The Roots of State Education Part 1: The Spartan Model | George H. Smith | Libertarianism.org: Sparta and Athens became competing model of education, especially for those Enlightenment intellectuals who did not want to leave education under the control of the Catholic Church and other religious authorities. The contrast between the Athenian model and the Spartan model could not have been more clearly delineated. Athens, with its brilliant intellectual and cultural achievements, enjoyed a free market in education. Sparta, an intellectual and cultural wasteland, was dominated by a system of state education.
For modern libertarians the choice between these two models would seem virtually self-evident. But this was not so for some of our predecessors, who thought that the Spartan model, suitably revised, would provide a better foundation and more security for a free society than educational laissez-faire ever could. This curious anomaly in the history of libertarian thought has rarely received the attention it deserves.