Should education be compulsory and tax-supported, as it is today?

The answer to this question becomes evident if one makes the question more concrete and specific, as follows: Should the government be permitted to remove children forcibly from their homes, with or without the parents’ consent, and subject the children to educational training and procedures of which the parents may or may not approve? Should citizens have their wealth expropriated to support an educational system which they may or may not sanction, and to pay for the education of children who are not their own? To anyone who understands and is consistently committed to the principle of individual rights, the answer is clearly: No.

There are no moral grounds whatever for the claim that education is the prerogative of the State—or for the claim that it is proper to expropriate the wealth of some men for the unearned benefit of others.

Further, the facts remain that: (a) most parents are effectively compelled to send their children to State schools, since they are taxed to support these schools and cannot afford to pay the additional fees required to send their children to private schools; (b) the standards of education, controlling all schools, are prescribed by the State; (c) the growing trend in American education is for the government to exert wider and wider control over every aspect of education.

- Nathaniel Branden. Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1966).