Public Education: The Compulsion to Control
Since the promoters of compulsory education do not have
history,
decency, common sense, and certainly not educational achievement
on their side,
force is the only way such activists can achieve their goal...
The compulsory public education of America's children
represents the bad fruit of allowing religion to influence
secular government, and interferes substantially in the
personal liberties of parents. The freedom of conscience
won through much suffering by the Separatists such as the
Pilgrims in Plymouth and Roger Williams in Rhode Island,
and forged into law in the U.S. Constitution, is quickly
being eroded in these modem times. At one time parents were
still free to pass on the knowledge and beliefs that they
thought best for their own children, until organized religion
in America, with its strong governmental influence, brought
in the concept of compulsory education. Eventually, taxes
were forced upon every citizen to pay for this education,
along with state control over what would be taught.
State-controlled education leaves the parents no
control over what the state uniformly and unalterably teaches
all the children regardless of the religious or cultural
values of the individual parents. This substantial interference
in the personal liberties of parents overrides the very
personal choices of what goes into their children by example
and by indoctrination. This is just one example of the bad
fruit of allowing religion to influence secular government.
There is a fundamental Christian concept underlying the
entire structure of state-controlled education that
may surprise you. In fact, many of its most ardent champions
would deny even being religious, let alone being guilty
of advocating one of the most well-known and least-liked
of Christian doctrines — the total depravity of man. The
assumption is that parents are corrupt, easily tending to
be abusive, unreliable, and therefore needing to be watched
over. James Carter, a Massachusetts legislator, wrote the
following in 1826. It was part of his ultimately successful
campaign to pass compulsory education laws. In speaking
of children, he writes:
"Their whole education is drawn from parental
examples, which are not always the best, and are often times
the most corrupt; and derived from the influence of surrounding
society, which, all will acknowledge, contains abundantly
enough of depravity to corrupt the propensities and pervert
the tender principles of a child."
Forty years earlier, Dr. Benjamin Rush, a prominent Christian,
statesman, and physician, had written towards the same end,
describing mankind in brute-like terms:
"Man is naturally an ungovernable animal; when
we add the restraints of ecclesiastical to those of domestic
and civil government, we produce in him the highest degrees
of order and virtue.. Our schools of learning, by producing
one general and uniform system of education, will render
the mass of the people more homogeneous and thereby fit
them more easily for uniform and peaceable government...
Our country includes family, friends, and property, and
should be preferred to them all. Let our pupil be taught
that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public
property. I consider it as possible to turn men into republican
machines."
Carter's and Rush's explicit goals were social change
and social control. They speak approvingly of the homogenization
of mankind. The public school system was created to achieve
this goal.
This deep-seated view of the ineptitude, if not
depravity of parents (people like you and me) is therefore
shared, as a core value, between groups that are today seen
as fiercely opposing forces in society: socially conservative
Christians and socially liberal family "protection" and
"planning" agencies and child welfare advocates. Of the
latter, Paul Roberts writes to the parents of America:
"If you want to avoid ruin, understand that "child
advocates' have succeeded in convincing school teachers,
doctors, your neighbors — just about anyone who sees your
child — that three out of four parents are child abusers."
The Christian forerunners of compulsory education, like
Carter and Rush, as well as the advocates of the modern
welfare state, do not explain how teachers or social workers
or foster parents escape this general depravity. They assume
that educated professionals are better suited to the care
and training of children than parents. In saying this, they
are actually attempting to set up a new social order. It
is not hard to foresee the day when such powers in society
will find common cause as they realize how advantageous
the other is to their shared goals.
However, proponents of compulsory education have neither
history, decency, common sense, nor educational achievement
on their side. It is an astonishing fact that in the two
centuries of America's history preceding compulsory education,
America's children were better educated, by every fundamental
measure, than they have been since. As you consider this,
know that the U. S. Supreme Court has already defined what
those measures are, in ways that may surprise you. In 1972,
in the case of Wisconsin v. Yoder,[5] the Court
identified the goals of compulsory education laws as:
- Minimize the danger of child labor;
- Prepare children for meaningful occupations so that
they will not become a public charge;
- Prepare children to exercise the responsibilities of
citizenship.
