Accueil
https://fee.org/people/c-bradley-thompson/
"The purpose of this essay is to inspire a revolution in the minds of the American people—to shake them of their sentimental attachment to the public school system—and to convince them to unify into an unstoppable movement toward the eventual abolition of public schools. To that end, we will examine what the “public” schools are, why they are immoral, why they are impractical, and why the only rational, moral course of action is to eliminate them." (p.8 )
"When we talk about the public school system, what exactly are we talking about ? What are its defining characteristics and purposes ?
The public school system is a government-created, government-run monopoly that fills its classrooms with tens of millions of students through compulsory attendance and truancy laws and that pays for its operations with money coercively taken from American taxpayers. Government bureaucrats dictate what is taught in the classrooms and how it is taught. Government-trained or government-certified teachers run the classrooms, where they are required to use government-approved curricula, lesson plans, and textbooks. The so-called “public” schools are therefore more properly called government schools; and, because their essential characteristic is force, they are properly classified as political institutions. From the time your children are five-, six-, or seven-years-old until they are at least sixteen, you are legally required to send them to a government-run or government-approved school." (p.8 )
"Because the government forces parents to send their children to government-run or government-approved schools, the government school system is properly classified as a form of conscription. Failure to comply with compulsory attendance laws means you can be harassed and interrogated by the government; your home can be subject to government inspection; you can be fined and jailed; and your children can be taken from you, evaluated by government psychologists, and put in the care of government social services workers.
Homeschoolers, too, must comply with government demands. In 2008, Judge H. Walter Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles ruled (as Time’s Kristin Kloberdanz summarizes) “that children ages six to 18 may be taught only by credentialed teachers in public or private schools—or at home by Mom and Dad, but only if they have a teaching degree.” Croskey stated, “California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children.” Furthermore, Kloberdanz reports, the judge held that “if instructors teach without credentials they will be subject to criminal action.” Croskey partially reversed his ruling later in 2008, finding (in Kloberdanz’s words) “that as long as parents declare their home to be a private school, they may continue to homeschool their children, even if the parents do not have credentials.” However, Croskey continued to hold that parents may homeschool their children only at the indulgence of the legislature, which may grant, alter, or revoke permission to homeschool at its discretion. Earlier this year, the New York Department of Children, Youth, and Families accused a home-schooling mother of “educational neglect” (which is a criminal offense) and, with the sanction of a judge, abducted her son and put him in a foster home. What was the mother’s crime? Her crime was that the educational bureaucracy had been slow in processing her duly-filed paperwork to homeschool her son. Finally, after a protracted court battle, the woman got her son back—but only after assuring the government she had complied with its home-schooling regulations." (p.10)
"Although subject to state control, homeschooling in America is at least legal. Not so in Germany. As the Observer reviews:
Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since it was outlawed in 1938. Hitler wanted the Nazi state to have complete control of young minds. Today there are rare exemptions, such as for children suffering serious illnesses or psychological problems. Legal attempts through the courts—including the European Court of Human Rights—have so far failed to overturn the ban.
Today, seventy-five years later, German education policy is set by Article 7 of the German Constitution, which reads: “The entire school system shall be under the supervision of the state.” (German law permits private schools, but only when approved and regulated by the state and “when segregation of pupils according to the means of their parents will not be encouraged.”) There is no difference in theory between the National Socialist law of 1938 and that which governs education in Germany today, and, for many individuals who live under the current law, there is no meaningful difference in practice. [...]
German homeschoolers, Time reports, have fled to the United States, including Ewe Romeike and his family:
Romeike decided to uproot his family in 2008 after he and his wife had accrued about $10,000 in fines for homeschooling their three oldest children and police had turned up at their doorstep and escorted them to school. “My kids were crying, but nobody seemed to care,” Romeike says of the incident."(p.11)
"Another European nation that has recently banned homeschooling is Sweden, where political leaders are even calling for the legal abduction of children from home-schooling parents. Michael Donnelly of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) warns, “Sweden’s educational policy is becoming increasingly totalitarian. A country that does not permit home education is not really a free country.” HSLDA recounts one of the more egregious cases of abuse: In 2009, a seven-year-old Swedish boy named Domenic Johansson was abducted by armed police officers acting on behalf of the state social services department. Domenic was kidnapped from an airliner as it sat on the runway waiting to take off to India, where his family planned to resettle and homeschool him. When Domenic’s distraught father attempted to have his son released from state custody, government authorities publicly branded him a “human rights fanatic.”." (p.12)
"Attempts have been made throughout American history to pass laws similar to those established in Germany for the purpose of using government force against parents and their children in the realm of education. And these efforts were not limited to assaults on homeschooling; in seeking to require all children to attend government schools, they assaulted private schools as well." (p.12)
"Catherine J. Ross, a professor at George Washington University Law School, argues that a liberal society “should not tolerate the inculcation of absolutist views that undermine toleration of difference,” and so the state “can and should limit the ability of intolerant home schoolers to inculcate hostility to difference in their children—at least during the portion of the day they claim to devote to satisfying the compulsory schooling requirement.” Ross’s explicit goal is for the state to regulate those home-schooling parents “who believe in an absolute truth.” Such views, she writes, “have no place” in America. Apparently, Ross is oblivious to the fact that her condemnation of other people’s absolutist views is itself absolutist, not to mention the fact that she is willing to use the coercion of the state to support her absolutism.
Likewise, Professor Kimberly A. Yuracko of Northwestern University law school has argued that constitutional and political limits must be placed on homeschooling parents who “teach their children idiosyncratic and illiberal beliefs and values.”." (p.12)
-C. Bradley Thompson, Freedom of Education, Essays from The Objective Standard, 2016, 51 pages.
