Forced Government Schooling

The recent news of a hard working, academically excelling Texas student who was jailed for truancy is a reminder of the oppressive system that confronts over 40 million public school students each day.  The young woman, Diane Tran, is an 11th grade honor student who was working two jobs to help support her family but apparently violated Texas truancy law.  The judge’s comment to the press is perfectly consistent with an authoritarian regime: “If you let one run loose, what are you going to do with the rest of them? Let them go, too?” Of course, we can’t allow someone to successfully escape the penitentiary, even if it’s just for limited periods of time.

Identifying public school as a type of prison seems self-evident to those of us who try to objectively examine the modern education system. However, it is an extreme rarity that anyone with academic credentials related to learning would have that view and much less publicly articulate that position. Fortunately, we have such a person in Peter Gray, Ph.D., research professor in the Department of Psychology at Boston College. I think he is particularly qualified to critique the legitimacy of the claims of the current government schooling system since his current focus is research related to “children’s play and its educative value.”  He also has an interesting blog at the Psychology Today web site called Freedom to Learn: The roles of play and curiosity as foundations for learning.

Dr. Gray kindly consented to answer some of my questions related to compulsory government schooling. Those questions and his answers are shown in the exchange below.

Issue:  Starting in the mid-19th century, state governments decided that the state must control the intellectual development of children. Federal courts have upheld the right of states to use their police powers to force attendance at public schools and enforce government standards at private and home schools.

Forced School (“FS”): Some people see similarities between the fight for education freedom and that of abolishing slavery.  Do you see any similarities from a psychological standpoint?

Dr. Peter Gray (“PG”):  Yes, there certainly are some similarities.  In the discussion of abolishing slavery people worried about what would happen when all of the former slaves were turned loose.  People now worry about what would happen when kids are turned loose.  People can’t envision what would happen, and that becomes an argument for maintaining the status quo.  There was also lots of economic incentive to slave owners—and others who profited from the products of plantations—to maintain slavery; and there is economic incentive on the part of many to keep schools as they are.  And, of course, many assumed that Negroes were not fully human and could not deal with freedom, just as many assume that (implicitly) about children today

FS:  What problems, if any, do you see with the coercive role played by government in shaping the intellectual development of children (i.e. as opposed to a merely advisory role)?

PG:  The main problem with a coercive role played by government or anyone else is that coercion interferes with children’s natural instincts to learn through play and exploration.  Coercion is antithetical to these natural ways of learning.  That’s the main point of my blog and my forthcoming book, Freedom to Learn.

Issue: Bobby Jindal, governor of Louisiana, recently helped enact reforms that relate to early childhood education.  One of the new rules includes this: “Establish performance targets for children under the age of three and academic standards for kindergarten readiness for three and four-year old children to be used in publicly funded early childhood education programs.”

FS:  If this becomes generally accepted, do you expect to see the behavioral problems that are not uncommon in elementary and middle school children (e.g. ADHD) being diagnosed in very young children?

PG: Absolutely.  In fact, ADHD is already being diagnosed in kids as young as 3, in “academically oriented” preschools, and some of them are already on stimulants.

Issue:  The education reforms that are politically successful today appear to be of the “standards-based education” variety. One definition of standards-based education included these points: “Rather than norm-referenced rankings, a standards-based system measures each student against the concrete standard. Curriculum, assessments, and professional development are aligned to the standards.”

FS:  When we are dealing with the education of children, rather than manufacturing cars or computers, is it possible to have standardized, age-segregated, objective tests for children that measure meaningful levels of learning? 

PG: It is certainly possible to measure the learning of specific skills and information, with some reliability and validity.  However, the very act of measuring—especially when it determines whether kids fail or succeed in school—interferes with learning.  Children become oriented toward doing well on the test rather than really understanding, and toward pleasing the teacher rather than developing their own ideas and ways of thinking.  And the stress induced by continuous evaluation interferes with creativity and learning.  Moreover, the goal in education, unlike that in producing a certain kind of car, should not be standardization.  The people we need most are those who are creative and have ideas, knowledge, and skills for which we have no measures.

FS:  Given the focus on measurement, what do you think is the purpose of modern education? 

