The Road to Freedom - #2

 
Special Interest Groups Love Compulsory Schooling

Marketers have come to realize that all roads eventually lead to the schools. - Ed Winter, co-founder, Channel One, Business Week

And it's not only businesses that are marketing.  Anyone who has an agenda needs to market -- they need to get their message out, convince others to buy into it. 

What better target than 48 million captive public school children?

You might be surprised to learn that one of the most dangerous aspects of state schooling is the groups allowed access to your children in school. Here's a partial list of the kinds of groups that now have access to public school children.

• psychiatric groups
• medical groups
• social reformers
• environmental groups
• feminist groups
• "alternative lifestyle" groups
• animal rights groups
• religious groups
• researchers
• business and industry
• the military
• social workers' groups
• And many more...

 How do these interests gain access to your children? 

• Many are granted access by state and federal law.
• They provide special study units and materials to teachers.
• They provide workshops and training for teachers.
• They provide workshops and special programs for students.
• They advise textbook publishers to make sure their views are represented in curriculum.
• The list could on and on. The ways are many and creative.

Under the guise of environmentalism, drug awareness, physical and mental health programs, diversity and tolerance, multiculturalism, equality, community service, family life and more, literally hundreds of special interest groups are able to reach your children with their messages.

That's why they love compulsory state schooling. They certainly wouldn't gain such direct access if your children were under your care.

Let's back up for just a moment. Here are a couple of examples of what we're talking about:

The Witches' League for Public Awareness says on their web site that they fight to "dispel the misconceptions surrounding Witchcraft and Wicca. We continue to work with schools, government agencies, the media, and when the need arises, directly with the private sector."

And from The Humanist magazine:

I am convinced that the battle for humankind's future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers that correctly perceive their role as proselytizers of a new faith... The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and new - the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism... - John J. Dunphy 

You may or may not agree with the messages of the above groups, but that's not the point. The point is that these and hundreds of other groups happily use the power of the federal, state, and local governments to force their message on school children.

Some of the very first special interests were the people considered the founders of public schools as we know them today. Their goals were the same as today's groups: Capture and indoctrinate the children. Many of their goals were admirable: less crime, a more peaceful society, even happier citizens. And many were not: people who were easier to control, more submissive to the state, not educated to the point that they'd become dissatisfied with menial labor.

Here some of them are in their own words.

We who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all parents as having given hostages to our cause.  - Horace Mann, widely considered the "Father of public schooling"

Every year the child is coming to belong more to the state and less and less to the parent. --  Ellwood P. Cubberley, 1909, Dean of School of Education, Stanford University, education historian

Ninety-nine [students] out of a hundred are automata, careful to walk in prescribed paths, careful to follow the prescribed custom. This is not an accident but the result of substantial education, which, scientifically defined, is the subsumption of the individual.  --  William T. Harris, The Philosophy of Education, 1906, U.S. Commissioner of Education from 1889 to 1906  

Without compulsory schools, backed by the police power of the state, all of these people and groups would find themselves on an equal footing with the rest of us. If they had a message they wished to promote, they'd have to preach it to adults who were free to disagree and argue. That's why they love the schools -- it makes their mission so much easier.


Sources and Notes 

Next Article:  Is there anything good about public schools?

Can you think of others who would benefit from the series?  Please direct them to The Road to Freedom!

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Road to Freedom - #2
Last updated January 24, 2008