Today, in the year 2003, the public education systems in the fifty states are in shambles. The prevailing belief is that the way to create a more efficient system is by training more teachers, placing fewer students in a classroom, and allowing teachers to spend more one-on-one time with each student.

At the other end of the opinion spectrum, some people believe that public schools are a total waste of tax-payer money and that the best way to eliminate ignorance and crime in the country is for all children to be educated in private secular or religious schools. Furthermore, these people believe the tuition for this schooling should be paid by government from public school funds.

In between the two, there are many other opinions how to improve public school education in the United States. There is also much talk in the media and in political circles about the function of public school education. Some "experts" believe the goal of public education is to guide students to be the best they can be: to help them develop to the highest levels of achievement possible.

Others claim public education should not be required to do more than to develop a child's basic level of proficiency in reading, writing, and mathematics and that after this level is achieved the child should use his or her own natural ambitions and abilities for full personal development.

As a result of these varied "expert" opinions, many parents of America's school-age children are confused and uncertain not only about which of the local public schools would be best for their children, but what knowledge they should be required to learn and how thoroughly they should learn it.

Part of the bewilderment is due to woeful ignorance of American history of current American generations. All American commoners should know the true history of the republic. All American commoners should know public education in the U.S. was initiated only after a long, hard struggle by educators and commoner parents. All should know rich Americans opposed public school education, as they didn't want the children of farmers and industrial workers to acquire the same knowledge as their own children or to compete with them in life.

They especially didn't want their servants to become "educated," because educated people have greater expectations than those of uneducated people, and want something better for themselves and their children than being domestics in the homes of rich people or laborers in the factories of rich people.

The fight for public school education in the country was purely an extension of class conflict; the eternal battle between rich and poor people. It's a subject strangely missing in current discussions about public school education.

It's also missing in the political discussions about pitiful conditions in the areas of crime, healthcare, and poverty, which are also the consequences of class conflict.

The concept of educating the children of commoners in schools paid for by tax money had one other formidable foe: organized religion.

In all countries, and in all past eras, religious leaders have been the traditional ally of the wealthy and powerful. In the 19th century, the stewards of organized Christianity in the U.S. opposed public education and fought just as vigorously as wealthy Americans to prevent secular, non-religious education for the masses of common children.

Why? Because in the early 19th century the basic education available to common children was religious school training—reading from the Bible, writing, and religion. Religious leaders also feared the thought of losing religious school students to public schools, and were horrified at the thought of teaching common children secular ideas contradictory to religious dogma. This, they feared, correctly, would result in the eventual loss of Church membership.

The study of history reveals still another relevant truth that must never be forgotten by contemporary or future working Americans. The early masses of immigrants to this country fled Europe to remove themselves not only from the oppression of arrogant kings and wealthy aristocracies, but also from the cruel oppression of organized Christianity.

Despite opposition of both wealthy Americans and organized religions, the masses of poorer Americans won the battle for secular, public school education. And despite the inadequate funding of public schools ever since, by a political system created by the wealthy and for the wealthy, public school education in the United States has been an overwhelming and unqualified success—until the end of World War II.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal programs couldn't solve the economic problems of the Great Depression that were caused by the unregulated capitalist system. It was World War II that saved the system from death. It was World War II that gave the leaders of the American Establishment time to plan postwar strategies to rebuff American workers and their demands for fairer wages and a bigger slice of the American pie.

Part of this strategy was the eventual dismantling of state public education systems, and the lowering of the intellectual capabilities and expectations of working-class children.

The abnormally long post-war prosperity for middle-class workers ended in the 1970s, when many of the corporations owned or controlled by American Establishment families were moved overseas, throwing millions of Americans into the unemployment lines. That same thirty-five year period witnessed the slow transformation of public high schools and colleges from institutions dedicated to academic studies into agencies specializing in business courses aka "vocaational" training.

The dismantling of the public school systems continued when Congress passed a law authorizing "charter" schools, which are funded with tax dollars but free of most state regulations, to compete with public schools. Charter schools function independently of a school district and are expected to offer courses differing from public schools.

Soon after the Republicans illegally stole the 2000 presidential election, the republic was flooded with propaganda—mostly created in the advertising and public relations offices of the republic's largest corporations—attacking the merits of the public school system.

Our unelected Republican president has since advocated and legalized the "school voucher" law that siphons public funds away from already under funded state public school systems, and diverts them to religious schools. Yet, few working parents can comprehend what this means, anymore than they can envision the bleak future in store for their children.

So, what is an effective or essential education for children? The logical place to begin would be with the definition of the word-symbol "educate." The Living Webster Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language states that educate is to:

...advance the mental, aesthetic, physical, or moral development of, esp. by teaching or schooling..." The word-symbol is derived from the Latin stem educo, which means to "lead forth...

The Latin word-symbol educe means "to bring or draw out; to extract..." Last, but not least, the word-symbol education is defined:

...the process of educating, teaching, or training; a part of or a stage in this training; the learning or development which results from this process of teaching or training...

Nowhere in these definitions does it mention specific categories of information or the methods to be used to educate. Only that something is to be taught. Moreover, the definition specifically states the function of education is "to develop the mental, aesthetic, physical, and moral abilities of the student." It doesn't mentions or imply that moral instruction equates with religious schooling. But it does clearly state that moral instruction should be part of the objectives of any form of education—secular public school, secular private school, or religious school.

Furthermore, the definition states that the educator educates by "drawing forth" knowledge from the student rather than by imposing such knowledge. This is a very important distinction in the education process. It means that the teacher should not offer, or impose, solutions but merely assist students to think about problems and allow each student to find his, or her, own solutions.

Simply stated, it is an "essential" function of education to teach the student how to think analytically, an objective state education systems have failed to accomplish.

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