However, the system you object to actually exists in the real world, in the country of the Netherlands, and several of the worries you have about that system don't seem to appear. In the Netherlands, by that country's constitution for the last century, schools are funded on a per-capita basis, and they can be wholly secular, religiously affiliated (with several different religions well represented by large numbers of schools), or affiliated with specialized approaches to educational philosophy (e.g., Montessori or Waldorf). Grown-up Dutch people seem every bit as able to make up their own minds about what to believe as grown-up American people. In view of this empirical reality, it wouldn't worry me if willing learners obtained funding for education on a basis of all schooling providers being on an equal footing, with parents free to choose for their minor children which educational program was the best fit for the child. See Choice of Schools in Six Nations

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/custom/portlets/recordD...

for history and current data on schools in the Netherlands in other countries.

> or affiliated with specialized approaches to educational philosophy (e.g., Montessori or Waldorf).

That is true. Private schools can sidestep disastrous education philosophies that the government introduces through the public school system.

A good example is my country's experiments in [Outcome Based Education](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outcome-based_education#OBE_aro...) (South Africa).

It destroyed a fairly good (under the circumstances) education system in less than 5 years. People who now receive matriculation cannot spell, construct sentences or even do basic mathematics.

I was involved in engineering education in 2007. The standards were dropped and even then the failure rates were astonishing (60%+ for single subjects). It is incredibly sad that a country's future was gambled on a failed education philosophy (which was chosen because it is politically acceptable).

If a parent can home school a kid and spend 2/3 of the day reading the bible, how can you even think that a voucher that may optionally be spent at an established parochial school even registers on the radar screen?

If a parent can have a child's genitals mutilated just after birth (for religious or secular reasons), how can you say that allocating voucher money to a parochial school (a school which the parent is free to send the kid to w/o the voucher) even remotely registers on the radar screen for children's rights?

I don't disagree with your points, but I think you are picking the wrong battle. The best antidote for religion is critical thinking, and an educational system with more choice will only help to engender such mental functioning on the part of students. Vouchers will also result in an influx of less faithful people to parochial schools and will create a wave of secularization, turning private schools less into religious orgs and making them more like regular businesses.

Think about it this way, at present only the most faithful are willing to scrimp and save to send their kid to the parochial school, while with vouchers there would be a lot more secularists attending simply to get a better education.

I am completely against home schooling for exactly that reason. And, I am against circumcision when it isn't done for medical reasons.

I agree with having choice in schools. I support vouchers and I support private schools. But, I don't support religious schools and I particular am against giving vouchers and other public money to religious schools.

By the way, many (most) parochial schools already have their own financial aid systems. For example, my sister went to a Catholic high school for a year where she only paid $1,500 or so, whereas the wealthy students were paying many times that much in order to subsidize the less wealthy. Sometimes church funds go towards those scholarships too. That is why I am against public funding of religious schools; they effectively increase the church's general fund. Everybody should be free to contribute to their own church but nobody should be forced to pay even a penny to a church they oppose.

On the subject of "public money", would you also vehemently oppose allowing a welfare recipient to spend money out of his/her welfare check at a church bake sale? Such behavior only increases the church's "general fund" and would seem to be equally distasteful to you.

What about spending money from one's tax rebate on a church raffle?

Also, how is anyone being forced to contribute money to a church they oppose? Are you saying that if my tax dollars went partially to the $0.50 someone used to purchase that donut at a Presbyterian bake sale, that my tax dollars are now being used to support a church I oppose?

The cost (financially and ethically) of policing those things is not worth the cost of accepting them. I am not advocating a police state where every transaction is monitored. Instead, I am promoting individual freedom--the freedom for people to spend their money on only their own religion (if any).

You keep using the word "distasteful" as though this is an issue of style instead of substance. It isn't; freedom of religion and the separation of church and state fundamental to our democracy.

You didn't answer my question, though. It would seem that in theory you would oppose (or find offensive) the bake sale example, even if you didn't advocate enforcement.

The question is, if I pay taxes and someone gets a school voucher or tax rebate, have they violated my freedom of religion by spending it at a Church? That seems to be the essence of your argument and I want to be sure I am clear on it.

Please also note the US constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...".

So you would have to argue that by giving the recipient of the school voucher or tax rebate freedom to spend it at a church, congress has attempted to establish a state religion or prevent free exercise thereof.

Items at a church bake sale are usually marked up to extreme levels. Purchasing these overpriced goods is not fiscally responsible. Anytime our tax money is wasted we should be offended.

You bring up a good point; maybe allowing people to use tax rebates for parochial schools is illegal. I can't say for sure as I don't understand the law enough.

It's a slippery slope... should government employees (whose salaries are paid by taxpapers) be allowed to buy goods at church bake sales?

Should people be allowed to buy goods at church bake sales with the proceeds from US Government Savings Bonds?

Should recipients of Federally subsidized student loans be allowed to use some of that loan money to buy church bake sale goods?

These are all (in my opinion) equally absurd examples, yet they are perfectly analogous to your objection to vouchers being spent at parochial schools.

