Democratic survival 101

universal, compulsory public education

A (democratic) republic must have UNIVERSAL, COMPULSORY PUBLIC education or it cannot succeed. This was well-known or suspected by the key republican theorists and propagandists of the revolutionary (American and French) period. We can't have people indoctrinated into crazy-ass religious superstitions without them AT LEAST being fairly exposed to science, empiricism, and reason ... but more importantly, the rights and duties (because rights are duties by reciprocity) of citizenship.