Compulsory education - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia "Compulsory education is education which is required by the government, usually at the national level. Many of the world's countries now have compulsory education through at least the primary grades. Compulsory education at the primary level was affirmed as a human right in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, such mandates were unknown in Western modernity before 1819, when mandatory schooling was introduced in Prussia. ..."
Articles
Public Schools Have Flunked Out, by James Erwin Norwood, Freedom Daily, Jun 2006 "Force-feeding children the state's prescription for education is more about creating jobs for teachers than about educating students. In any event, no one can be forced to learn anything. Compulsory-attendance laws ... generate resistance and disruption by captive students, who are not interested in ordering from the state's menu."
School's Out: Get ready for the new age of individualized education, by Daniel H. Pink, Reason, Oct 2001 "Through most of history, people learned from tutors or their close relatives. ... Not until the early 20th century did public schools as we know them ... become widespread. And not until the 1920s did attending one become compulsory. ... Compulsory mass schooling is an aberration in both history and modern society. "
The "Value" of Public Schooling, by Jacob G. Hornberger, Freedom Daily, Nov 2006 Related Topics: Educational Freedom, Militarism, Socialism "There are two major values of public schooling, from the perspective of government officials. One, ... the means by which government officials can slowly but surely ... mold the mindsets of children into one of conformity and obedience to authority. Second, public schooling enables government officials to fill children's minds with officially approved political, historical, and economic doctrine."
The Education Debate We're Not Having, by Scott McPherson, 15 Nov 2006 "All this handwringing over the best way to pay for public schools distracts us from a far more important point: that we are dealing, first and last, with a broken system — and one that is inherently defective. Rather than patch it up with more money, we ought to try a different approach. Few dare speak of it, ... but an alternative to public schools does exist."
America's Most Persecuted Minority, by Murray N. Rothbard, The Irrepressible Rothbard, 1994 Related Topics: Moral Repression, Prohibition, Woodrow Wilson "... since it would be clearly unconstitutional to outlaw the Catholic Church, the PMEP substitute was to try to force all children into a network of public schools, the object of which was to inculcate obedience to the State and, in the popular slogan of the day, to 'Christianize the Catholic' kids, since Catholic adults were clearly doomed."
Childhood Ends at Puberty, by Charley Reese, 15 Apr 2006 Related Topics: Children, Benjamin Franklin, Learning "To stretch out for 12 years so little knowledge is ridiculous. ... The idea of consolidated central schools is one of the dumbest ones ever to come down the pike ... Compulsory-attendance laws are another dumb idea. ... Without compulsory-attendance laws, a school could set standards and send home any student who failed to meet them."
On Equality and Inequality, by Ludwig von Mises, Modern Age, 1961 Related Topics: Rights, Capitalism, Entrepreneurship, Government, Labor, Socialism "... the United States embarked upon the noble experiment of making every boy and girl an educated person. All young men and women were to spend the years from six to eighteen in school ... the success of this plan is merely apparent. It was made possible only by a policy that, while retaining the name 'high school,' has entirely destroyed its scholarly and scientific value."
Piercing through Myths, Lies, and Stupidity, by George C. Leef, Freedom Daily, Aug 2006 Related Topics: John Stossel, Farming, Politics "Throughout the book, Stossel uses boxes containing one statement that's a myth followed by another statement that's true. His first such box in the schooling chapter reads, 'Myth: Educating children is too important to be left to the uncertainty of market competition. Truth: Educating children is too important to be left to a government monopoly.'"
Self-Interested Defenders of 'the Peculiar Institution', by Vin Suprynowicz, Las Vegas Review-Journal, 24 Mar 2007 Related Topics: Taxation "There were no government schools as we know them before the 1850s. Yet the generation of the founding fathers ... were literate beyond the dreams of most Americans today. How did that come to pass – why did de Tocqueville find America's working class the most literate on earth, when he toured America in 1831 – if 'only government' can make us literate?"
What Do You Call Someone Who Wants to Get Their Hands on Your 5-Year-Old?, by Vin Suprynowicz, 3 Feb 2007 Related Topics: Children "Even though these unpleasant and very costly outcomes track perfectly with the growing amount of time kids have spent in government-run 'schools' over the past 70 years, most Americans will look at you like you're nuts if you posit any CAUSAL relationship between these problems and locking our kids up in mandatory youth propaganda camps for ever more hours, days, and years."
The National Education Service, by Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, Yes, Prime Minister, 21 Jan 1988 Related Topics: United Kingdom Episode of the British sitcom, where the Prime Minister attempts to abolish the Department of Education and Science