PG: “Modern education” has a number of purposes. One is babysitting, as most parents work and no adults are home during the day.  Another is employment for millions of people in the education business.  A major purpose, from the point of view of individual teachers and other school personnel, is to help students go through whatever hoops they need to move on to the next grade and ultimately into college.  Rarely is there serious thought or debate about the question of why those hoops are there. Rarely is there real reflection on bigger questions of how one finds meaning and happiness in life, or what skills are really useful, to a given person, to be productive and helpful to others in the larger culture. 

FS:   When did you come to the conclusion that schools and prisons are similar in nature?  Was there a triggering event or series of events that caused you to come to this viewpoint?

PG:  When I was a kid in school my friends and I often, only half facetiously, often referred to school as prison, and we often commented that it’s “not a free country” after all.  The point was not driven home to me, however, until my own son was in public school and, from the beginning, saw it as prison and rebelled continuously against it.  He forced me to realize how coercive and undemocratic this institution is and how much suffering it creates for many kids.  I didn’t use the word “prison” or the phrase “forced education” in my writing, however, until September. 2009, when I posted my Psychology Today essay, “Why Don’t Students Like School? Well, Duhhhh…”  I just decided then that it was time to do away with euphemisms.

Anyone who dreams of education freedom for our children should be thankful for Peter Gray’s research and his boldness.

Another education crisis has been discovered: the lack of civic knowledge. Suddenly, civic education appears on the radar screen and “solutions” are being offered by the same type of people who created the problem in the first place.  The federal government appears to be rallying the troops to push its version of politically correct citizenship in public schools. Perhaps the growing support for limited government is enough of a threat to the political elites that they feel compelled to take action where they can.

The Department of Education’s web page on civic learning includes links for a number of reports.  The first one that got my attention was this:  Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools. The title is enough to get one’s blood pressure to rise since a democracy is the polar opposite of the authoritarian public school system - as evidenced by compulsory attendance laws and the treatment of its captives. The report was published by the Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools in October 2011.  Per their web site: “The Campaign is guided by a Steering Committee that represents a coalition of more than 60 advocates, educators, practitioners, and officials dedicated to promoting civic education in America’s schools.”

It is interesting how they frame the problem in the report. Apparently, they see the lack of civic knowledge (and participation) as a material cause of “divisiveness and inaction.”

But the ideal of America as composed of a unified “We the People” can at times seem to ring hollow, since so little seems to unite three hundred million Americans.

The present decline in common purpose is closely linked to a decline in civility. When Americans do not feel bound to their fellow citizens, spirited rhetoric leads to divisiveness and inaction. Even a brief look at cable news or political blogs makes clear that many Americans are talking past— rather than to—each other, and they often do so with a fundamental lack of respect for the other’s perspectives.

The folks behind this report are the people who need to learn civility first before they lecture anyone else on that topic: does anyone remember the teachers protesting Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and similar events in other states? I suspect that these self-appointed Guardians of Democracy really don’t like the “great unwashed” disagreeing with their superiors.  As expected, we are told that more compulsory government schooling is the solution to this latest “crisis.”

John Taylor Gatto noted this false assumption behind public schools in his magnum opus The Underground History of American Education: “The socialization of children in age-graded groups monitored by State agents is essential to learn to get along with others in a pluralistic society.” Gatto then elaborates:

The actual truth is that the rigid compartmentalizations of schooling teach a crippling form of social relation: wait passively until you are told what to do, never judge your own work or confer with associates, have contempt for those younger than yourself and fear of those older. Behave according to the meaning assigned to your class label. These are the rules of a nuthouse.

Here are some recommendations from the Guardian of Democracy report with my interpretive headings:

Let’s create more standards and give more tests: “Support the development of common state standards in civic learning (civics, history, geography, and economics). Support the states in the development of common assessments tied to the standards.”

Let’s discuss the glory of big government and then lobby for more education dollars: “Revitalize civic learning from the dry facts of history and the structure of government to a focus on the ways citizens can and must be engaged participants in civic life. Focus instruction on a vibrant discussion of historical facts and their underlying values.”

But don’t talk about liberty and limited government: “All citizens should volunteer time and resources to help schools provide effective civic learning.”

Let’s get our media pals to help us indoctrinate the kids: “The media should recognize schools as an ideal venue for reading/watching news outlets and should support schools through programs such as “Newspapers in Education” and PBS’s “the.News.””

Returning to the Dept. of Education’s web site, I took a look their own “crisis” report: Advancing Civic Learning and Engagement in Democracy: A Road Map and Call to Action published January 2012.

