To me, one of the most important causes for libertarians is to abolish Public Schools.
The Public Schools train our kids to be statist, worshipers of the state.
The best way to achieve liberty in our lifetime, and make sure we keep it for future generations, is to completely separate government from education -- any government, from any education.
When kids start studying the Declaration of Independence (Not the part court historians that worship Lincoln selectively notice, but the part that says all government is given its power by consent of the governed), The Constitution, and the Articles of Confederations, they will learn why our founders hated paper money, hated taxes, and hated protectionism (at least Madison hated protectionist tariffs).
Another thing is the public schools don't teach kids how to read. 70% of people in this country can't read above a 5th grade level, and 50% can't read beyond an 8th grade level -- at least according to an article I read awhile ago about car seat manuals. The article recommended a law to force car seat manual writers to write at a 5th grade level. (They were written at 10th.)
I substitute teach in the public school district sometimes, and I'm amazed at the number of kids in advanced math classes (for which I frequently sub) who can't do basic addition and multiplication in their head.
The public schools don't teach kids to think. In fact, they are designed to teach kids not the think. To be sheep. To cause strict separations between the elite classes and the masses.
The goal of the public school, is not to channel a students courage, but to make him incapable of being courageous about anything. See John Taylor Gatto's Dumbing Us Down
As John Taylor Gatto says, "The problem with public education, isn't that it's not working. It's that it is working and it's doing exactly what it's suppose to."
The public schools also tend to teach kids that pleasure and and accumulating things are the ultimate goals. Hedonism and materialism are the gods the public schools teach kids to believe in. With kids addicted to that kind of thinking, it's no wonder kids can't think, read, write, or add. It's not that public schools have digressed. It's that they were designed to do this from the start.
He writes, "Now, you needn't have studied marketing to know that there are two groups of people who can always be convinced to consume more than they need to: addicts and children. School has done a pretty good job of turning our children into addicts, but it has done a spectacular job of turning our children into children. Again, this is no accident."
Add to that the lies the public schools are teaching our kids: That our country is a democracy (It's not, it's a Constitutional Federation based on the rule of law, not on the rule of men -- see also, Democracy, the God that failed); That Lincoln was the great emancipator (He wasn't ); That FDR Saved us from the great depreciation. (Actually Wilson caused it by expanding the money supply, and Rosevelt was the one that made it great.)
It's no wonder the majority of our population is statists and believes it's OK to use government to plunder their neighbors.
Steps to achieving this seperation
One thing we don't want to do, is a implement a voucher program. Vouchers will eventually come with strings, thereby making the private schools extensions of government propaganda.
We don't want what's happened to private colleges and universities to
happen to private secondary and elementary schools.
See
http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/001499.html
http://www.sepschool.org/misc/vouchers.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig/paul2.html
http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul132.html
Several things CAN be done immediately.
1) Get rid of ANY and ALL home schooling laws. No Statewide tests. (And no local ones) And making it illegal to force people to take the federal ones (and the state ones) too.
2) Eliminate ALL state funding of public education. The more local the public education that does exist, the easier it will be to abolish it. Relevant to this goal, is to not allow the state to accept ANY federal funds relating to education either. Frankly, don't allow the state to accept any federal funds period is better. But we should focus on the education ones first, as I believe it is of primary importance for achieving liberty. Political entities should depend on the smaller geographical political entities, not the other way around.
3) Allow families who don't use the public school, to deduct the entire amount off their taxes that would have gone to public education. Typically this would mean they could deduct most of their property tax.
4) Allow ANYBODY to deduct dollar for dollar, all monies donated to private schools, or donated to help put somebody into a private school, or donated to help somebody buy home-schooling materials.
Eventually, everybody will leave the public education system, because of this influx of money into the more free education markets, and we can entirely abolish government schools.
When that happens, or when we get close to that goal, (Or maybe immediately) we can propose a State Constitutional Ammendment.
"Legislature shall make no law regarding the establishment of education or school. There shall from now on, be a complete separation between government and education, and a complete separation between government and schooling. The people of this state don't believe it's right for the government to tell their kids how to think, as it is the voice-box of tyrannical government propaganda."
All this will have the positive side affect of eliminating the majority of property taxes as well. A tax that inherently violates our right to own property. As soon as you start paying property tax you have in effect become renters to the government, a serf.