Community compulsory service patently violates the 13th Amendment’s prohibition of involuntary servitude.

Source: Sheldon Richman
Separating School & State

Topics: Uncategorized

Imagine that you are one of those functionaries of government in whom there has grown, it seems inescapable, the propensity to command, in however oblique a fashion and for whatever supposedly good purpose, the liberty and property of your constituents. Which would you prefer, educated constituents or ignorant ones? . . . Which would you rather face, even considering your own convictions that the cause in which you want to command liberty and property is just—citizens with or without the power of informed discretion? Citizens having that power will require of you a laborious and detailed justification of your intentions and expectations and may, even having that, adduce other information and exercise further discretion to the contrary of your propensities. On the other hand, the ill-informed and undiscriminating can easily be persuaded by the recitation of popular slogans and the appeal to self-interest, however spurious. It is only informed discretion that can detect such maneuvers.

Source: Richard Mitchell
The Graves of Academe, pp. 7-8.

Topics: Uncategorized

Some children are dull and demand a slower learning pace; bright children require a rapid pace to develop their faculties. Furthermore, many children are apt in one subject and quite inept in another. They should be permitted to develop themselves in their best subjects and drop the poor ones. Whatever educational standards are imposed from outside, injustice is done to all—to the less able who cannot absorb any instruction, to those with different sets of aptitudes in different subjects, to the bright children whose minds would like to be off and winging in more advanced courses. Similarly, whatever pace the teacher sets in class is bound to be injurious to almost all—to the dull who cannot keep up and to the bright who lose interest. Moreover, those in the middle, the “average,” are not always the same in all classes and often are not the same from day-to-day in one class.

Source: Murray N. Rothbard
Education, Free and Compulsory: The Individual’s Education, p. 7.

Topics: Uncategorized

Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his country requires it.

Source: Benjamin Rush
signer of the Declaration of Independence

Topics: Uncategorized

In the hands of private schoolmasters the curriculum expanded rapidly. Their schools were commercial ventures, and, consequently, competition was keen . . . . Popular demands, and the element of competition, forced them not only to add new courses of instruction, but constantly to improve their methods and technique of instruction.

Source: Robert F. Seybolt
Source Studies in American Colonial Education: The Private School, p. 102.

Topics: Uncategorized

According to Carl F. Kaestle, “Literacy was quite general in the middle reaches of society and above. The best generalization possible is that New York, like other American towns of the Revolutionary period, had a high literacy rate relative to other places in the world, and that literacy did not depend primarily upon the schools.” Another indication of the high rate of literacy is book sales. Thomas Paine’s pamphlet Common Sense sold 120,000 copies in a colonial population of 3 million (counting the 20 percent who were slaves)-the equivalent of 10 million copies today. In 1818, when the United States had a population of under 20 million, Noah Webster’s Spelling Book sold over 5 million copies. Walter Scott’s novels sold that many copies between 1813 and 1823, which would be the equivalent of selling 60 million copies in the United States today. The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper sold millions of copies. John Taylor Gatto notes that Scott’s and Cooper’s books were not easy reading. European visitors to early nineteenth-century America such as Alexis de Tocqueville and Pierre du Pont de Nemours—marveled at how well educated the people were.

Source: Sheldon Richman
Separating School & State, p38-39

Topics: Uncategorized

The fundamental point to be made about parents and students is not that they are politically weak, but that, even in a perfectly functioning democratic system, the public schools are not meant to be theirs to control and are literally not supposed to provide them with the kind of education they might want. The schools are agencies of society as a whole, and everyone has a right to participate in their governance. Parents and students have a right to participate too. But they have no right to win. In the end, they have to take what society gives them.

Source: John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe
Politics, Markets and America’s Schools, p. 32.

Topics: Uncategorized

A small number of very passionate American ideological leaders visited Prussia in the first half of the 19th century; fell in love with the order, obedience, and efficiency of its education system; and campaigned relentlessly thereafter to bring the Prussian vision to these shores. Prussia’s ultimate goal was to unify Germany; the Americans’ was to mold hordes of immigrant Catholics to a national consensus based on a northern European cultural model. To do that, children would have to be removed from their parents and from inappropriate cultural influences.

Source: John Taylor Gatto
“Our Prussian School System,” p. 10

Topics: America, History; Education

One had to cram all this stuff into one’s mind, whether one liked it or not. This coercion had such a deterring effect that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year . . . . It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to wrack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty. To the contrary, I believe that it would be possible to rob even a healthy beast of prey of its voraciousness, if it were possible, with the aid of a whip, to force the beast to devour continuously, even when not hungry—especially if the food, handed out under such coercion, were to be selected accordingly.

Source: Albert Einstein
(a “product” of the prussian school system)
Quoted in Paul Goodman, Compulsory Miseducation and The Community of Scholars

Topics: Education

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