Once again, the civics “crisis” is revealed:

As these data suggest, our public schools and postsecondary institutions are simply doing too little today to adequately prepare Americans for informed, engaged participation in civic and democratic life.

One interesting comment stands out:

The goals of traditional civic education, such as increasing civic knowledge, voter participation, or volunteerism, remain worth pursuing. However, the new generation of civic learning puts students at the center and includes both learning and practice—not just rote memorization of names, dates, and processes. And more and more, civic educators are harnessing the power of technology and social networking to engage students across place and time [emphasis added].

Is this what we want?  Should government agents not only be indoctrinating students but also “harnessing” technology and social networking to politically “engage students”? With the possibility of creating public school versions of ACORN, it is difficult to imagine a greater conflict of interest: government agents organizing students to lobby for expanding state power.  Since it is happening now to varying degrees, we can see the temptation is irresistible.

The Advancing Civic Learning report also states this:

At no school, college, or university should students graduate with less civic literacy and engagement than when they arrived. 

I’m not sure if I should laugh or cry.

Can we reasonably expect public schools to present our founders’ views of the constitutional limits of government (to a captive audience in a prison-like environment) when the very existence of government control of the intellectual development of our children is an affront to our freedom of conscience?  I think not.

Since the topic of true education freedom is now so foreign to the American mind, there seemed to be a need for a short, entertaining video on that topic. In order to reach as many people as possible with the basic message, I created a four minute animation video featuring Angus “the world’s most interesting goat” and his human friend Stuart. The video can be found by clicking here: Angus the Goat headbutts the school system.  

With the publishing of the video, it seems appropriate to highlight some of the content of this blog.  Selected blog posts are shown below for a quick tour of the issues. As with all of my posts, the bold text is a link to the source documents.

• A brief summary of the issues is found in my very first post Don’t ask a fish. The arguments are expanded here:  Conceptual problems with the system.

• Why true learning is hampered in the current education model: Do you enjoy learning? We can fix that problem.

• Freedom of conscience is trampled with this system:  Public school vs. private conscience

• Schools are considered a necessity but so is food: Free groceries and other analogies

• The true financial costs are staggering: What do you expect for a mere $600 billion a year?

• It is a fight that has been going on for a long time: Resisting public schools in 1886: the work of Asst. Attorney General Montgomery

• Just a touch of humor: You’ve been programmed

• I also updated the about me page to provide some context for this project.

A pithy description of the current government education was made by educator John Taylor Gatto (in reference to the 19^th Century Prussian origins of our school system) in an essay titled Against School:

… an educational system deliberately designed to produce mediocre intellects, to hamstring the inner life, to deny students appreciable leadership skills, and to ensure docile and incomplete citizens - all in order to render the populace “manageable.” 

The National Education Association’s motto reads: Great Public Schools for Every Student.  In effect, the real objective is this: Great Public Schools for Every Government.

Sometimes we encounter ideas that are simply breathtaking in their scope and arrogance.  The current example before me is the paper titled Taking Children’s Interests Seriously by Martha Fineman of the Emory University School of Law .   Her bio looks very impressive.  “Her scholarly interests are the legal regulation of family and intimacy and the legal implications of universal dependency and vulnerability.”  Her bio also says she is “a leading authority on family law and feminist jurisprudence.”

Whatever her positions may be in other subjects, in the area of human rights and public schools she is firmly on the side of government oppression. The basic thesis of her paper appears to be that parental interests in a child’s education must be subordinate to the interests of the state. 

In Fineman’s opinion, home schools or private schools are inferior to public schools for the following reasons:

Parents are not qualified to make education decisions for their children.

I question whether parents have superior knowledge when the issues involve what subjects and methods of preparation are most likely to prepare the child for a future in a complex, technical, and rapidly changing world. This type of expertise is almost certainly within the province of certified teachers and school boards, not parents

Governmental entities have difficulty managing an annual budget let alone prophesying the future, yet we are to believe the government’s nominal experts can prepare us for an unknown and unknowable “future in a complex, technical, and rapidly changing world.”  

Parents may teach their children ideas that conflict with “secular standards.”

But what if the parental values and morals to be expressed in making choices for the child are not so conveniently exemplary by secular standards as those that are presumed? What is the role for expressive interest of parents who believe in the value and morality of white supremacy or resistance to the “jack-booted” officials of a federal government poised to take over and enslave free people?

