A logos to my daughter

[Art.] 6. [Morality and Piety.] As morality and piety, rightly grounded on high principles, will give the best and greatest security to government, and will lay, in the hearts of men, the strongest obligations to due subjection; and as the knowledge of these is most likely to be propagated through a society, therefore, the several parishes, bodies, corporate, or religious societies shall at all times have the right of electing their own teachers, and of contracting with them for their support or maintenance, or both. But no person shall ever be compelled to pay towards the support of the schools of any sect or denomination. And every person, denomination or sect shall be equally under the protection of the law; and no subordination of any one sect, denomination or persuasion to another shall ever be established.

June 2, l784

[Art.] 28-a. [Mandated Programs.] The state shall not mandate or assign any new, expanded or modified programs or responsibilities to any political subdivision in such a way as to necessitate additional local expenditures by the political subdivision unless such programs or responsibilities are fully funded by the state or unless such programs or responsibilities are approved for funding by a vote of the local legislative body of the political subdivision.

November 28, l984

We are told that educationalists recognize two broad approaches to education:

1. the "transmissive" (which I should describe as didactic); and

2. the "autonomous" method of self-directed study, in which a child is permitted to pursue its own interests.

Is that system of education "efficient"? A system in my judgement (and so I direct the court) is "efficient" if it achieves that which it sets out to achieve. By that test, the evidence that the education of these children is "efficient" is all one way. In achieving its intended aims, therefore, the education is efficient and full-time. The next essential question is whether that education is suitable to the age, ability, and aptitude of the children and each of them.

In our judgement, that requirement is fulfilled if, and only if, the education is such as:

We have heard argument as to whether the principal end of education should be academic learning or practical ability. That argument has at times been confused with the rival merits of the transmissive and autonomous approaches to education, although for myself I see no reason why the transmissive method should not be directed to implanting practical skills and a pragmatic approach to problems if so desired. Again, fortunately, we are not called on to make any pronouncement about such matters. Whichever end is desired, and whatever the emphasis of the educational system, we see no reason why those objects should necessarily be regarded as totally mutually exclusive.

We regard the fundamental academic skills of writing, reading, and arithmetic as fundamental to any education for life in the modern world. We should be surprised if any of the signatories to Ex A(8) Education for capability would be anything but horrified at the suggestion that their contention was an argument for the irrelevancy of literacy or numeracy. Those attainments are essential for communication, research, or self-education. The sooner they are acquired, the greater the advantage to the acquirer. We should not, in the ordinary case, regard a system of education as suitable for any child capable of learning such skills, if it failed to instil in the child the ability to read, write, or cope with arithmetical problems, leaving it to time, chance, and the inclination of the child to determine whether - if ever - the child eventually achieved even elementary proficiency in those skills.

That does not mean, I repeat, that we think that the children should be subject to conventional schooling, or that the whole balance of their present education should be changed to one of academic emphasis. Regard must be had to their disability; they should not be made to feel undue pressure or urgency which could undermine the benefits which have apparently accrued from their present upbringing. They need sympathy and a reassuring environment.

Pt. II, Art. 83-a. [Legislation Relative to Education Must be Fully Funded.]

The general court shall not enact any legislation relative to education in this state unless all the funding that is necessary to implement such legislation shall be appropriated and funded by the state.

Pt. II, Art. 83. [Encouragement of Literature, etc.;...]

"...; it shall be the duty of the legislators and magistrates, in all future periods of government, to create an educational opportunity of equal quality for the children of the state by providing for the maintenance and support of a complete system of public elementary and secondary schools,..."

Art. 40, Pt. I [Restricting Free Elementary and Secondary Education in Public Schools.]

The elementary and secondary education in the public schools of the state which shall be required to be offered to the citizens of the state free of tuition costs shall be restricted to those subjects and activities as shall be determined by the legislature to be essential. Any subject matter or activity not considered to be essential by the legislature offered in a public school may be subject to a tuition charge imposed by the school district. Such tuition charges to be determined by the school district shall be restricted to any costs involved in presenting the nonessential activity or subject matter. No state aid shall be appropriated from the state treasury for nonessential activities or subjects.

