Education is central to a prosperous, tolerant and civilized society. It is through education that the individual develops skills, reasoning, confidence and self-esteem. Education acts as a means of empowering the individual, by making him economically self-reliant, and enables him to contribute positively to the stability of society. The superiority of providing goods and services through a competitive market place, rather than by government direction, has been recognized in nearly every other area of life, yet in education the power of the state is still vast and dominant, and the subsequent side effects of statism are all too apparent.  It is time for education to be set free of the state's stranglehold and allowed to operate in a system characterized by freedom of choice, parental rights and competition.

It cannot be emphasized strongly enough that the preference for the establishment of freedom of choice in education is not motivated merely by a philosophical belief in the individual and the market but rather, and more pressingly, because state control has resulted in shameful levels of illiteracy, innumeracy, truancy and delinquency in the United States; problems which are also to be found in the United Kingdom. Twenty per cent of American students drop out of high school without graduating, and of those who go on to college, one third are required to take remedial classes in reading, writing or mathematics. Indeed, it has been said that, "the longer pupils stay in American schools, the worse they perform compared with their peers abroad". A significant reason for such poor results stems from the sidelining of parents and religion from the education of children.

Inherent within the educational establishment is a belief that professional educationalists have a greater knowledge of what is best for a child, than do the child's parents. This is especially true of attitudes towards low-income parents and those parents who have not received a significant degree of education themselves. However, it should be recognized that parents are far more informed of their child's aptitudes and difficulties than distant government officials. The parent has a profound knowledge of his child, whereas the professional educationalist perceives only the type of group that a child falls into- not the individual child himself.

However, the vast majority of parents are in no position to harness this greater knowledge of their child to obtain an education suitable to his or her needs and aptitudes. As a result of an illiberal, confiscatory tax regime, the state impoverishes most parents to the extent that they have no freedom of choice; the public school is the only option available. This is particularly coercive with regard to those parents who wish to send their child to a school where the same religious values that the parents seek to emphasize within the home are also stressed in the school room. The Framers of the Constitution established the separation of church and state to prevent religious coercion, however, it is possible to detect in today's educational system a social coercion, whereby Christian parents are left with little choice but to send their children to schools where religion is often systematically erased. Examples abound of a principal banning a student from reading her Bible on the school bus, to a school preventing
students from distributing invitations to a Bible study group, to a teacher preventing a third-grade student from writing a report on Jonah and the whale. What is required is a system which allows parents to control the money that they have expended their own efforts earning, and to be able to spend this income in accordance with their own opinion of what represents the most appropriate education for their child.

In many American states, and in other nations, those who favor choice have found it notoriously difficult to create a system of education vouchers. Increasingly, pro-school choice advocates are finding other ways to break the state's grip. In Pennsylvania, the establishing of a scholarship tax credit, by former Governor Tom Ridge, will potentially enable thousands of children to escape the educational poverty of the poorest performing public schools. Tax credits have the particular advantage of sidestepping any conflict between using public money to fund education in religious schools and the separation of church and state. Moreover, by encouraging private sector businesses to contribute to the welfare of low-income families, tax credits help to bind a community together as a result of authentic individual will. Often such scholarships do not cover the full cost of education, thus requiring families to meet the excess cost themselves. This helps to dispel the myth that low income families do not care about the education of their children and that they would not or could not fund their child's education without government compulsion.

Education vouchers would also liberate the demand side of education by empowering parents as consumers. Unlike the present system, where parents are constrained by the state's power, under a more market driven approach parents would be able to expect higher quality and competitive prices. Schools would have to operate in the knowledge that a substandard level of service or unreasonable prices would see parents taking their vouchers to other schools. Opponents of vouchers claim that the best schools would be heavily oversubscribed, allowing them to select the most academically able students, leaving the rest with no option but to take their vouchers to the more mediocre schools. However, this is to imagine a situation where the supply side of education is continuing to operate as at present. Of course it is difficult to envisage a system of vouchers working successfully where the state regulates what type of school can accept vouchers and continues to prescribe what an acceptable curriculum
consists of. Vouchers for education must go hand in hand with greater freedom to establish schools without coercive regulation by the state. This would enable diversity in education to flourish, with parents having a range of options to choose from, and the freedom to decide what type of school is most suitable for their child, in accordance with the greater knowledge that they have of their child's requirements.

Again, this is an issue of particular concern for Christian parents. This point was famously made by Pope Paul VI in the Declaration on Christian Education, Gravissimum Educationis:

        "Parents who have the primary and inalienable right and duty to educate their children must enjoy true
        liberty in their choice of school."

