David Friedman: Does the First Amendment ban public schools?
Short answer; yes, although as the first commenter at his site notes, the courts have restricted the meaning of the the 1st to mean it doesn't legally do so.
This is a point that libertarians have understood for decades, that schools by necessity must teach a specific world view, and as Prof. Friedman says -
[...]one cannot, in practice, educate without either supporting or denying a wide variety of religious claims.
It is my observation that those who most strongly support single provider public education are most likely to want to impose their personal religion, ehh, worldview, on the general populace.
"Short answer; yes...."
Plainly the short answer is no. "Should it" is a different question that "does it." Factually, it does not. "I believe it should" doesn't change reality.
Posted by: Gary Farber at December 28, 2005 10:39 PMAnd having read the piece, Mr. Friedman is making a fundamental category error. Science is entirely neutral about religion. Science doesn't address religion; that there are religious positions that are contradicted by reality, fact, and testability is not the fault of science, nor is it a product of any bias in science other than towards testable hypotheses. The whole point of science is that that's is its only bias, save when there are individual errors.
But studies consistently make clear that only a tiny minority of Americans have any understanding of what science is, and that it's not a body of knowledge -- the body of knowledge is merely produced by what is provably, objectively, correct.
No amount of religious belief makes the world flat, or the earth orbit the sun. Observing reality might be considered a "bias," but it's not going to get you very far when you try to calculate an orbit.
Many things are subjective; many other things are, in fact, not.
Posted by: Gary Farber at December 28, 2005 10:47 PM Any worthwhile education will do much more than cover objective knowledge, it will also look at the processes of perceiving knowledge. Every aspect of morals and sense of self follows, and whether those things are grounded in secular or religious bases will make a great deal of difference on the results.
Science is only a small part of what we're talking about here, as Friedman's Ibn Khaldun example demonstrates.