*

The North Carolina political and educational establishment might counter: We’ve progressed. We are more sophisticated. Many layers of oversight and control ensure quality.

That’s a plausible argument. There was no teacher licensing in Thomas Jefferson’s day, no teachers colleges, no state curriculum, no compulsory attendance . . . In fact, there were no government schools — and would not be for another 70 years. So how were the founding generation educated without the benevolent attention of government?

According to David McCullough, the two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning historian, the founders “were steeped in, soaked in, marinated in, the classics: Greek and Roman history, Greek and Roman ideas, Greek and Roman ideals. It was their model, their example.”**

Imagine, if you can, a trace of that kind of education in a public school today. Not that such education should be required, but should it not be an option?

In another context, McCullough observed, “It is a sad, sad, but true fact that the literacy rate in the state of Massachusetts [his home] in 1798 was higher than it is in 1998.”

It is egregious folly to exclusively fund the vast government education empires we have today. To do so is to level down and standardize what should be a rich and varied landscape of schooling opportunities.

I would go further. It is unpatriotic for Americans to stay this perilous course.