What if the “secular standards” delivered in prison-like “jack-booted” environments (such as public schools) in fact alienate the children from their family, their culture, and ultimately themselves and thereby greatly impoverish their lives? Ironically, our modern school system has its roots in a true “jack-booted” society: militaristic 19th Century Prussia.

Private schools don’t inherently operate in the best interests of the child.

Fineman  sees private schools as an inferior option because they may teach a worldview that that she finds offensive or unenlightened.  Within that context she states: “Children’s interests are pushed to the background under the erroneous assumption that private schools inherently operate in the best interests of the child.”

She apparently assumes that public school administrators, teachers unions and the politicians that are lobbied by them operate in the “best interests of the child?” Anyone who believes that government agencies are somehow exempt from natural human weaknesses is certainly naive. At least with private schools, you can essentially fire them.  Like any other private enterprise they are normally very interested in what their customers think – obviously, that is something not found in governmental agencies like public schools.

Fineman does not like the fact that home education is less regulated in some states. However, the “research” she cites is incorrect:

… at least ten states currently lack regulations of any sort over parents who choose to home school their children (Gross, 2008). In fact, in those ten states, parents are not even required to inform the school or the state that they intend to home school their children (Gross). As a result, parents are given total discretion over their children’s education and neither children nor the state are given an opportunity to assert their interests.

I wish that were true but it is not.  The states in question appear to be AK, CT, ID, IL, IN, MI, NJ, OK, MO and TX.  All of the ten states have compulsory school laws.  In all states, home school is an exception to compulsory public school attendance which could be more heavily regulated by legislative decree at any time in the future.  All but one state asserts, either explicitly or implied through case law, that the education  must be equivalent or comparable to public school.  Most dictate the number of days or hours of instruction.  Even in the most liberal state of all,  Alaska, the state can still make a case that the child is not being “educated” and  take enforcement actions etc.  Please note that these are the most lenient states.

She also makes this unsubstantiated claim regarding those ten states: “The total absence of regulation over what and how children are taught leaves the child vulnerable to gaining a sub-par or nonexistent education from which they may never recover.”  If is true that children would never recover from a sub-par education, then we should immediately release the forty million captives in the public school system since, from a classical education perspective, that system is guilty of that very same crime.

Fineman’s ultimate objective is for the abolition of home and private schools.

Perhaps the more appropriate suggestion for our current educational dilemma is that public education should be mandatory and universal. Parental expressive interest could supplement but never supplant the public institutions where the basic and fundamental lesson would be taught and experienced by all American children: we must struggle together to define ourselves both as a collective and as individuals.

So there you have it.  Everyone must be processed and programmed by the government school system. The education establishment and politicians determine whatever they think should be the “fundamental lesson” that must be “taught and experienced” by every child in America. Parents must sit at the back of the bus -  and pay for everyone’s ride.

There is nothing new here.  If you look into the history of compulsory schooling in America, you will find that Fineman’s totalitarian thinking was represented there at the inception.

The education propaganda machine would have you believe that our government education system has always been seen as something beneficial and absolutely essential to the success of our great republic.  One would be led to think that only a few cranky libertarian kooks and extreme religionists would be against such an exalted public service.

Au contraire. There has been resistance to the concept of government control of education from the time of the first compulsory government schooling state law in 1852 (Massachusetts) all the way down to the present time.  One of the more interesting people in this resistance movement was Zachariah Montgomery.  He was the U.S. Assistant Attorney General appointed by President Grover Cleveland and served in that position from 1885 to 1889. Even while in office, he traveled and lectured on the conceptual problems with what he called the anti-parental “New England system” of compulsory government schools.  In 1886, he published Poison Drops in the Federal Senate: The School Question From A Parental and Non-Sectarian Stand-Point.  

The concepts contained in the following quotes from Montgomery’s book should be familiar to readers of this blog.

…the true and proper course to be pursued by the friends of educational reform is to keep prominently before the people  the fundamental, the vital issue, this question, namely : Shall the parent or the political State determine for a child who shall be its teacher, its companions, and what books it shall or shall not study. Let all other issues be made subordinate to this.

…the law of nature and nature’s God, which ordains that it is both the right and duty of parents to educate their children in such manner as they believe will be most for their future happiness is utterly disregarded and set at naught by the State, which ordains that it is neither the right nor the duty of parents, but of the State, to say when, where, by whom, and in what manner our children shall be educated.

