About home schooling: Article 10 of the exalted Bill of Rights, Government’s 10 Commandments, reads: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively or to the people.”

So far as I know, up to 1979, all students in every public school in America were being “home-schooled,” in the sense that every school system was locally controlled.

An interested researcher will find that the majority opinion in America was bragging that it was the unique-in-all-the-world public school system that should be credited with making America great and American citizens responsible custodians of freedom. When the Department of Education was established its defenders took pains to explain that their goal was only to channel money to the locally controlled systems.

They promised on their mother’s graves never to encroach on local prerogatives. Have you stopped laughing? Wasn’t that one of the most hilarious one-liners ever in the Big Brother show? His usurpation of holy power was clearly unconstitutional, but who cares.

The Constitution is out of date, and, anyway, caring is too much bother.

Victor Lister

Athens