More on education.

A few days ago, I blogged about the lack of decent education in the U.S. It was sort of cryptic, as I simply asked people to read John Stossel's great article, "Stupid in America." I didn't editorialize, I just had a quote up from the Texas Declaration of Independence.

My feeling on education in America is that states should be in charge of their schools. The federal government should not be in the business of education at all. I don't think their involvement has been for the better; clearly, schools are not as great as they could be. If states were in charge, I believe that their education curriculum and their schools would be an asset to their commerce, in that businesses and other people would move to states where the schools were better, and people would have a choice as to what kind of education their children received. This would be the better solution to below-average schools. There would be no top-down mandates or federal funds. States that did not have good schools would be the losers in this, as no one would want to live there that had children. In the long run, they would have to improve their schools to get competitive in the commercial marketplace. That would be a win-win situation for children as well as business interests.

Look--the government-run VA hospitals are not the place I'd go for a major surgery. Would you really allow your most precious asset, your children, to be educated in a public school that is sort of controlled by the federal government? I sure wouldn't. I think a federal Department of Education is sort of creepy in a free-thinking society, actually.