Amendment VIII: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

Amendment XIII, Section 1: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Council of Chief State School Officers

But (setting aside the fact, that for one despot who now and then reforms an abuse, there are ninety-nine who do nothing but create them) those who look in any such direction for the realisation of their hopes leave out of the idea of good government its principal element, the improvement of the people themselves. One of the benefits of freedom is that under it the ruler cannot pass by the people's minds, and amend their affairs for them without amending them. If it were possible for the people to be well governed in spite of themselves, their good government would last no longer than the freedom of a people usually lasts who have been liberated by foreign arms without their own co-operation. It is true, a despot may educate the people; and to do so really, would be the best apology for his despotism. But any education which aims at making human beings other than machines, in the long run makes them claim to have the control of their own actions. The leaders of French philosophy in the eighteenth century had been educated by the Jesuits. Even Jesuit education, it seems, was sufficiently real to call forth the appetite for freedom. Whatever invigorates the faculties, in however small a measure, creates an increased desire for their more unimpeded exercise; and a popular education is a failure, if it educates the people for any state but that which it will certainly induce them to desire, and most probably to demand.

Moses Maimonides, The Guide for the Perplexed (b 1135 A.D.) Chapter XXXIII

"The majority of scholars, that is to say, the most famous in science, are afflicted with this failing, viz., that of hurrying at once to the final results, and of speaking about them, without treating of the preliminary disciplines. Led by folly or ambition to disregard these preparatory studies, for the attainment of which they are either incapable or too idle, some scholars endeavor to prove that these are injurious or superfluous. On reflection the truth will become obvious."

Porphyry; Life of Pythagoras, 30 Empedocles …when he says of (Pythagoras)

Among them was a man of immense knowledge Who had obtained the greatest wealth of mind, An exceptional master of every kind of wise work. For when he stretched out with all his mind He easily saw each and every thing In ten or twenty human generations.

In many school districts, the issue can be brought before the voters with a citizens petition if your school board does not want to submit the warrant article themselves. It is unlikely that the state will ever mandate that your school district provide public kindergarten. There is an amendment to our state constitution which requires the state to totally pay for any mandate.

Breakfast Programs:

Schools should offer breakfast programs in circumstances where children will benefit and funding is available. (Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development)

58) Plato Republic 365d

[365d] But all the same if we expect to be happy, we must pursue the path to which the footprints of our arguments point. For with a view to lying hid we will organize societies and political clubs, and there are teachers of cajolery who impart the arts of the popular assembly and the court-room. So that, partly by persuasion, partly by force, we shall contrive to overreach with impunity.

59) Plato Republic 377b

[377b] For it is then that it is best molded and takes the impression that one wishes to stamp upon it." "Quite so." "Shall we, then, thus lightly suffer our children to listen to any chance stories fashioned by any chance teachers and so to take into their minds opinions for the most part contrary to those that we shall think it desirable for them to hold when they are grown up?" "By no manner of means will we allow it."

61) Plato Republic 493a

[493a] in the present condition of society and government, in saying that the providence of God preserves it you will not be speaking ill." "Neither do I think otherwise," he said. "Then," said I, "think this also in addition." "What?" "Each of these private teachers who work for pay, whom the politicians call sophists and regard as their rivals, inculcates nothing else than these opinions of the multitude which they opine when they are assembled and calls this knowledge wisdom. It is as if a man were acquiring the knowledge of the humors and desires of a great strong beast which he had in his keeping,

1) Aeschines Against Timarchus 9

[1.9] In the first place, consider the case of the teachers. Although the very livelihood of these men, to whom we necessarily entrust our own children, depends on their good character, while the opposite conduct on their part would mean poverty, yet it is plain that the lawgiver distrusts them; for he expressly prescribes, first, at what time of day the free-born boy is to go to the school-room; next, how many other boys may go there with him, and when he is to go home.

One of the most interesting byproducts of Prussian schooling turned out to be the two most devastating wars of modern history. Erich Maria Remarque, in his classic "All Quiet on the Western Front" tells us that the First World War was caused by the tricks of schoolmasters, and the famous Protestant theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the Second World War was the inevitable product of good schooling.

It's important to underline that Bonhoeffer meant that literally, not metaphorically - schooling after the Prussian fashion removes the ability of the mind to think for itself. It teaches people to wait for a teacher to tell them what to do and if what they have done is good or bad. Prussian teaching paralyzes the moral will as well as the intellect. It's true that sometimes well-schooled students sound smart, because they memorize many opinions of great thinkers, but they actually are badly damaged because their own ability to think is left rudimentary and undeveloped.

["Compulsory education" is only on what to "know". It is far more important to know how to think; and knowing what to know comes automatically to the independent individual who knows how to think. Another problem is that some areas of what is "taught" in these "schools" as "knowledge", is actually brainwashing - not useful facts.]

...[C]ompulsion schooling, a bad idea that had been around at least since Plato's "Republic," a bad idea that New England had tried to enforce in 1650 without any success, was finally rammed through the Massachusetts legislature in 1852. It was, of course, the famous "Know-Nothing" legislature that passed this law, a legislature that was the leading edge of a famous secret society which flourished at that time known as "The Order of the Star Spangled Banner," whose password was the simple sentence, "I know nothing" - hence the popular label attached to the secret society's political arm, "The American Party."

