 The importance of education, and the crucial role of the freedom of thought in education, implied, for Lange, that any social entity should have the right to set up schools and decide what should be taught in them. The state should set up schools only where existing structures of civil society have failed to generate enough schools. The state should restrict the opening of a school only when it poses a genuine threat to a legitimate state or explicitly promotes criminal activity. There should be no requirement that there be any religious instruction, let alone a requirement that any particular religion be taught. In state schools, there should be no religious instruction (Lange 1968b, 125–127).