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Ben Sasse: Public schools designed to separate Catholic kids from parents, parishes – LifeSite

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(LifeSiteNews) — Former U.S. Senator Ben Sasse explained in just a few words the shocking reason for the institution of public schooling in America: to separate Catholic kids from the influence of their parents and parishes.

Sasse, a former university president who represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate from 2015 to 2023, is dying from pancreatic cancer. He spoke at a Trinity Forum event Monday evening in Washington, D.C.

“The spread and rise of American public schools in the factory model was overwhelmingly about separating Catholic kids from their parents and their parish,” Sasse told the audience. “That’s what it was for.”

“Ben Sasse has always been honest, but facing a terminal diagnosis he has been unplugged,” reacted Jeremy Wayne Tate, perhaps the country’s biggest proponent of classical learning school and founder of the CLT Exam.   

“Last night, in exactly 13 seconds, he explained the real reason compulsory education ever started in America,” Tate explained on X.

“Catholics, consider this when making choices about education for your children,” Tate warned.

The video clip garnered over 400,000 views in less than seven hours.

That’s why the Catholic bishops created Catholic schools in 1884 — to ensure that they could teach the faith to Catholic kids because public schools promoted Protestant theology,” noted Mary Rice Hasson, senior fellow and director of the Person and Identity Project at The Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC).

“Today, public schools promote the pseudo-religion of gender ideology and Catholic schools (independent or diocesan) are needed now more than ever,” Hasson declared.

“From the beginning through today, American government-run schools have pushed the worldview of mainline Protestant denominations,” said Eric N. Kniffin, a Colorado attorney who is also an EPPC fellow.

“A great reminder that public education has always been politicized, and that private education (homeschooling, Catholic schools, religious schools by other religions, non-sectarian private schools, etc.) is absolutely crucial to a pluralistic and free society,” noted Will Estrada, senior counsel at Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA). 

Another X user who uses the name “Pope Respector” suggested on X that the rise of public schooling “was an attempt to destroy Catholic culture in America.”


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