Over the next 50 years state after state followed suit, ending schools of choice and ceding the field to a new government monopoly. There was one powerful exception to this - the children who could afford to be privately educated. It's important to note that the underlying premise of Prussian schooling is that the government is the true parent of children - the State is sovereign over the family. At the most extreme pole of this notion is the idea that biological parents are really the enemies of their own children, not to be trusted. You can see this philosophy at work in court decisions which rule that parents need not be told when schools dispense condoms to their children, or consulted when daughters seek abortion.

How did a Prussian system of dumbing children down take hold in American schools? ... Virtually every single one of the founders of American schooling had made the pilgrimage to Germany, and many of these men wrote widely circulated reports praising the Teutonic methods. Horace Mann's famous "7th Report" of 1844, still available in large libraries, was perhaps the most important of these.

By 1889, a little more than 100 years ago, the crop was ready for harvest. In that year the U.S. Commissioner of Education, William Torrey Harris, assured a railroad magnate, Collis Huntington, that American schools were "scientifically designed" to prevent "over-education" from happening. The average American would be content with his humble role in life, said the commissioner, because he would not be tempted to think about any other role. My guess is that Harris meant he would not be able to think about any other role.

In 1896 the famous John Dewey, then at the University of Chicago, said that independent, self-reliant people were a counter-productive anachronism in the collective society of the future. In modern society, said Dewey, people would be defined by their associations - the groups they belonged to - not by their own individual accomplishments. In such a world people who read too well or too early are dangerous because they become privately empowered, they know too much, and know how to find out what they don't know by themselves, without consulting experts.

Dewey said the great mistake of traditional pedagogy was to make reading and writing constitute the bulk of early schoolwork. He advocated that the phonics method of teaching reading be abandoned and replaced by the whole word method, not because the latter was more efficient (he admitted it was less efficient) but because independent thinkers are produced by hard books, thinkers who cannot be socialized very easily. By socialization Dewey meant a program of social objectives administered by the best social thinkers in government. This was a giant step on the road to state socialism, the form pioneered in Prussia, and it is a vision radically disconnected from the American past, its historic hopes and dreams.

Dewey's former professor and close friend, G. Stanley Hall, said this at about the same time. "Reading should no longer be a fetish. Little attention should be paid to reading." Hall was one of the three men most responsible for building a gigantic administrative infrastructure over the classroom. How enormous that structure really became can only be understood by comparisons: New York State, for instance, employs more school administrators than all of the European Economic Community nations combined.

...Bertrand Russell once observed that American schooling was among the most radical experiments in human history, that America was deliberately denying its children the tools of critical thinking. When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. There is no evidence that has been a State purpose since the start of compulsion schooling.

When Fredrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten in 19th century Germany, fashioned his idea he did not have a "garden for children" in mind, but a metaphor of teachers as gardeners and children as the vegetables. Kindergarten was created to be a way to break the influence of mothers on their children.

David T. Freeman, 1997

The fact is, however, that most American schools were ungraded until the second half of the nineteenth century, the graded school having been introduced in the United States in 1848, when the Quincy Grammar School in Boston, Massachusetts, opened its doors. A number of educators, impressed with the graded schools they had seen in Germany, had been proposing adoption of the technique in this country. The Quincy School was the first built for that purpose; it contained twelve rooms of equal size, four to a floor, in which a teacher and some fifty-five children would meet for a year at a time. The men who created the school predicted that it would set the pattern of American schooling for another fifty years. Their estimate was clearly conservative.

Thales to Dewey, Gordon Clark, Houghton Mifflin Co., Boston, 1957, pp532-533.

"Apparently the conclusion is that Dewey cannot give a rational argument for or against any moral standard."

"To avoid a subjectivism of widespread disagreement as to ends of action Dewey cautiously hints at a type of ethical theory that would scientifically investigate the causes of decisions. If such a theory could be constructed, it would be possible by its techniques to manipulate human nature as successfully as we now manipulate physical matter. Presumably Dewey was not anticipating the Red Chinese techniques of brain washing. He disclaims a desire to alter human nature by external force. What he has in mind, he does not quite reveal. Possibly he means that a group of people, who already share his desire, could get control of public education and prevent the children from thinking along unapproved lines. Then in a generation or two morality would be objective because the population would have been habituated to desire just the social reconstruction Dewey demands.