Montgomery provided evidence that states with compulsory government schooling had higher crime and suicide rates (and other social problems) than those states without such compulsion.  His research was based on published government census data.  Unfortunately, it is a study that we can’t duplicate today since there are no states in America that have true freedom of education  (i.e. no compulsion and no government education laws).

Another serious problem with government control of school curricula is the conflict of interest that it engenders: the government has the power to mold the minds of its citizens.  It is natural that the government would favor teaching obedience to authority and belief in a benign and benevolent government, even as it perpetually seeks increasing control over our lives.  Arguing along this line of reasoning, Montgomery notes the significant changes to the definitions of words in the standard lexicon of the time: Webster’s Dictionary.  One of his examples follows:

Webster’s 1859 version: “In free States the Constitution is paramount to the statutes or laws enacted by the Legislature, limiting and controlling its power; and in the United States the Legislature is created and its powers designated by the Constitution.”

Webster’s 1884 version: “The principal or fundamental laws which govern a State or other organized body of men, and are embodied in written documents or implied in the institutions or usages of the country or society.”  Montgomery concludes:

Thus, under public-school [instruction], the rising generation no longer look[s] upon the written Constitution as the source and limit of legislative power; but on the contrary the mere “usages of society” are raised to the dignity of constitutional law.

…how would it have been possible for them to have contrived a more ingenious device to justify in the eyes of the rising generation their official misdeeds, than by thus adopting, legalizing, and forcing into the public school, through their willing tools, a definition of the word  “Constitution” sufficiently  elastic to cover every species of their accustomed rascalities?

Perhaps one could argue that in the above example the definition was simply broadened.  However, it is interesting that the dictionary changes that Montgomery highlights in his book, along with modern anecdotal evidence, point to a trend of erosion of the constitutional limits on government.  This is consistent with what one would expect with the incentives of a system that has a natural conflict of interest with individual liberty, as noted above.  Therefore, it is not surprising that after 128 additional years of such purposeful changes, the Constitution is effectively ignored or revised into such flexibility that it has lost much of its force to contain the government’s power. 

Ultimately, Montgomery argued that government should not be in the business of providing education. That is the only long-term answer to the “school question” for a country founded on “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

Perhaps, though, we shall be told that so radical a change in the public school system, as that suggested, would work the destruction of the system itself. If that be so, then we would ask whether it is better for us to destroy the system, or to let the system destroy us?

Lest you think Montgomery is just another fossil from the Victorian era, please consider John Taylor Gatto’s summary critique of our repressive education system in his book The Underground History of American Education:

It set out to build a new social order at the beginning of the twentieth century (and by 1970 had succeeded beyond all expectations), but in the process crippled the democratic experiment of America, disenfranchising ordinary people, dividing families, creating wholesale dependencies, grotesquely extending childhoods.  It emptied people of full humanity in order to convert them into human resources.

It seems that history has proven that Mr. Montgomery was right.

President Obama’s comments about education in his recent State of the Union address caused me to ponder what else the government could do to our youngest citizens.  Here is some proposed text for the President for the next step in the evolution of education:

We all know that young people will be more successful if they have a strong moral and ethical foundation.  So tonight, I am proposing that every state — every state — require that all students be taught ethics and morality each year until they graduate or turn 18.  Since all children must receive this specialized training and to ensure fairness and access for all, we will require each state to create non-sectarian tax-supported state institutions that I’m calling Centers of Ethics and Morality.  A new federal cabinet position called the Secretary of Ethics and Morality will be established to ensure that each state establishes Centers meeting federal guidelines. 

This new institution will incorporate what our experts, guided by the latest scientific research, deem to be the best of the ethical and moral teachings of all religions.  By having the government provide this instruction we will remove all sectarian competition and strife that has characterized religious movements and belief systems of the past. My plan will, over time, eliminate the wasteful duplication of hundreds of thousands of obsolete and unnecessary traditional churches competing for attendees.  By bringing economies of scale and utilizing existing school buildings that are empty on the weekends, we can save religious Americans billions of dollars. Plus I will promote the conversion of thousands of tax-exempt private church buildings to productive uses that will now generate tax revenues to help support our local communities.

