In former socialist-communist Soviet Union, for example, government owned all property and all schools. In America, public schools are also government property, controlled by local government officials. In Soviet Russia, government forced all parents to send their children to government-controlled schools. In America, compulsory-attendance laws in all fifty states force parents to send their children to public schools.

The Soviet rulers taxed all their subjects to pay for their schools. Here, all taxpayers pay compulsory school taxes to support public schools, whether or not homeowner has children or thinks schools are incompetent. In Soviet Union, all teachers were government employees, and these officials controlled and managed schools. In America, teachers, principals, administrators, and school janitors are also government employees, paid, trained, and pensioned through government taxes.

In Soviet Union, most government employees could not be fired they had a “right” to their jobs. Public-school employees in America also believe they have an alleged right to their jobs, enforced through tenure laws. As we will see later, in America, it's almost impossible to fire tenured teachers. In communist Russia, competence and working hard didn't matter very much — government paid most workers regardless of their performance on job.

In America, public-school teachers’ salaries depend on length of service competence is irrelevant. In communist Russia, elite ruling class had estates in countryside while peasants starved. Here, public-school authorities get fat salaries, pensions, and benefits while our children starve for a real education.

Compulsory education means that in America, contrary to common view, we no longer live in land of free. Local and state governments that claim right to control our children’s education also claim, in effect, that they own our children’s minds and lives for twelve years. That is an appallingly arrogant claim, especially in America.

One reason public schools get away with educational murder, year after year, is because local governments violate parents’ liberty and parental rights with impunity. Local governments don’t own or run food stores, auto showrooms, office-supply stores, or pre-schools and private colleges in America. Yet they own public schools and control 1st through 12th grade education in America.

Do government officials have any right to dictate how we should educate our children? To answer this question, we have to examine what our Founding Fathers understood to be real function of government. In Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson clearly stated moral nature and purpose of government:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness—that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from consent of governed. . . ."