"Here again, one gains the impression that Dewey had imposed a foreign meaning on the term objectivity as he did with the terms knowledge and value. The objectivity of public uniformity produced by political manipulation of human nature is not the objectivity that rationalists and theists have always demanded. Dewey's objectivity grows out of the personal subjective preferences of a few politicians or social reformers. As there are, however, in any historical situation, different preferences, plans, desires, one is forced to ask whether there is any rational argument for choosing Dewey's ideal rather than another? To some Dewey's idea is as repulsive as theirs is to him. And even to a "liberal," particularly if he is tired, success may not seem worth the effort. Why not just commit suicide and save oneself the bother? Why not!"

There is no greater reason why our discourse should become valueless in our own estimate, when we are engaged in teaching the uninstructed, than this,--namely, that it is a delight to us to discern in an extraordinary fashion, and a weariness to speak in an ordinary. And in reality we are listened to with much greater satisfaction, indeed, when we ourselves also have pleasure in the same work; for the thread of our address is affected by the very joy of which we ourselves are sensible, and it proceeds from us with greater ease and with more acceptance.

Augustine, On Catechizing the Uncatechized

Tacitus, Agricola, A.D. 98 Penguin Edition, Chapter 21

The following winter was spent on schemes of social betterment. Agricola had to deal with people living in isolation and ignorance, and therefore prone to fight; and his object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave private encouragement and official assistance to the building of temples, public squares, and good houses. He praised the energetic and scolded the slack; and competition for honour proved as effective as compulsion. Furthermore, he educated the sons of chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared with the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptations of arcades, baths, and sumptuous banquets. The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as "civilization," when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.

Given, however, that according to the Peace of Augsburg (1555) the prince of a territory had the right to determine the religion of his subjects (cuius regio, eius religio), it was only a question of time till a Protestant ruler would reason that attendance at these schools was in his own best interest as well as in that of the individual and the Church, and that therefore it must be compulsory. This crucial moment came in 1619, in the small German duchy of Saxe-Weimar.

We are now entering a period in European history that is known as Absolutism, that is, the age of princes with unlimited power. Germany had developed into a patchwork of often very small principalities, and many of the princelings found that, in order to imitate the extravagances of the French court, the profligate standard of Europe, they had to exploit their little territories ruthlessly. This works best, of course, when the population is co-operative, in the belief that despotism is divinely ordained and that sedition is a crime and mortal sin. The schools offered themselves as an expedient institution to train the ideal subject. It would be unjust to say that Duke William of Saxe-Weimar did not also have the spiritual and temporal welfare of his subjects at heart, according to the insights of his time, but mainly he needed -- at the outbreak of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) -- money, provisions and, most importantly, obedient bodies.

It had taken less than three hundred years for the Church -- the harbinger of the Kingdom of Heaven, of universal peace and good will -- to become a willing accomplice in bloody power politics (ironically, in order to escape her temporal destiny -- suffering), and when after thirteen hundred years she undertook to reform herself from the worst abuses into which she had fallen, she was able to do so only by affirming her subservience to temporal power; and the state lost little time (less than a hundred years) in laying its heavy hand on her most expedient -- and most dangerous -- reformational institution: universal public education.

We make here no distinction between the Reformation and the Counter Reformation; for, all denominations, Roman Catholics as well as Protestants, paid homage to temporal power, whether they espoused it in the form of a clergy-dominated theocracy or borrowed it in the form of the secular sword wielded by secular hands. Only the Anabaptists, whose relation to the state is reduced to the level of scripturally required nonresistance and who in any case do not count themselves among the main-stream Protestants, their beginnings in many cases predating the Reformation considerably, may here be exempted.

The prototype of modern state-controlled education in Saxe-Weimar was largely overshadowed by the ravages of the Thirty Years’ War, a "religious" war, that laid waste vast stretches of central Europe and reduced the population there by about two thirds: the world was still too busy attempting to control people’s beliefs by brute force to pay attention to what in retrospect was an important experiment in peaceful thought control. Only the neighbouring duchy of Saxe-Gotha followed in 1639 the example of Saxe-Weimar. Indeed, it was not till 1717 that the foundations were laid for the one model of state-controlled education that eventually would attract the attention of the world. In that year King Frederick William I of Prussia (1713-1740), the "Soldier King," issued an "advisory" edict ordering parents, on pain of "rigorous punishment," to send their children to school.

Frederick William I was in many ways an enlightened man: for instance, he liberated the serfs on the royal domains, and as a devout Pietist he avoided war, his cognomen notwithstanding (he merely heeded the age-old maxim of Si vis pacem, para bellum, if you wish peace, prepare for war) As an absolute monarch he pursued the establishment of a military and civil-service state, demanding unconditional subordination of all his subjects, and he was not above trading in humans, to indulge his hobby of the Tall Guards, men well over six feet, whom he acquired from all over Europe (some of his sovereign compeers, in order to fill their coffers, sold their subjects in large numbers as soldiers or colonists).

