Consequences of Our Constitutional Designs

Especially at the State Level

Among the Founders, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison were the most prominent supporters of public education and public libraries. However well they understood the tendency for governments to grow—and for religions to metastasize within them—they probably didn’t foresee that a new form of ideology, rooted in racism and sexism and often referred to as "wokism," would one day emerge from public universities and become entrenched in both privately-funded and state-funded K–12 schools.

Should we blame these Revolutionary Era intellectuals for not designing a better government—one with safeguards against the funding of religion-like ideologies within public educational institutions? The Constitution says nothing about education; hence, in my view, education is not a power granted to the federal government by the Constitution. The Department of Education is therefore unconstitutional, and President Trump has the legal authority to dismantle it. But why didn’t the Founders create safeguards in their state-level constitutions against government support of ideologies within state-funded schools and libraries? The short answer is that they probably supported state-level funding of education in the form of public schools and libraries.

I have not studied state-level constitutions in much detail, but most of those I’m familiar with explicitly support public education and libraries. Perhaps publicly funded libraries are mostly harmless, but publicly funded schools seem like a serious mistake. Your thoughts?

Perhaps it’s time we begin reading and discussing our state constitutions.

I don’t blame the Founders—or the American people—for poor constitutional design. In fact, I don’t even blame wokism on poor constitutional design, even at the state level. My view is that in designing a complex system, you have to do it twice. The first time is to work out the kinks: to make mistakes and discover the consequences of your design. The second time is to do it right. Now is our chance to get it right.

We can see the consequences of the first design. Now, let’s amend our state constitutions to eliminate public schools, since they no longer teach the values and history necessary to maintain a sufficiently limited government. That, arguably, was the most important reason the Founders supported public education in the first place.

Let’s also consider the recent growth and success of private schools that do teach freedom, entrepreneurship, discovery, and traditional American values. Here are two of my favorites:

• Thales Academy, founded by Robert Luddy and headquartered in North Carolina.

• Challenger School, founded by Barbara Baker in Silicon Valley and now headquartered in Utah.

These schools aren’t perfect, but they’re better than public schools. Let’s create more private schools—even better than these.