I have been troubled by the fact that my daughter started in public school last year when she started first grade. Until then, she had been in a church-run preschool and kindergarten. But a generous mother-in-law was the only way my wife and I could pull that off.

As if I am not worrying enough, along comes Stacy McCain, writing about Obama’s new, $4 billion dollar “education initiative,” to shame me into doing just about anything to come up with the scratch necessary for church school tuition or to arrange to home school:

Everyone remembers Obama’s plan for education reform, right? Uh, actually, no. Never mind that. Does anyone remember when $4 billion was a lot of money?

The rush is on for $4.35 billion in “Race to the Top” grants, targeted to leverage historic reforms in US public schools.
“This is one of the largest investments in education reform in American history,” said President Obama at the US Department of Education on Friday. “And rather than divvying it up and handing it out, we are letting states and school districts compete for it.”
The high-stakes grants are targeted to reward states and school districts that are “ready to do things that work,” the president said. “That’s how we can incentivize excellence and spur reform and launch a race to the top in America’s public schools.” . . .

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The problem with the public education system is the system itself. Parents who send their kids to public schools are constituents of the world’s largest welfare program. Whatever the total federal expenditure is on K-12 education, every dime of it is “waste, fraud, and abuse,” a stupid idea with stupid consequences.

You cannot defend public education and call yourself a conservative.[My emphasis.] The entire history of public education shows that it has been, from Day One, a liberal project aimed at achieving liberal policy objectives that have nothing to do with actual education.

Ouch. I don’t mind being shamed. Christians are often grateful for being convicted of sin or other poor behavior.

And believe me, I’d much rather have my daughter in a church-run school. And I know lack of money sounds like a bogus excuse, but you have no idea how badly I’ve been struggling since I struck out on my own. It’s not like I’m refusing to sacrifice for the good of my daughter’s education. It’s that we can’t send her to private school and eat at the same time. (OK, there you go, I guess I am refusing to sacrifice, because I could always stop eating. And I know, with finances like this, I sure don’t sound like a conservative, either.)

Anyway, give his post a look and enjoy the video of his proposed public school reform.  And learn the answer to this political trivia question: Newt Gingrich referred to public education as “subsidized ___________.”

UPDATE (7/24/09): It occurred to me an hour or so after I put up this post that I assumed McCain was looking at this from a purely political viewpoint, as opposed to a moral or theological one. That’s because some of my good Christian friends (i.e., good friends who are Christians, not friends who are good Christians, but they could be both) made a point of sending their kids to public school. They were prepared to supplement the teaching as necessary in order to have the kids grow up in the world and even have their kids evangelize.

This generally cuts across the grain of the typical Christian outlook on public schools. Some Christians who have their kids in private school think you’re a horrible Christian if you send your kid to public school. But the Christians with kids in private schools are then looked down upon by some Christian homeschoolers!

So, is McCain’s point a moral one as opposed to a political one? I suspect he meant it that way, but there may be more room for debate about the appropriateness of sending your kid to public school than he’s letting on.

None of which is to say that I wouldn’t prefer a church-run school for my daughter.