Everyone in Prussia, following the example of the king, was to work hard, and be disciplined and thrifty to improve the fortune of the "state" - an entity more abstract than the laws of Sparta. The "Sun King," Louis XIV of France (1643-1715), had once said, in truly absolutist fashion, "L’état c’est moi (I am the State)"; now Frederick the Great (1740-1786), the son of Frederick William I, said, "The prince is the first servant of the State."

Our state-controlled social studies programmes would have us believe that the modern totalitarian state is a manifestation of certain well-defined ideologies, such as fascism and communism. History, however, teaches us that totalitarianism appears in degrees wherever any ideology, lust for power, or entrenched self-interest influence political decisions and administrative measures, abrogating individual rights and freedoms in favour of egoism or abstract concerns. No government, not even our much exalted "free and democratic" one, is free of more or less pronounced totalitarian streaks. Thus the institution of compulsory education and school attendance, and the mandating of how much and what sort of history is to be taught are not simply authoritarian but rather totalitarian measures. The first modern totalitarian government taking hold of the individual under the guise of lofty but otherwise anonymous abstractions is that of Frederick the Great of Prussia.

From 1763 to 1765 Frederick the Great issued a series of decrees that constitute the first full-fledged school code (his father had issued a less comprehensive one already fifty years earlier), which regulated compulsory attendance (all boys and girls between the ages of five and fourteen), fines for truancy, discipline, school hours, vacations, fees and their possible remission, training and certification of teachers, curriculum content and textbooks -- nothing was left to chance or choice except, perhaps, dress where this had not been dealt with under discipline and propriety. Schools were to be established only by, or with the consent of, the state, and all state-run schools were to be strictly secular, that is, the Church, of whatever denomination, was politely elbowed out of the mainstream of education. Frederick the Great set aside all pretence of religion in state affairs; in his schools any religious teaching was to be summed up in the golden rule, And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise (Lk. 6:31). When the king was informed of an unwholesome atmosphere between Catholics and Protestants, he wrote on the margin of the report: "All religions must be tolerated, but the state must see to it that one does not disadvantage another; for here everybody must find salvation according to his own fashion."

Education in Prussia was utilitarian and socially divided; neither of the aforementioned monarchs was interested in seeing his subjects rise above their station in life. Schools were meant to give the individual a set of moral rules and equip him with the practical knowledge for his occupation, to make him productive for the state and submissive to authority (after the invention of the bicycle Germans referred to the typical Prussian civil servant as a "cyclist," that is, one who bows to those above and treads on those below). The system worked.

Frederick the Great inherited a state treasure of eight million dollars in 1740, which he, through ups and downs and in spite of his many military campaigns, increased to fifty-one million by the time of his own death in 1786. Frederick’s German neighbours could not possibly have overlooked such a striking demonstration of what state-controlled education can contribute to an economy, and by the end of the century most had followed the Prussian example.

The world at large, however, was strangely oblivious to these German developments in education. It began to take note only when Prussia, against great odds, obtained militarily first against Austria in 1866, and then, in 1871, against France. These successes were partly seen as victories of the Prussian schoolmaster and made western Europe aware of the importance of popular education, though France had sent an observer to study the Prussian system already in 1831. But it was not till the last quarter of the century, when the evil side-effects of the Industrial Revolution could no longer be ignored, that the world focused its attention on the Prussian model of education as a ready-made solution to a new and urgent social problem.

The Industrial Revolution had uprooted much of the traditional agricultural society. Masses of people had to leave the countryside and move to the cities where they had to work in factories and live in slums. Since wages were such that in most cases both the father and the mother had to work, the children were mainly left to their own devices - if they not also were forced to work for a pittance. All manner of child abuse and juvenile delinquency were rampant. Virtually the only effective means of control that men open-minded to the problem could think of was some form of what we now call day care, to remove those children from the dangerous streets and the squalid dwellings for at least part of the day and teach them at the same time the elements of reading, writing and reckoning, together with some moral rules so that they, if they were not able to improve upon the lot of their parents, would at least become law-abiding citizens and a better skilled workforce.

At first these day-care schools were private and haphazard efforts; governments were loath to provide any money. However, when it became clear that only sweeping measures would make any real difference, governments in Great Britain, France and North America looked at Germany and enacted their own adaptations of the Prussian solution (though to this day national pride forbids some educational scholars in those parts to admit this).