"The purpose of this essay is to inspire a revolution in the minds of the American people—to shake them of their sentimental attachment to the public school system—and to convince them to unify into an unstoppable movement toward the eventual abolition of public schools. To that end, we will examine what the “public” schools are, why they are immoral, why they are impractical, and why the only rational, moral course of action is to eliminate them." (p.8 )
"When we talk about the public school system, what exactly are we talking about ? What are its defining characteristics and purposes ?
The public school system is a government-created, government-run monopoly that fills its classrooms with tens of millions of students through compulsory attendance and truancy laws and that pays for its operations with money coercively taken from American taxpayers. Government bureaucrats dictate what is taught in the classrooms and how it is taught. Government-trained or government-certified teachers run the classrooms, where they are required to use government-approved curricula, lesson plans, and textbooks. The so-called “public” schools are therefore more properly called government schools; and, because their essential characteristic is force, they are properly classified as political institutions. From the time your children are five-, six-, or seven-years-old until they are at least sixteen, you are legally required to send them to a government-run or government-approved school." (p.8 )
"Because the government forces parents to send their children to government-run or government-approved schools, the government school system is properly classified as a form of conscription. Failure to comply with compulsory attendance laws means you can be harassed and interrogated by the government; your home can be subject to government inspection; you can be fined and jailed; and your children can be taken from you, evaluated by government psychologists, and put in the care of government social services workers.
Homeschoolers, too, must comply with government demands. In 2008, Judge H. Walter Croskey of the Second District Court of Appeals in Los Angeles ruled (as Time’s Kristin Kloberdanz summarizes) “that children ages six to 18 may be taught only by credentialed teachers in public or private schools—or at home by Mom and Dad, but only if they have a teaching degree.” Croskey stated, “California courts have held that under provisions in the Education Code, parents do not have a constitutional right to homeschool their children.” Furthermore, Kloberdanz reports, the judge held that “if instructors teach without credentials they will be subject to criminal action.” Croskey partially reversed his ruling later in 2008, finding (in Kloberdanz’s words) “that as long as parents declare their home to be a private school, they may continue to homeschool their children, even if the parents do not have credentials.” However, Croskey continued to hold that parents may homeschool their children only at the indulgence of the legislature, which may grant, alter, or revoke permission to homeschool at its discretion. Earlier this year, the New York Department of Children, Youth, and Families accused a home-schooling mother of “educational neglect” (which is a criminal offense) and, with the sanction of a judge, abducted her son and put him in a foster home. What was the mother’s crime? Her crime was that the educational bureaucracy had been slow in processing her duly-filed paperwork to homeschool her son. Finally, after a protracted court battle, the woman got her son back—but only after assuring the government she had complied with its home-schooling regulations." (p.10)
"Although subject to state control, homeschooling in America is at least legal. Not so in Germany. As the Observer reviews:
Home-schooling has been illegal in Germany since it was outlawed in 1938. Hitler wanted the Nazi state to have complete control of young minds. Today there are rare exemptions, such as for children suffering serious illnesses or psychological problems. Legal attempts through the courts—including the European Court of Human Rights—have so far failed to overturn the ban.
Today, seventy-five years later, German education policy is set by Article 7 of the German Constitution, which reads: “The entire school system shall be under the supervision of the state.” (German law permits private schools, but only when approved and regulated by the state and “when segregation of pupils according to the means of their parents will not be encouraged.”) There is no difference in theory between the National Socialist law of 1938 and that which governs education in Germany today, and, for many individuals who live under the current law, there is no meaningful difference in practice. [...]
German homeschoolers, Time reports, have fled to the United States, including Ewe Romeike and his family:
Romeike decided to uproot his family in 2008 after he and his wife had accrued about $10,000 in fines for homeschooling their three oldest children and police had turned up at their doorstep and escorted them to school. “My kids were crying, but nobody seemed to care,” Romeike says of the incident."(p.11)
"Another European nation that has recently banned homeschooling is Sweden, where political leaders are even calling for the legal abduction of children from home-schooling parents. Michael Donnelly of the Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA) warns, “Sweden’s educational policy is becoming increasingly totalitarian. A country that does not permit home education is not really a free country.” HSLDA recounts one of the more egregious cases of abuse: In 2009, a seven-year-old Swedish boy named Domenic Johansson was abducted by armed police officers acting on behalf of the state social services department. Domenic was kidnapped from an airliner as it sat on the runway waiting to take off to India, where his family planned to resettle and homeschool him. When Domenic’s distraught father attempted to have his son released from state custody, government authorities publicly branded him a “human rights fanatic.”." (p.12)
"Attempts have been made throughout American history to pass laws similar to those established in Germany for the purpose of using government force against parents and their children in the realm of education. And these efforts were not limited to assaults on homeschooling; in seeking to require all children to attend government schools, they assaulted private schools as well." (p.12)
"Catherine J. Ross, a professor at George Washington University Law School, argues that a liberal society “should not tolerate the inculcation of absolutist views that undermine toleration of difference,” and so the state “can and should limit the ability of intolerant home schoolers to inculcate hostility to difference in their children—at least during the portion of the day they claim to devote to satisfying the compulsory schooling requirement.” Ross’s explicit goal is for the state to regulate those home-schooling parents “who believe in an absolute truth.” Such views, she writes, “have no place” in America. Apparently, Ross is oblivious to the fact that her condemnation of other people’s absolutist views is itself absolutist, not to mention the fact that she is willing to use the coercion of the state to support her absolutism.
Likewise, Professor Kimberly A. Yuracko of Northwestern University law school has argued that constitutional and political limits must be placed on homeschooling parents who “teach their children idiosyncratic and illiberal beliefs and values.”." (p.12)
-C. Bradley Thompson, Freedom of Education, Essays from The Objective Standard, 2016, 51 pages.
