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Vin Suprynowicz
Time to separate school and state
We keep getting letters explaining government schools can't turn out as good a product as private schools -- even private schools spending less per student -- since the private schools choose their students, while mandatory government youth internment camps have to "take every which one."
In a speech he gave after being named New York City's Teacher of the Year (yes, "public school") in 1989, John Taylor Gatto famously said:
"Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts, from around 1850. It was resisted -- sometimes with guns -- by an estimated 80 percent of the Massachusetts population, with the last outpost, in Barnstable on Cape Cod, not surrendering its children until the 1880s, when the area was seized by the militia and the children marched to school under guard. ...
"Senator Ted Kennedy's office released a paper not too long ago claiming that prior to compulsory education the state literacy rate was 98 percent, and after it the figure never again climbed above 91 percent, where it stands in 1990. ...
"Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five, or even 10 years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.
"If we're going to change what's rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance," Mr. Gatto continued, "we need to realize that the institution 'schools' very well, but it does not 'educate'; that's inherent in the design of the thing. It's not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent. It's just impossible for education and schooling to be the same thing. ...
"Schools were designed ... to be instruments for the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce ... formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.
"To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this. But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic -- because the community life that protects the dependent and weak is dead. ...
"When children are given whole lives instead of age-graded ones in cellblocks, they learn to read, write, and do arithmetic with ease. ..."
There's a lot more. You can find it easily online.
I'm just trying to imagine the men with the bayonets explaining to the residents of Barnstable, back in 1880, "See, when Alexis de Tocqueville toured the United Stated in 1831, he reported our American working class were more literate, better read, more up-to-date on the affairs of the day than those of any European nation. But we're here to force you to give up the voluntary, community-based schools that accomplished that, and instead herd your kids into tax-supported, coercion based, collectivist government schools on the Prussian model because a bunch of Ph.D.s think it's a better way for government to control the masses.
"Just think of it! By 2010 this town's high school graduates won't be able to reliably spell, count change, or structure a proper English sentence, all things your fifth graders can do today! We wish we could promise you better results, but after all, our new tax-funded youth propaganda camps 'will have to accept every which one.'"
The premise was that government could do the job better, if they could just wrest those kids away from the bad influence of their parents. Yet now they explain they're failing because "The parents aren't doing their part"! This is like the Khmer Rouge saying their revolution couldn't succeed until they killed every Cambodian who knew how to read, and then whining that of course things aren't working out: those darned educated elites refuse to do their part!
The current paradigm, endlessly brayed, is that we "have a collective responsibility to pay taxes to fund the schooling of other people's kids, because they're our future."
In fact, we all know the Pilgrims were starving, back in 1622, thanks to similar collectivist notions.
Prosperity only came when Gov. Bradford authorized private gardens, with each family allowed to eat what they grew, and those who didn't work condemned to starve.
Once they did this, no one starved. They voluntarily worked.
Since the "collective obligation" paradigm has failed so utterly in modern American schooling, as well, let me propose a new one: We have no obligation to educate anyone's offspring but our own.
In fact, while we are, of course, free to indulge our instinct to charity by offering to voluntarily help fund the schooling of orphans and such, the nation will again thrive only when we realize this is a competition. I have a vested interest in seeing my own children receive an education. Meantime, I hope all you deadbeats out there don't do a thing to educate your kids, because that will reduce the competition for my kids.
This is not an hereditary elite, but an equal opportunity meritocracy. Learn now or starve later.
The argument will be offered that the pathetic unmarried welfare mom will have no ability to fund her own kids' educations, even if we allow her to keep the money she's now spending in sales and property taxes (yes, renters pay property tax, even if it's not itemized) since the father is a long-absent crackhead.
But this presupposes that minority women must always bear children to absentee crackheads. In fact, put young women in a position to say, "Wait a minute, you mean to tell me once I bear a child there's going to be no government agency to provide me with food stamps, housing subsidies, and a basically worthless tax-funded 'free education' -- that this kid will be worthless to help support me in my old age unless I pay for his schooling?" and you might notice something very refreshing happening,
You might notice those young women saying, "Well then, I can't afford to bear a child by this shiftless gangster. I wonder if that young man who was so nice to me at church is still interested. He's a little boring, but he might be the kind who'd actually land a job and stick around and help me raise my kids."
Why couldn't it work that way again? Because minority women, unlike Anglo women, are incapable of figuring this out for themselves?
What are you, a racist?
Vin Suprynowicz is assistant editorial page editor of the Review-Journal, and author of "Send in the Waco Killers" and the novel "The Black Arrow." See www.vinsuprynowicz.com.
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Public education is a triumph and don't let no home schooled imbecile tell you otherwise. The foundation for this country's growth, and achievements are a direct result of our educational system, which has driven the entire world to our door. Ever wonder why masses of immigrants come to this country for student visas? It ain't for the 99 cent shrimp my home schooled friends; it because the public and private educational institutions in this country are the absolute BEST in the world. Show me a country where there is no public schooling and I will show you a failed/failing country. Good luck with that!