Great Britain legislated compulsory schooling in 1880, and France in 1882. In the United States and in Canada, where the real necessity of solving an urgent social problem due to industrialization and urbanization was combined with the perceived need to hasten the assimilation of large numbers of ethnically divers immigrants, the introduction of compulsory schooling varied from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The State of Massachusetts legislated compulsory attendance as early as 1850, though the children of the last hold-outs against this in America unprecedented usurpation of a parental prerogative by the state were marched to school by the militia only some thirty years later; in the Province of Manitoba school attendance was not mandated till 1916.

To summarize, the idea of universal education through public schooling was first conceived and put into practice for the sole purpose of man’s spiritual betterment by the Protestant reformers. Since, however, the mainstream reformed Church was not able to free herself from

the bondage to the state, into which the early Church had unwisely given herself, but fell - due to her own preoccupation with power and success - into a yet greater dependency on the secular sword; and since public schools offered themselves as an expedient for the training of

docile and industrious subjects, the state, in short order, took control of those schools.

Frederick the Great of Prussia, who created the first consistent system of state-controlled popular education, did not do so to solve a social problem; on the contrary, in more than one way he generated one by depriving farmers, artisans and merchants of the help of their children for the better part of the day, by alienating the young from the family and by producing a new breed of men submissive to any authority. His primary objects were the exercise of power without let or hindrance, and the interest of a sovereign and abstract "state," which he considered to be also in the best interest of his subjects. When less than a century later the Industrial Revolution burdened the world with a genuine social problem, concerned governments everywhere eventually recognized in the Prussian system of state-controlled popular education the solution, which, as it were, had just been waiting for its real problem to occur.

There is yet one significant difference between the autocratic Prussian king and the modern, democratic heirs of the sovereign state: a year before his death the enlightened despot wrote on the margin of one of his executive orders, "I am tired of ruling over slaves" - democratic governments come and go without showing any such fatigue.

Our social studies programmes are designed to promote the idea that more government and, by implication, more state control in education are better although there is every indication that less government is best. While in Prussia and then virtually everywhere education was controlled by the state, there is now mounting evidence that modern educational systems more and more control the state. Modern public systems have grown into bloated, Byzantine bodies within the body politic, insatiable of funds. In order to justify their demands for ever more money, these systems advance chiefly the following claims: 1. Without comfortable schools and attractive programmes the state would have to provide some other, equally expensive day-care facilities to keep children and adolescents off the street and under control while at the same time preparing them for integration into society and the work force. 2. Education generally and the care of special-needs students in particular require a degree of professionalism that is possible only in large systems. 3. Only in schools can the young be properly socialized; unschooled children run a greater risk of being maladjusted and becoming a burden to society.

One must admit that the first two claims have some validity, given that the vast majority of parents can or will not undertake the care and education of their children entirely on their own, be it for reasons of conviction, of economics or of competence. Public day-care in the form of kindergarten and school is not only an immodest expectation but, paradoxically, a practical necessity in modern society, a necessity that must ultimately be dealt with by governments, and nobody would deny that this responsibility should be carried out in a professional manner.

However, it is very debatable whether large state-controlled systems and institutions provide the best solution to the problem (school boards are agents of the state); there is rather overwhelming evidence that here also private enterprise is in a better position to offer cost-efficient services and deliver real quality due to competitive pressure. Defenders of the state-controlled establishment will now point toward "equal opportunity versus elitism"; yet if equal opportunity translates into mediocrity, as it appears to in practice, then elitism no longer seems so undesirable. Curricula tailored to a least common denominator of abilities may be an excellent day-care tool where all comers must be accommodated, but they may not necessarily lead to excellence in education - unless one willfully re-defines the latter term.

Eckehart Marenholtz

The gratuitous and utterly unsupported assertion has sometimes been made by the friends of State-controlled education that the reason why statistics show the largest list of criminals in those localities where the most money has been lavished upon the public schools is because those are the only localities where the criminals are all, or nearly all, caught and convicted; while in those places where there is little or no public-school training the criminals cannot be caught.

As we have already seen, it was in the early period of their first settlement in America that the colonists of Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Rhode Island tried the experiment of taking from the fathers and mothers the educational control of their own children and entrusting it to the general public, while six other colonies, to wit, Maryland, Virginia, Delaware, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina left this educational control of children in the hands of parents, their natural guardians. With slight exceptions, in a few of the last-named communities, (towards the close of the period,) this experiment continued down to 1860.

An analysis of these figures will show that in every solitary instance where the political State had controlled the education and training of children, the ratio of suicides ranged from 250 percent to 800 percent higher than where the education and training had been left to parental control, while the aggregate ratio shows over four times as many suicides under State education as under parental education. This enormous excess in the number of suicides amongst people educated under State control over that found amongst those educated under parental control must have a cause, and a cause adequate to the effect.

