My Kids Are Not Part Of "Team America"

There's another one of those interminable international education studies out. I can barely bother myself to read the details. U.S. leads or lags or falls in the middle of the pack in this indicator or that blah, blah, blah.

I can't really care. I shouldn't have to care. Fortunately, my family opted out of the public education system, so we're not really affected by Common Core and all of the people who run around in circles waving their arms that "something has to be done" everytime we don't stack up against the South Koreans in educational outcomes. Home schoolers used to be widely persecuted, but we've put a stop to most of that with consistent legal defense and the sheer weight of numbers.

An important point about the U.S. Constitution is that it is anti-utopian. Yes, there's language in the preamble about forming "a more perfect union," but the means chosen to go about that are the opposite of the Utopian instinct.

We're a nation of individuals. We were the first major nation to recognize that the individual is the most important political unit, and maybe the only major nation to actually function on that basis for an extended period of time.

These educational studies are collectivist wet dreams. They identify a problem with us, collectively, and then proceed to the conclusion that it's OK to manipulate, force and coerce us, collectively, to resolve the problem.

But, regardless of how the U.S. stacks up against other nations educationaly, every single child in the U.S. is an individual. They are not competitors in the World Education Cup Games. How we do collectively is completely irrelevant, because each child's education is the responsibility of himself and his parents. Children and families have no obligation to "pitch in" and help the national average. Education may not be a priority for them -- especially others peoples' educations, or comparative results, and our nation used to recognize the right of people to be uninterested.

Just because the U.S. lags tiny, rich Singapore isn't a reason for some person in Washington to think he can start dictating how kids in Lincoln, NE ought to be educated. It's none of his business. The American system is designed that way. There wasn't even a cabinet-level department of education until the Carter administration in 1979, because education, like most other of our day-to-day governmental responsibilities, was recognized to be a local function for most of U.S. history.

So, don't tell me how the South Koreans are doing compared to us and what we need to do about it as a nation. You worry about your kids and I'll worry about mine. Move to South Korea if it's really important for you to be on the "winning" education team. I'm not on your team. There is no team.