Education broadens your mind. Indoctrination, on the other hand, narrows it.

Sadly, in Alabama — where I have lived for more than 40 years — state politicians seem unconcerned about broadening anyone’s mind, and they don’t appear to worry about private schools and home schools that indoctrinate more than they educate. They just want votes.

The Legislature and Gov. Kay Ivey are working on a proposal that would give nearly $7,000 of public money — your money — to parents who want to homeschool their kids or send them to private schools. Certainly, the idea of spending state money on private schools could be problematic constitutionally, but that’s not the real issue.

Abandonment of public education is what this is about.

Sure, the politicians who support this plan would deny that. They would say that Alabamians should have the freedom to educate (or indoctrinate) their children any way they like, and that they shouldn’t have to pay a premium to do that. Translation: People shouldn’t have to pay taxes to support public schools and also pay tuition to send their children to private schools or pay to educate them at home. The government should cover their costs just like it covers the costs of teaching children in public schools.

The governor and legislators behind the plan understand that it would gravely affect public education in Alabama, leaving kids from poor families stuck in public schools that are even more poorly funded than they are now.

Please don’t splutter to me that those families can home-school their kids or create private schools in their rural communities. That won’t be doable for many folks, and our political leaders know that. But they also know that this is a perfect way to declare that they aren’t “woke” and that you should be able to teach your children at home or in private schools at state expense.

It’s red meat for the conservative majority in this state, and they know it. The fact that they’ll trash the notion of public education in the process is shameful.

But shouldn’t you be able to educate your children any way you want? What about me, a grandmother of two children who attend (or, in the case of the younger one will soon attend) Catholic school, and whose own children attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through the 12th grade?

You can educate your children through free, taxpayer-supported schools provided by the state. You can also educate your kids at home, or you can send them to private schools that charge tuition. In all cases, you and everybody else — including people who don’t have kids — will pay taxes that support public schools.

And that’s as it should be. A well-educated society is a universal good that benefits everyone in the society, regardless of whether they have children.

Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the man who pushed the development of nuclear naval vessels in the 1950s, was known as an extremely tough and disciplined man. In the last years of his life, he concentrated on education, and had this to say about its importance:

“Our greatest responsibility, as parents and as citizens, is to give America’s youngsters the best possible education. We need the best teachers and enough of them to prepare our young people for a future immeasurably more complex than the present, and calling for ever larger numbers of competent and highly trained men and women.”

By “best possible education,” I do not think he meant that we should replace public schools with a network of pop-up private and home schools that are unlikely to produce “competent and highly trained men and women.”

What the governor and legislators want to do is to relegate public education to the poor. That done, the money to fund public schools will dwindle and a lot of nice kids with no experience of having their ideas challenged will enter society. Some of them will be well-indoctrinated but poorly educated — just the way a despot likes them.

There are some places where indoctrination is absolutely necessary. If you doubt it, ask a United States Marine to name the nation’s elite fighting force. Soldiers are indoctrinated in basic training to obey the doctrine — the basic beliefs, practices and functions — of the military service to which they belong. Organizations do this, too; think of the “company vision” posters plastered on the walls of business conference rooms.

But aren’t I the hypocrite here? Except for a few years at public universities, our children attended Catholic schools from kindergarten through law school. Certainly, they were indoctrinated in Catholic teaching. They were taught that their faith is important. However, they were also taught about religions and philosophical ideas that were new to them — and different.

We didn’t expect the state of Alabama to pay for their educations.

What’s more important is that our children — and I hope yours — were exposed to ideas that broadened their thinking. As youngsters they were educated, not indoctrinated, and thus they are now hard-to-mislead adults.

The notion to weaken or even ditch public education is deeply cynical. It will hamper our ability to compete economically and could ultimately lead to the failure of our democratic system.

Republican President George W. Bush highlights this fact in a publication from the Bush Presidential Center in which he quotes Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt: “[d]emocracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely.  The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.”

Regardless of what they say, far too many of Alabama’s politicians don’t care about the future of democracy. They’re interested in the next election and the next million dollars they need to raise to win.

The danger of what they’re trying to do is a lesson we all must learn right now.

We must have a well-educated society.

Our democracy depends on it.

Frances Coleman is a former editorial page editor of the Mobile Press-Register. Email her at [email protected] and “like” her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/prfrances.