Thus the freedom of choice which vouchers would deliver would enable many more parents to choose a religious school for their child, and to be confident that, unlike the present time, their child would not be exposed to the promotion of values and attitudes in the school room which are the antithesis of the beliefs which the parents are trying to inculcate in their children within the home. Education vouchers are not only a question of economic liberty but also religious liberty.

Opponents of school choice argue that the present public schools system enables individuals of different backgrounds and values to mix together, and that ultimately, this proves cohesive for society. Such claims should be treated with caution, but even if one were to accept their validity, it must still be remembered that schools exist to teach, not for the purposes of social engineering. Opponents also maintain that faith-based schools would breed religious intolerance. This claim is particularly scurrilous, since on the contrary, a school teaching true and sincere religious values will stress the importance of tolerance and respect for others of different faiths and colors. Moreover, because religious schools can demonstrate that we should show tolerance and respect for others because it is God's will, this carries greater resonance than a public school teacher simply claiming that tolerance and respect should be observed because it is "right" or "good" to do so.

Indeed, it is this centrality of Christianity to education in religious schools which means that the atmosphere is more conducive to learning than in public schools. In accordance with Christianity, discipline and respect are emphasized and limits are set, which teachers expect students to observe. Furthermore, Christian teaching explains the existence of the moral absolutes of right and wrong and provides a sure foundation for the observance of such fundamentals through faith. In contrast, public schools are party to the ideology of moral relativism, which means any values emphasized in public schools are built on shifting sands.

The success of religious schools extends also to academic performance. One study in 1990 of high schools in New York found that ninety-five percent of Catholic high school students graduated each year compared to just over fifty percent in the public schools. Moreover, Catholic schools send a greater proportion of their students to college than do public schools. Indeed in Chicago, when Mayor Richard Daley took over control of failing public schools he cited the city's religious schools as examples of how public schooling could and should be.

As stated, one of the significant advantages of vouchers is that they will engender competition into the provision of education. The other essential element of educational excellence is parental involvement. This would, of course, be greatly encouraged by implementing school choice. At present, parents are shackled by government bureaucracy; the government confiscates the means through which parents could exercise real choice, and then directs their child to attend a particular school, where the parents have little or no say over the school's curriculum, the books which are read, or the values which are expounded. School choice would encourage and facilitate parents to play a more active role in the educational development of their child. Since parents would be empowered as consumers they would be more vigilant than at present over the school's quality, facilities and overall attainment, not least because they could ultimately take the necessary action if the school failed to improve. One study concludes that, "Compared with public school parents, parents of children in choice programs, (1) monitor their children's work
and help them more often; (2) get more involved with their children's school; (3) seek and find environments that offer their children safety, discipline and better instructional quality; (4) are more satisfied with their children's new school than they were with their previous school across a wide range of indicators; and (5) are likely to re-enroll their children in their schools of choice."

That such an outcome results from parental choice will be of no surprise to critics of the welfare state. Conservatives and libertarians know that state involvement acts as a corrosive influence on the authentic ties which truly bind together the family, community and nation. Indeed, John Stuart Mill warned against the dangers of replacing individual will with state coercion:

        "A people among whom there is no habit of spontaneous action for a collective interest — who look
        habitually to their government to command or prompt them in all matters of joint concern- who expect to
        have everything done for them, except what can be made an affair of mere habit and routine — have their
        faculties only half developed; their education is defective in one of its most important branches…Such a
        system more completely than any other embodies the idea of despotism."

Those who advocate state control have long since lost the argument of economic efficiency. Instead, collectivists now emphasize the allegedly greater morality of state action, as opposed to individual will and private provision. However, conservatives, libertarians and Christians, who attach such importance to the principle of subsidiarity, know this to be untrue.

Morality can only exist when the individual can exercise freedom of choice in line with his own conscience; coercion of the individual through taxation, for example to fund education, precludes the possibility of moral choice. David Hume stressed this when he wrote:

        "We can never have regard to the virtue of an action unless the action be antecedently virtuous. No
        action can be virtuous, but so far as it proceeds from a virtuous motive."

State dominance of education has failed. The results can be seen in the levels of illiteracy, innumeracy and delinquency which exist in American schools, and indeed in other nations which employ similar methods of funding, such as the United Kingdom. State dominance of such a fundamentally important part of society as education has weakened the genuine ties which truly strengthen the family and community, particularly as a result of the impoverishing effects of taxation and the demoralizing consequences which result from a lack of choice. Freedom of choice in the education of children is an essential right, which all parents should be able to exercise, and this is a particularly important right for Christian parents. Economic and religious liberty demands the abolition of state control and the empowerment of parents.