In a Charlotte Observer op-ed, Bill Anderson, executive director of Mecklenburg Citizens for Public Education, asks the question, “Do we no longer see education as the cornerstone of democracy?”

We could spend a lot of time considering the “we” and defining “education” and pondering the needs of a thriving republic.  But I am more interested in Anderson’s idea of supporting “the collective interest of all of our citizens.”  If you ask me, “collective interest” is a vacuous concept, often used by liberals to describe interests that they would like to impose on others.

In his op-ed, Anderson appears to make the argument that global economic competitiveness is in our collective interest, but countries like China and India demonstrate that a nation can become globally competitive without a robust system of public schools.  Many nations do just fine in the global economy by maintaining an intense focuse on educating the best and brightest students. (This was a cornerstone of Thomas Jefferson’s education proposal, by the way.)  And if we are falling behind our global competition, it has nothing to do with public school spending.  The United States the second highest per pupil expenditure in the world.