SUICIDE

25.0% of the students seriously considered attempting suicide during the past 12 months. 15% males; 33% females

20.0% of the students made a plan about how they would attempt suicide during the past 12 months. 15% males; 25% females

10.0% of the students actually attempted suicide one or more times during the past 12 months. 5% males; 14% females

3.0% of the students who attempted suicide resulting in an injury, poisoning, or overdose had to be treated by a doctor or nurse during the past 12 months. 2% males; 3% females

(The Arizona Republic, September 3, 1992), "The education that most kids receive is nothing to write home about; however, that received by black youngsters is criminal... 46 percent of white - and 54 percent of black - Chicago public school teachers have their own children in private schools."

From my grandfather's father, [I learned] to dispense with attendance at public schools, and to enjoy good teachers at home, and to recognize that on such things money should be eagerly spent.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Roman Emperor from March 7, A.D. 161 to March 17, A.D. 180), Meditations Book I, verse 4

I believe that school makes complete fools of our young men, because they see and hear nothing of ordinary life there.

Petronius, Satyricon

Isocrates Against the Sophists

[13.1] If all who are engaged in the profession of education were willing to state the facts instead of making greater promises than they can possibly fulfill, they would not be in such bad repute with the lay-public. As it is, however, the teachers who do not scruple to vaunt their powers with utter disregard of the truth have created the impression that those who choose a life of careless indolence are better advised than those who devote themselves to serious study. Indeed, who can fail to abhor, yes to contemn, those teachers, in the first place, who devote themselves to disputation, since they pretend to search for truth, but straightway at the beginning of their professions attempt to deceive us with lies?

[65] And even you yourself; (at least that is my opinion and expectation,) excited as you are at present by the impetuosity of your disposition and elated as you are both by the vigour of our natural character and by your confidence in your own ability, and inflamed as you are by your recent study of all these precepts, will find practice modify them and time and increasing years soften and humanise you. In truth, those tutors and teachers of virtue, whom you think so much of appear to me themselves to have carried their definitions of duties somewhat further than is agreeable to nature, and it would be better if, when we had in theory pushed our principles to extremities, yet in practice we stopped at what was expedient. "Forgive nothing." Say rather, forgive some things, but not everything. "Do nothing for the sake of private influence." Certainly resist private influence when virtue and good faith require you to do so. "Do not be moved by pity." Certainly if it is to extinguish all impartiality; nevertheless, there is some credit due to humanity. "Abide by your own opinion."

My elder Brothers were all put Apprentices to different Trades. I was put to the Grammar School at Eight Years of Age, my Father intending to devote me as the Tithe of his Sons to the Service of the Church. My early Readiness in learning to read (which must have been very early, as I do not remember when I could not read) and the Opinion of all his Friends that I should certainly make a good Scholar, encouraged him in this Purpose of his. My Uncle Benjamin too approved of it, and propos'd to give me all his Shorthand Volumes of Sermons I suppose as a Stock to set up with, if I would learn his Character. I continu'd however at the Grammar School not quite one Year, tho' in that time I had risen gradually from the Middle of the Class of that Year to be the Head of it, and farther was removed into the next Class above it, in order to go with that into the third at the end of the Year. But my Father in the mean time, from a View of the Expence of a College Education which, having so large a Family, he could not well afford, and the mean living many so educated were afterwards able to obtain, Reasons that he gave to his Friends in my Hearing, altered his first Intention, took me from the Grammar School, and sent me to a School for Writing & Arithmetic kept by a then famous Man, Mr Geo. Brownell, very successful in his Profession generally, and that by mild encouraging Methods. Under him I acquired fair Writing pretty soon, but I fail'd in the Arithmetic, & made no Progress in it. --At Ten Years old, I was taken home to assist my Father in his Business, which was that of a Tallow Chandler and Sope-Boiler.

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography

Plato Laws 819b

[819b] First, as regards counting, lessons have been invented for the merest infants to learn, by way of play and fun,--modes of dividing up apples and chaplets, so that the same totals are adjusted to larger and smaller groups, and modes of sorting out boxers and wrestlers, in byes and pairs, taking them alternately or consecutively, in their natural order. Moreover, by way of play, the teachers mix together bowls made of gold, bronze,

But if it is believed that these elementary schools will be better managed by the Governor and Council, the commissioners of the literary fund, or any other general authority of the government, than by the parents within each ward, it is a belief against all experience. Try the principle one step further and amend the bill so as to commit to the Governor and Council the management of all our farms, our mills, and merchants' stores.

Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, Feb. 2, 1816, reprinted in Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1955), page 98 and The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition 1904), volume 14,pages 420-21.