Public education is a POLITICAL institution. It's all about buying off constituencies throug:h
- jobs for DEM union members,
- contracts for GOP service firms
- football for sports nuts
- diversity "education" for Leftists
- abstinence "education" for Rightitsts
- Holocaust "education" for Jews
- Martin Luther King "education" for Blacks
- Global warming "education" for Enviromentalcases
- Underwriting fees for Bond salesmen
- Design wins for Architects
- Test cases for lawyers
- Bodies for military recruiters
- Memorials for Veterans
- Affirmative Action statements for Board members
If any of these and or the numerous other political blocs are slighted in the least there is a strident popular outcry, district damage control teams spring into action, policies are reviewed, and so forth, but when 18 year olds can't construct simple sentences or perform basic math calculations everyone just shrugs their shoulders.
All you guys who talk about rigid classroom discipline, uniforms, out by age 16, more testing, more vouchers, etc just don't get it. As Vin7v Gatto has tried to explain, public education is a CATASTROPHE and CANNOT be reformed.
Ah, now I get it; a free society is one where some people, very few and let me make that clear, very, very, very, very few, get to tell the vast, vast, vast, majority of people, that THEY can't have the society they want. And given even half a chance, they would force THAT decision on the rest of us, at the point of a gun. And now THEY claim that WE are using force on them. They speak of a world where "freedom and liberty" are the hallmarks of a "true" government, and yet, when they are offered a chance, to go somewhere to live the life they seem to want so badly, they...balk. There are those who are so hypocritical that they don't know even what they want anymore.
Ah. Now I get it. Slavery IS freedom. The state holds a gun to your head, forcing you to pay for a school system. The smiling gunman advises you that you are still "free" to spend even more of your money on private schooling if you wish, but you still have to pay the gunman. And of course, if you don't like it, you can leave the country. Nice. Observe that my initial point was never addressed (as I pointed out, it never is): in a free society (one in which the government does not hold a gun to your head to force you to pay for its indoctrination centers), you are completely free to support a Prussian-style factory school system, if you so desire. Others are free to support their chosen system. The issue is indeed force. "Did I miss something here." Answer: Yes, and no one is so blind as one who refuses to see.
It is difficult to understand the homeschooled proponents when they say things. They seem not to understand that although there are public schools, that there are also private schools that they are free to attend. Furthermore, they seem incapable of understanding that, in addition to home schooling, they are free to attend, or not attend, any school that they wish, so long as they meet the eligibility requirements if there are any. Seems to me, that the only thing that a potential public school system offers is, more choice. Did I miss something here? And as to any claims of "force" even this is nonsense; they are free to choose to go anywhere they want in the world if they don't "consent" to the system this country has established. Its a beautiful thing.
I never seem to get an answer from government school advocates, when I point out that, in a free society with free market education, they would be free to support any mode of education they deem appropriate. The real issue here is FORCE; those who advocate the government indoctrination camps want to impose their particular view of education on everyone else, using their beloved henchman, the state. Those who advocate freedom in education, want you to be allowed to make up your own mind.
There are many interesting articles about education and the educational performance of many country including this one. Most are mere propaganda, intended to sway the opinions of the all ready true believers of the nonsense contained therein, and a few are truly full of valuable information that can be useful in deciding the best way to educate a citizenry. Vin points out the usual nonsense here about Americans being "literate" in the 1800s but of course, fails to point out the problems with most of these "reports" about education and literacy; they are full of lies. See, the population measured back then didn't include lots of people....lots and lots of people. And of course, the vast, vast, vast, majority of the people not counted, were not literate. Imagine that? So, like China does today, the "counters" of "literate" people way back in the 1800s, just ignored pretty much everyone that the counters knew wouldn't be literate. Its like "reporting" that "everyone" in the United States is a certified genius, by simply not counting all those people that don't qualify for being a genius. Tools for fools is all, and only a fool would believe.
There is an interesting article by Pat Buchanan at Townhall.com and elsewhere, that discusses US educational performance. We spend far, far more in the US than any other country. For this, we place a dismal 25th out of 65 nations in math, science, and reading--miles and miles behind the Chinese, who took two of the top four spots (Shanghai was first, Hong Kong third).
Yet, as Vin points out, Americans (according to de Toqueville) had the most literate population in the world in the early 1800's. This all began to fall apart under the influence of Horace Mann, the creepy authoritarian who imported Prussian style teaching into the US in the late 1800's.
As John Taylor Gatto has pointed out, we don't educate: we "school." We don't focus on mastering reading, math, and science; instead, we focus on turning out obedient citizens. This was the ultimate goal of Prussian education: obedient soldiers and docile factory workers.
Public education has succeeded in what it was really meant to accomplish.
@former, unless you consider the Japanese to be all idiots and uneducated.
@former, that is not true. Look at Japan and theor ages for education. They do A LOT of private education.