I suppose that some folks will contend that that this action violates the First Amendment to the Constitution.  However, the government is simply teaching ethics and morality not religion.  Don’t forget that public schools have been teaching children what they must think and know since the 19th century with the support of the Supreme Court.  If you find the idea of government teaching ethics and morality objectionable from a freedom of conscience perspective, then you will just have to get over it.  You live in the 21st Century now so it’s time to leave behind the thinking of the past and rely on our experts to teach your children the best, most scientifically advanced ethics and morality available in the world today.

Since we have tolerated government control of our children’s minds and bodies for so long, it is not difficult to imagine another profoundly unconstitutional idea tossed on to the existing framework of coercion and indoctrination. Besides, since government schools already teach ethics and morality in various ways, perhaps this concept is not so outrageous after all.

I recently spent some time studying the Smart Boys, Bad Grades report written by Julie Coates and William Draves in 2006.  The authors analyzed the well-known phenomenon of lower male academic performance in school.  They summarized the problem as follows:

1. Boys get worse grades than girls;
2. Boys are now a declining percentage of students and graduates in higher
education.

This problem appears to be endemic in Western developed countries:
“It occurs in many if not most post-industrial advanced nations, including the United Kingdom, Scandinavia, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, including French speaking Quebec, and the United States.” 

The authors summarize their findings with this statement: “The underlying reason boys get worse grades and attend higher education in declining percentages is because boys have different biological and neurological characteristics than girls.” One of the primary reasons for lower grades is that boys are “punished for late homework. GPAs are lower because of behavior unrelated to learning and knowledge. Smart boys turn in homework late, and this is also explained by the boys’ hard wiring.”

The authors issued an additional report titled  The Evidence Homework Grading is Gender Biased. In that report they present evidence that boys and girls score similarly in gender neutral tests.  

Specifically, grades are gender biased. Grade Point Averages (GPA) are lower for boys than girls because boys do less well on homework than girls, even though they do just as well on test scores, which are gender neutral. Boys get lower grades on homework primarily because they are graded on behavior unrelated to learning and knowledge, such as turning homework in late or not doing homework.

They found no correlation between homework and standardized test scores:

Dr. Cooper also reports no significant correlation (+.07) between time spent on homework and standardized achievement test scores, noting “No strong evidence was found for an association between the homework-achievement link and the outcome measure (grades versus standardized tests) or the subject matter (reading versus math).”  What this means is that time spent on homework for boys does not lead to better test scores. Boys do quite fine on tests while spending less time on homework than girls.

Although it is not discussed in the report, perhaps another message from the data is that girls are wasting time on unnecessary homework. Maybe it is actually as irrelevant as it seems. Education scholar Alfie Kohn has essentially made that argument.

It is interesting that they highlight what I think is obvious to anyone that has been processed by the education system:

“Grades…. are often not accurate measures of what students know,” writes Dr. John Woodward, Director of Research and Development for the NCA Commission on Accreditation and School Improvement. He writes, “In theory grades could be one of the best indicators of student learning, if certain conditions were met. However, in practice, teachers include many factors that are not related to what students know when grading those students.”

Although Coates and Draves document the disconnect between homework and knowledge,  they make the mistake of accepting that high “standardized test scores” equal knowledge (see my earlier post on national standards).  I argue that it is the factory model of education that is the real problem. Public education was established to create a standardized product, not to provide education in the classical sense.  Students are warehoused until they are considered old enough to enter the work force with a minimum knowledge set that will allow them to be employable by big business and government. 

More bad news from Smart Boys, Bad Grades:

The significance for boys is serious, and long lasting. Some of the impacts:

• Boys are less able to learn.

• Boys are emotionally affected, which further inhibits their learning.

• Boys are less likely to feel they can continue their formal education in the future.

• A college education is increasingly recognized as a prerequisite for entrance into the knowledge jobs of the 21st century, thus boys are not as prepared for the work world as they want to be.

• The emotional scars stay with them throughout life.

Some of the above listed problems can apply to anyone going through the system.  Just tinkering with the abuse of boys is not sufficient in light of the reality of modern education, especially delivered in a prison-like environment.  That reality is captured by Gatto in his Underground History of American Education:

The decisive dynamics which make forced schooling poisonous to healthy human development aren’t hard to spot. Work in classrooms isn’t significant work; it fails to satisfy real needs pressing on the individual; it doesn’t answer real questions experience raises in the young mind; it doesn’t contribute to solving any problem encountered in actual life. The net effect of making all schoolwork external to individual longings, experiences, questions, and problems is to render the victim listless.

