February 14, 2012: GOP Presidential Candidate Attacks Government Funding for Public Schools

Speaking at an Idaho campaign rally, Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R-PA) implies he is opposed to government-funded public schools. “We didn’t have government-run schools for a long time in this country, for the majority of the time in this country,” he tells his listeners. “We had private education. We had local education. Parents actually controlled the education of their children. What a great idea that is.” He refuses to answer questions as to whether he wants to end public funding for public schools, but as CBS News reports, his antagonism for public schools is clear in his remarks. In March, he told an audience: “Just call them what they are. Public schools? That’s a nice way of putting it. These are government-run schools.” Santorum home-schools his seven children; however, between 2001 and 2004, he enrolled them in Pennsylvania’s Cyber Charter School, a publicly-funded school, while he and his family lived in Virginia, and failed to pay over $100,000 in tuition fees and charges that the state and the local district were forced to absorb. [Mother Jones, 1/4/2012; CBS News, 2/15/2012] In 2011, Santorum said that public schools were a means that Democrats used to “socialize” children away from their parents and towards their way of thinking (see January 7, 2011).