That the compulsory educational system of America has
failed radically on its second goal is all too clear from
the emphasis that has been placed on welfare reform in America
for the past thirty years. How has it done on fulfilling
its third goal, to prepare children to exercise the responsibilities
of citizenship? Let's compare the new system of state-controlled
education with the freer, public, private, and parentally
controlled, non-compulsory system of education that
preceded it.
The famous French observer of American life, Alexis De
Tocqueville, who traveled the United States extensively
in 1831-1832, made the following amazing observation
about education in America twenty years before the first
compulsory education laws:
"The mass of those possessing an understanding
of public affairs, a knowledge of laws and precedents, a
feeling for the best interests of the nation, and the faculty
of understanding them, is greater in America than anyplace
in the world."
A century and a half after education was made compulsory,
Curtis Gans, director of the Committee for the Study of
the American Electorate, would say before the November 7
election,
"Young people no longer study current events or
get tested on them... A large majority don't discuss politics
and a large minority are civicly illiterate."
De Tocqueville would not be able to repeat his words today
would he?
And lastly, what of the traditionally stated goals of
public education, "reading, writing, and arithmetic"? In
1800 DuPont de Nemours was commissioned by President Thomas
Jefferson to survey education in America. He could happily
report to Jefferson that:
"Most young Americans... can read, write, and
cipher. Not more than four in a thousand are unable to write
legibly — even neatly..."
Four in a thousand who can't read and write translates
into 99.6% who can! And this was 52 years before the first
compulsory education laws. De Tocqueville especially praised
the citizens of New England:
"There has never been under the sun a people as
enlightened as the population of the north of the United
States. Because of their education they are more strong,
more skillful, more capable of governing themselves and
understanding their liberty; that much is undeniable."[9]
This being the situation, it may reasonably be asked,
"What problem was compulsory education imposed upon America
to fix?" It would seem as though something needs to be found
to fix the solution.
According to the famous article, "Johnny Still Can't Read,"
estimates in 1981 of the numbers of people who were "functionally
illiterate" are truly astonishing:
"…those who cannot read a want ad, bus schedule,
or label on a medicine bottle — run as high as 25 million;
another 34 million are just barely capable of simple reading
tasks."
So these people can barely read, and they cannot do what
the Americans De Tocqueville saw in 1832 could do. They
cannot govern themselves. They cannot even take care of
themselves. They need, even demand, that the government help them. They certainly do not understand their
liberties, or they never would have handed over the education
of their children to such a foundationally flawed, corrupt,
and failing system as compulsory public education!
So why does it stay in place, besides the obviously self-serving
power of teachers' unions? Gene I. Maeroff, education writer
for the New York Times, cautions, "Make no mistake.
Schools have been viewed by Congress primarily as instruments
of social change." Therefore, as home-schooling advocate
Helen Hegener writes,
"The benevolent teacher imparting knowledge to
children has been replaced with a combination of psychological
goals and restructured intellectual objectives. Schools
have become the primary agency for eliminating social ills
in this country, and for developing personal integrity and
the national character. It has been a master stroke to veil
this design with an inspired long-term public relations
campaign that has turned parents into staunch allies by
proclaiming that "Education is the key to "The Good Life!"'"
The "social change" and "national character" that schools
are now developing in students are actually homogenizing
students' thinking to embrace a wider loyalty to the emerging
one-world government and economy. This is achieved by down-playing
patriotism, "dumbing down" curriculum and training students
for menial jobs, says former Department of Education official
Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt.
Dr. Rush is prevailing, isn't he? Karl Marx failed in
his efforts to produce the "new socialist man," which was
supposed to come about through the removal of all the middle-class
concepts about individual rights. Dr. Rush desired his "republican
machines." The two are not really any different as far as
human freedom and dignity are concerned. Behold your teacher,
America! The victims of compulsory education will continue
to be those parents who desire to pass their culture, habits,
and ways of thinking to their children independent of the
state's control or oversight.
More about the education of our children:
We train our children in our own homes. We have developed
our own curriculum, designed to meet our children's needs.
We report our children's educational progress to the state
regularly in recognition of their right to know that our
children are being educated.
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