It seems quite odd that we have a technologically advanced society that clings to such an impoverished view of how we learn and flourish.  It is odd but not an accident. At one time, education in America was intended to assist in developing basic intellectual skills (such as critical thinking), instruction in manners and civility, and achieving self-reliance - unlike the job focused factory system that we force on our young today.

If there are any solutions to ending the infringement on our liberties by compulsory government schooling, they will have to come through the legislative branch of our government.  They will not likely be provided by the courts.  The Supreme Court of the United States (“SCOTUS”) has regularly failed to follow our founding principles in defending citizens against tyrannical education laws. With these laws, the government is violating, among other things, our freedom of conscience (see this earlier blog post Public school vs. private conscience).

In order to understand how the SCOTUS has supported this oppression, it is instructive to examine the “only U. S. Supreme Court case that has ever decided any case involving home teaching:“  Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972) involved a group of Old Order Amish who challenged the state’s compulsory attendance laws.  Although the SCOTUS ruled in favor of the Amish, it essentially was a religious exemption only for this particular group.  What is disturbing is the underlying logic supporting the state’s authority to impose laws on its citizens minds and bodies as it relates to education.  There is an old saying in law: “If you’re weak on the facts and strong on the law, pound the law. If you’re weak on the law and strong on the facts, pound the facts. If you’re weak on both, pound the table.“  Since the court didn’t think it necessary to ground its reasoning on the Constitution and simply asserted the state’s power, witness the table pounding with these quotes from the majority opinion [emphasis added]:

There is no doubt as to the power of a State, having a high responsibility for education of its citizens, to impose reasonable regulations for the control and duration of basic education.

 … where nothing more than the general interest of the parent in the nurture and education of his children is involved, it is beyond dispute that the State acts “reasonably” and constitutionally in requiring education to age 16 in some public or private school meeting the standards prescribed by the State.

No one can question the State’s duty to protect children from ignorance….

Students of logic will see the fallacy of “begging the question” in operation in the court’s reasoning, i.e. simply assuming a claim is true does not serve as evidence for that claim.

The court also twisted Jefferson’s true position on education with this statement:

When Thomas Jefferson emphasized the need for education as a bulwark of a free people against tyranny, there is nothing to indicate he had in mind compulsory education through any fixed age beyond a basic education.

In fact, Jefferson was against compulsory schooling: “It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation [removal] and education of the infant against the will of the father.” (Note to Elementary School Act, 1817.)

Wisconsin v. Yoder also has this expansive and ominous statement within a concurring opinion:

A State has a legitimate interest not only in seeking to develop the latent talents of its children but also in seeking to prepare them for the life style that they may later choose, or at least to provide them with an option other than the life they have led in the past.

The above statement does not use the term “citizens” or “children of citizens,” rather the term used is “its children,” i.e. the state’s children. Since a state has never been known to create children, where did these children come from? They must come from those pesky natural parents.  In effect, this alludes to one of the  most unjust child custody agreements known to man: an “agreement” where the state has an almost unlimited supply of money, lawyers and guns to bring to the negotiating table while parents have to pay for their own defense plus contribute to their opponent through taxes.  It’s a deal that Don Corleone would love.

Another disturbing fiction in this opinion is this grand statement: “Providing public schools ranks at the very apex of the function of a State.” Contrary to that judicial fantasy, the views of our founders were more accurately represented with this statement made by Justice Harlan in a dissenting opinion in Berea College v. Kentucky in 1908:

The capacity to impart instruction to others is given by the Almighty for beneficent purposes; and its use may not be forbidden or interfered with by government, - certainly not, unless such instruction is, in its nature, harmful to the public morals or imperils the public.

As a side note, Harlan was dissenting against the majority ruling that upheld a Kentucky law making it unlawful to operate  a private educational institution “where persons of the white and negro races are both received as pupils for instruction.”  This case is just another example of where the majority of the SCOTUS ignored the principles underlying the Bill of Rights.

The Yoder case highlights  another interesting issue: exactly what is the function of a state or government in general? Are public schools “at the very apex of the function of a State?”   The answer can be found in the Declaration of Independence [emphasis added]: “…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, …”  Only if you twist and abuse the concept of happiness could one conceivably make the argument that government control of education is a legitimate function of the state, i.e. people will be unable to live a happy and fulfilling life unless they are forced to submit to the government’s concept of education.  If you carefully read the SCOTUS opinions in this area, such  convoluted and weak logic is unfortunately sufficient for a majority opinion. 

