Besides, the alternatives to public education are all worse.
There are millions of people who went to charter schools, private schools or were home schooled who would take issue with his last sentence. They got fine educations. I'm a big believer in good parents making up for bad schools but you can't just hand wave away the productivity of all the professionals involved in schooling by saying "their parents cared they would have turned out fine wherever they went" (which is the typical retort).
Catholicism has fewer cultural proscriptions than what the predominant waspy culture wanted. For example, Catholic schools in native American reservations didn't seek to undo Indian culture. This state of affairs was not acceptable and there was a chance said children would become catholic.
Thus, the WASPs, unable to organize schooling in their own churches for their children at an affordable price (a problem which still exists today.. catholic schools are empirically cheaper than other christian schools), turned to the government as the only way to combat the papists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_public_education_in...
I am not anti public school, but I just take issues with the idea that public schools original purpose was for equality. As Thomas Sowell points out in "education in america", catholic schools do better than public ones for minorities even when accounting for socieconomic factors. This is probably why minorities disproportionately favor vouchers.
Public schools leading to equality is today a 'fact' asserted with little empirical data and any attempt at refutation is met with all kinds of accusations.
I didn't say it was.
> For example, Catholic schools in native American reservations didn't seek to undo Indian culture.
Are you sure about that?
> Public schools leading to equality is today a 'fact' asserted with little empirical data
I know of no person who asserts that fact.
Yes. Whether it was the California missions or the Jesuit missions of Canada, by far the missionaries were better than the other European authorities. Perfect? No. Better... Yes
This is a good article detailing the original approach of the church before the authorities started getting involved. It's not what you think it is.
https://forheavenssake46778317.wordpress.com/2021/06/08/resi...
But with all respect, you don't in fact know what I think.
That's fair. I shouldn't have said that.
Re the blog post... it cites several books and scholarly texts, and mainly chooses which ones to present. Now of course, that's a form of bias, but the books and source materials are explicitly listed and I believe they paint the picture even clearer than the blog post.