As far as I can tell, there is no Constitutional "Right to a Free Education"

If you read my previous entry, you should have, by now, come to your conclusion about whether or not there is a right to free education that is protected by the US Constitution.  As I said in that post, I was recently in a discussion regarding this point and was confronted with some rather adamant respondents who got very incensed when I tried to point out the gaps in their logic.  Hopefully, if you are reading far enough to reach this sentence, you are willing to have an adult discussion based on the facts and wording of the US Constitution and its amendments. 😃

So, let's get started on my response.   As indicated in the title of this post, my short answer is, no, as far as I can tell there is no "Right to a Free Education" guaranteed by the United States Constitution or its Amendments.  I've read (and recently reread) the US Constitution and its Amendments and, while there is mention of protection of our borders and a couple of other things as being the responsibility of the federal government, there is no mention of the federal government being responsible for the public (i.e. free) education system.

I know this may come as a shock to some people, especially in light of a rather long list of Supreme Court decisions regarding equality of education.  The thing is, in many of not most, of those SCOTUS decisions, there is reliance on the 14th Amendment and the fact that it calls for equa; treatment under the law, so an awful lot of people have drawn the inference that this reliance on the 14th Amendment implies (or, as some would claim, out right states) that there is a Constitutionally defined and protected Right to a Free Education.  In point of fact, the only implication that should be drawn from those decisions and their reliance on the 14th Amendment is that IF a state/county/city offers free education, THEN the free education must be offered to everyone on an equal basis.

Okay, so, what rights ARE guaranteed by the US Constitution and its Amendments?

Do we (in the United States) have a Constitutional right to a free education?

Recently, I entered into a discussion (on Facebook) that started from a statement by someone that, in the United States, there is a Constitutional right to a free and equal education.  Before I reveal more about the discussion, I'm going to ask you to consider whether or not you would agree with that statement.  As with all questions regarding Constitutional rights, i.e. rights enumerated in and protected by the US Constitution and its associated Amendments, this is not a nuanced, shades of grey question but, rather, a straight up or down, yes or no question.  So, pause here for a few seconds and decide, yes or no, do you agree with the statement that, in the US, there is a Constitutional right to a free education.

Okay, I'm going to assume that you have given at least a little thought to the question and have decided upon your answer to it.  So, if you have decided that, yes, there is a Constitutional right to a free education, I now have another question for you: where in the US Constitution and its Amendments is this right guaranteed?  Feel free to Google/Bing the US Constitution and its Amendments and then post a comment with your references ... I promise to read your comments; however, I am going to provide my answer in my next post.