If you want true education freedom don’t look to the courts for support.  The solution must come from the legislative branch of government.

It recently occurred to me that there may be some psychosis involved in the resistance of many otherwise intelligent people to see the tyranny, oppression and violation of freedom of conscience (and other civil liberties) imposed on us by  forced government schooling. Perhaps we are witnessing the odd psychology of people suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

The dictionary definition of Stockholm syndrome is “the psychological tendency of a hostage to bond with, identify with, or sympathize with his or her captor.” It was first identified in a “1973 robbery attempt in Stockholm, Sweden, during which bank employees held hostage developed sympathetic feelings toward their captors.”

A Psychology Today blog post titled Political Terrorism and the Stockholm Syndrome by psychiatrist Brian Trappler has these interesting observations:

This unique attachment established between the victim and captor evolves from the exclusive dependence by the former on the latter. In exchange for the restricted life granted by the captor, these victims are willing to adopt a new reality in which no harm can come to them.

In this apparent act of self-deception, victims of Stockholm syndrome believe that their irrational empathy for their captors and their ideologies will protect them.

The psychiatrist notes that something similar to a Stockholm syndrome can occur with larger groups and even populations in politically repressive countries. 

In this fashion (through a combination of threat, isolation, and propaganda), a political tyranny has been asserted over the collective consciousness of large populations inducted into the mythical ideologies of their masters.

While adopting quasi-mystical attributions of meaning that offer existential relief, such ideologies have been devised to serve and empower the idealized leader’s political goals.

Within the religious and political arenas, unquestioning dogma is used to induce obedience.

“Threat, isolation and propaganda” could be the motto for our public education system.  It has not only been your humble scribe who has noticed how the support for the tyrannical school system seems to evidence Stockholm syndrome. For example, Clark Aldrich, education practitioner and theorist, posted this on his Unschooling Rules blog:

The traditional coercive tools for school are always a combination of carrots and sticks, promises of bright future for compliance and threats of public and total failure for resistance. Fair enough.

As a result, students often find themselves displaying signs of Stockholm Syndrome. This situation, when victims under the total control of a few people form sympathy with their captors, has been identified from studying hostage situations. But many students as well form a bond with teachers and institutions they feared, and who had similar (perceived but wielded) absolute control over their lives and futures.

Since almost everyone in our society has been processed and programmed by public schools, this syndrome does help explain at least some of the mindless support given by former captives of a repressive system.

One final note: although it is a somewhat elastic term, psychosis has been defined as “a mental disorder characterized by symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations, that indicate impaired contact with reality.” So, is support for public schools a form of psychosis?  For at least some people, the answer is yes.

It seems that the modern nanny state views individuals as incompetent sheep that will either endanger themselves or others.  As I was recently pondering the classic skit from Saturday Night Live, Do Not Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford, it occurred to me that certain people in government probably think we are too stupid to manage our own money.  In  order to deal with their concerns, I propose that we all turn our bank accounts over to the government.  Then government experts will determine when, where and on what we spend our money. But wait! There’s more: we are also too stupid to know how much and what to eat (just like Mad tv’s Eat Less Move More skit), so the government should control that too. Then we will wait in line to receive our daily government approved ration of food provided “free,” of course, since everyone has a “right” not to be hungry in a country as wealthy as America.

I suppose many folks may think that the above propositions are absurd.  But I also posit that most of those same people also think compulsory government schooling is some form of a “right” and that it should be provided by the government at no direct cost to the user.  However, just like the concept of government controlled bank accounts, parents routinely turn their most precious assets over to government “experts” who determine what, when and where their children learn.  In addition, like the hypothetical government food, children wait in line to receive their daily ration of government produced “education” glop to be delivered within prison-like government buildings. 

One could rationalize the government control of our bank accounts this way: some people might spend too much of their money and then require government assistance to survive. Similarly, some people have argued that certain parents, if left alone, might not ensure that their children will learn enough to avoid becoming burdens to the government welfare system (or criminal justice system). Therefore, following this line of reasoning, government must have control of both our money and our children.

Because there would be a huge political uproar if the government attempted to seize personal bank accounts, they remain free.  Yet each day the the civil rights of children and parents are violated by government control of the intellectual development of our youngest citizens.  Simply amazing.