In all your examples, the person receiving the cash either earned it (bonds, government employees) or will pay for it (student loans). A voucher is a gift from the government (taxpayers) to an individual. That's the key difference.

Usually, people earn their cash. When they earn it, we don't get to control what they do with it. In fact, we don't even get to know what they spend it on. That is the beautiful thing about cash. To restrict people from spending their money on their religion illegally restricts their expression of their religion.

When feasible, the government shouldn't be giving cash to people who didn't earn it. That is a core principle of welfare and that is why we have WIC, food stamps, government-subsidized housing, and school vouchers. It isn't feasible to have coupons for everything so we have to give people cash for some things.

> And, public dollars should never go to religious organizations or anti-religious organizations.

You are acting as if these children's parents did not pay tax. They only get their own tax money back to spend it on their children's education as they see fit.

What you propose is that we remove money from parents (through taxation) and force them to sent their children to school that you (or whoever) approved.

> Again, I am not against religion but I am against someone imposing their religion on others--even their own children.

You use the word indoctrination rather funny. It looks like to you, indoctrination is any teaching of anything which is not approved by you.

A parent should have the full authority to teach his child whatever values and beliefs it is he wants the child to believe. It is not the responsibility of the state or you or anyone else to determine what a parent should teach his child.

You are against a religious person teaching his beliefs onto his children. Yet you are for imposing your beliefs onto the children of other people.

If you want to educate children in your beliefs then you can get your own children or adopt some – but do not try to force other parents what to do.

It is not true that they "only get their own tax money back". A tax rebate would have that effect. I am not opposed to refunding people's tax money; I am opposed to giving them somebody else's tax money to support their religion. The voucher program is not a tax rebate because the people that stand to benefit most from the voucher program do not pay enough property taxes to cover the cost of private schools if they those property tax payments were refunded to them.

I never suggested that we force people to do anything. My whole argument is that we shouldn't force people to pay for religions they don't subscribe to.

I never said that the state should force parents to raise their kids secularly. What I said is that we shouldn't give them money to raise them religiously. I am not trying to impose my beliefs on anybody, and I am not asking anybody for money to help me impose my beliefs.

You keep trying to reframe my argument as anti-choise and anti-religion. It isn't the case. My argument is that the law should ensure that people should be able to choose NOT to support religious organizations they aren't members of, and we shouldn't take people's tax money and give it to religious organizations they oppose.

(I do believe that parents should give their kids a serious means of choosing their own religion. But, I didn't say the state should force them to do so.)

> people that stand to benefit most from the voucher program do not pay enough property taxes to cover the cost of private schools

How do you know how much tax they pay? I can bet you that most people pay more taxes than the value of the voucher program. Why not then abolish the education part of taxation completely and let everyone else decide where to school their children with private money? Or would that lose its coercive effect that you desire?

> My whole argument is that we shouldn't force people to pay for religions they don't subscribe to.

What if a tax payer opposes not sending children to schools of their choice? If 10% of the tax payers are of a certain religion then logic dictates that about 10% of children's parents would belong to that religion.

Religious people can choose religious schools, secular people can choose secular schools or (what happens more often) they choose the same private school and religious people choose religious classes.

> I never said that the state should force parents to raise their kids secularly.

What you said was “I am against someone imposing their religion on others--even their own children.”. The only way you would be able to accomplish that is with state interference (i.e. policing parents to ensure that they do not impart any religion on their children).

> I am not trying to impose my beliefs on anybody, and I am not asking anybody for money to help me impose my beliefs.

If you tax the public and use that money to provide education that fits your specified view (e.g. totally secular/irreligious) then you are imposing your beliefs on someone else.

That is because if a parent wants their children to have a religious education, they would have to pay double for it (once through taxation and once through school fees). The only thing that these vouchers do is preventing parents from paying double for their children's school fees.

When I said "I am against someone imposing their religion on others--even their own children," I meant exactly what I said and no more. In particular, I didn't say anything about the government policing parents regarding their religious practicies.

I totally support a tax rebate program that could be used for both religious and secular private schools. That way parents do not have to "pay double" to send their kid to private school. But, that is not the effect that the voucher program has, because of our progressive tax system.

Interesting. A few things stand out about your view:

You support public financing of education, but only when there is also public delivery of education services.

The objective of public financing of education is economic egalitarianism -- why should a kid not be able to go to school just b/c his parents can't afford it or don't consider it a worthwhile expenditure.

By objecting to some cases of public financing of education (such as vouchers) you seem to think that a kid whose parents are poor or who do not value education should have only one option, public school. I'm curious why you feel the need to limit the choices of the poor kid so much, but not the rich kid -- why shouldn't all parochial schools be banned?

It may be the case that you oppose the public funding of k-12 education. If that's the case, your argument is at least consistent. But you would then need to admit that since most people pay quite different amounts of property taxes, etc., that some deserve a refund and some deserve to have to pay extra even for public school.

As I said in other comments, I support vouchers for most non-parochial private schools.

I am willing to give parents of parochial school students tax rebates as a compromise to make voucher program implementable. Anybody that pays enough in property taxes to have the rebate cover the parochial school tuition can afford to send their kid to parochial school anyway. So, my support for tax rebates is purely tactical/political.