It [should not] be proposed to take ordinary branches [of education] out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal. Thomas Jefferson, sixth annual message to Congress (1806), reprinted in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition 1907), volume 14, page 384.

Jefferson most definitely supported public funding of schools, but made clear he opposed compulsory attendance. Is it a right or a duty in society to take care of their infant members in opposition to the will of the parent? . . . 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 and education of the infant against the will of the father. What is proposed here is to remove the objection of expense, by offering education gratis . . .

Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Cabell, September 9, 1817, reprinted in Writings of Thomas Jefferson (Memorial Edition 1904) volume 17, page 423.

Nancy Ibarguen, the coordinator of certification for Maine, described the Praxis 1 as "an exit high school exam." Along with taking the test, those applying for vocational education certification must also show work experience and 12 credits in course work. But Lewis and other education officials admitted that the tests aren’t that difficult. "It is only a screening device" measuring basic knowledge, Lewis said, adding the tests can’t reveal whether the test-taker is an expert, or has a rapport with children, or is a dynamic teacher. All those qualities can only be measured by local school boards and superintendents, he said. While certification proves teachers have fulfilled the minimum requirements, course work, student teaching experience and references also show how qualified a person is to teach, said Dover Superintendent Gerald Daley. "I look for enthusiasm and a love of teaching," Daley said. "Someone who’s creative and innovative, someone who will engage the students in the learning process." Several years ago, Daley said, he worried about the quality of teachers who were applying for jobs in the Dover School District. Teacher salaries were very low, and bright college students could easily find better paying jobs in other professions. That’s changed recently, as teacher salaries became more competitive with other careers. "There’s some excellent people out there who have this love for teaching, and I have been heartened by what I’ve seen," Daley said. As for the Praxis tests, "if it will help to make people more comfortable, then fine," Daley said. "Frankly, for the people we’ve been hiring, the test shouldn’t be an issue." But it’s a level that some applicants across the nation haven’t been able to reach. One-third of the prospective teachers in Virginia recently failed the Praxis I test; of the 20 states using the test, Virginia has the highest cut-off scores in the nation. The New Hampshire Board of Education will decide what the cut-off scores will be during a meeting later this year. "We’re concerned that we set it at a good level ... to establish a basic skill and knowledge base of what teachers need to know in New Hampshire," Lewis said. The National Education Association of New Hampshire supported using the tests for entry-level teachers, said Dennis Murphy, the director of public affairs. "When you look at someone entering the profession, you should be sure the person has the minimum level of adequate skills," Murphy said.

Isocrates Antidosis 226

[15.226] No, it is evident that these students cross the sea and pay out money and go to all manner of trouble because they think that they themselves will be the better for it and that the teachers here are much more intelligent than those in their own countries. This ought to fill all Athenians with pride and make them appreciate at their worth those who have given to the city this reputation.

"prior right [of parents] to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children" (United Nations, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26.3; 1948)

Teaching means different things in different places, but seven lessons are universally taught from Harlem to Hollywood Hills. They constitute a national curriculum you pay for in more ways than you can imagine, so you might as well know what it is. . . . 1.Confusion. 2. Class Position. 3. Indifference. 4. Emotional Dependency. 5. Intellectual Dependency. 6. Provisional Self-Esteem. 7. One Can't Hide. . . . It is the great triumph of compulsory government monopoly mass-schooling that among even the best of my fellow teachers, and among even the best of my students' parents, only a small number can imagine a different way to do things.

And for explanation:

John Taylor Gatto, speech on accepting 1991 New York State teacher of the year award, reprinted in Gatto's Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1992), pages 1-12.

Denise Devlin, director of the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services, called those figures disappointing. "There's a part of me that says I'm glad we're doing the prevention efforts we are," she said. "I don't know if maybe the rest of the environment we're fighting is so difficult." That environment, Devlin said, has kids with a lot of unstructured time on their hands, too few mentors outside of the home and a resurgence of media messages - particularly in popular music and sitcoms - portraying drug use as harmless and fun.

As everyone here knows, education is about more than making a living. It's about learning how to live. Along with our family and our communities, school is where we develop our values, nurture our creativity, and have those formative experiences that shape our perspectives throughout life. School should be a place where we learn to love learning, so that we can keep that capacity to adapt and grow throughout our lives.

(Education Summit Speech)

PARENTS' DAY

JULY 27, 1997

WHEREAS, parents are to their children, role models and guides through both the joyful and the trying times of life; and

WHEREAS, parents, by their example, transmit moral and cultural values which play a crucial and determinant role in the development of youth; and

WHEREAS, parents are the most influential source in learning societal values, such as responsibility for one's actions, respect for others, honesty, and many, many others; and