'Disestablishing our secular schools'

"It is true that American parents are free to choose a nonpublic school for their children," Charles L. Glenn writes, "but they must do so at their own expense at a time when spending in public schools nationwide is more than ten thousand dollars per pupil."

This is fundamentally unjust as well as a denial of the rights of conscience. As scholar of religious liberty Carl Esbeck wrote in the Journal of Law and Religion, "When the government elects to affirmatively extend welfare or educational services to a general class of beneficiaries, then the government should not exclude an individual from the class because she makes a religious choice over a secular choice. To take note of religion only in order to exclude it from modern civil society is not only not required by the Establishment Clause, but runs counter to the clause’s predisposition to enlarge religious freedom." 

 

Glenn adds, "public education should be no more synonymous with government-operated schools than public health is with government-operated hospitals. Parents should be free to choose the school their children attend without financial penalty."