Courtesy Gage Skidmore, Flickr Creative Commons

Running on a platform that exhorts the connection between strong family values and a strong economy, Santorum has often criticized the federal government’s reach into the private sector.

"We didn't have government-run schools for a long time in this country, for the majority of the time in this country," he said, according to CBSnews.com. "We had private education. We had local education. Parents actually controlled the education of their children. What a great idea that is."

  Santorum contended that returning control of education to parents, states, and local districts -- ”the customers of the education system,” as he referred to them in the September 2011 Fox News/Google debate  -- encourages healthy socialization of children, which the public school system spoils by corralling children into grades and classes with classmates of similar age and socioeconomic group. 

"Never before and never again after their years of mass education will any person live and work in such a radically narrow, age-segregated environment," wrote Santorum in his 2005 best-seller It Takes a Family. "It's amazing that so many kids turn out to be fairly normal, considering the weird socialization they get in public schools." 

“In a home school, by contrast, children interact in a rich and complex way with adults and children of other ages all the time. In general, they are better-adjusted, more at ease with adults, more capable of conversation, more able to notice when a younger child needs help or comfort, and in general a lot better socialized than their mass-schooled peers.” (Thehill.com)

Santorum, who is described on his website as “a homeschooling parent and consumer of different schools,” has not always home-schooled his seven children.  Five of his children were enrolled in the Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School in 2001, according to Mother Jones.  The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School is considered a public school where students are held to state guidelines.

Santorum has not issued a detailed plan retooling the nation’s education system, stating only that he believes the the government should draw the line at supporting civil rights protections, enabling research, and promoting equality of opportunity.