Are children property?

Obama Inc. Defends German Homeschool Ban as “Promoting Tolerance for a Pluralistic Society”

OK, children have a right to education.

But that's only a legal right, at best, and not even a constitutional right, since there are no natural or moral rights.

See posts labeled "amoralism."

Anyway, why can’t the parents provide it?

And saying kids have a right to education that might conflict with bad parenting is quite different from saying the community “owns” kids and the parents don’t.

Creepy, is right.

Lately, the president has gone on public record complaining that church associated schools are divisive.

Getting ready for a real hum-dinger of a free exercise battle?

PS.

I find nothing in the constitution about education at all, or warranting federal action in that area or interference in state or local action in that area.

The word "education" does not appear in that document, anywhere.

Nor the word "school."

And yet there is a federal department of education, there are federally guaranteed and regulated loans, there is federal aid to education, and there are federal mandated testing and other standards.

Apart from the service academies, there are no federal schools, that I know of.

The idea of a right to education – moral, natural, or legal – seems to have arisen only in the 19^th Century and makes no appearance in the Articles of Confederation, the US Constitution, or the Declaration of Independence.

I don’t know about the constitutions of the US states, either of that era or today.

The Pennsylvania constitution today requires provision of public education but does not seem anywhere to mention a right to education.

Other states may do the same.

Right to education

CATO on education and the US constitution

It appears that as late as 1973 the Supremes insisted the constitution does not guarantee any such alleged right, either against federal or state authorities.

A right to education does occur in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights and various other documents emanating from supra- or inter-national authorities, according to Wikipedia.

I am not aware of any federal court ever claiming the US, either the general government or the states, is bound by the UN Declaration or any of these other documents.

There have been public schools operated at the state level, here and there, among the US states, since even before the American Revolution.

But they were far from universally available and even elementary education was not compulsory in all of America until the early 20th Century.

In fact, this is another theater of the culture war, with secularist liberals seeking to control the education of the young at all levels, relying more and more on federal power, money, and regulation.

It appears hostility to the very existence of parochial or church affiliated or church run schools, at any level, is spreading among them and more and more openly avowed.