Should Government Schooling Be Abolished

Teleology (Greek: telos: end, purpose) is the philosophical study of design and purpose.

Wikipedia

There exists a subject class unable to imagine a condition of existence without an ever expanding government presence in its life. So inured to servitude has it become, that the wide world of liberty outside its mental shackles appears a threatening place. So habituated to obedience to the state have its subjects lately become, that government is daily emboldened to thrust ever more intrusive indignities (or so they would seem to a free people) upon it.

The manifest existence of this condition would be instantly clear to any citizen of the Colonies at the time of the Revolution for Independence, and not alone to patriots. Patriots went to war over the imposition of a tiny stamp tax.

The intrusion of nameless functionaries with massive volumes of restrictions, fees and regulations, requiring a stamp of approval upon nearly every act, private and public, simply would have been unimaginable to anyone then living. Had even a tiny fraction of this tyranny been attempted against this freedom loving people, government would have been swept away in an instant .

Albert Jay Nock educational theorist and social critic wrote:

[My teachers] did not pretend to believe that everyone is educable, for they knew, on the contrary, that very few are educable, very few indeed. They saw this as a fact of nature, like the fact that few are six feet tall. [...] They accepted the fact that there are practicable ranges of intellectual and spiritual experience which nature has opened to some and closed to others.

Why does government segregate children from the rest of society and regiment them like interchangeable units while claiming to educate them? What is government trying to accomplish?

Philosopher, Herbert Spenser wrote:

... what is meant by saying that a government ought to educate the people? Why should they be educated? What is the education for? Clearly, to fit the people for social life — to make them good citizens. And who is to say what are good citizens? The government: there is no other judge. And who is to say how these good citizens may be made? The government: there is no other judge. Hence the proposition is convertible into this — a government ought to mold children into good citizens…. It must first form for itself a definite conception of a pattern citizen; and, having done this, must elaborate such system of discipline as seems best calculated to produce citizens after that pattern. This system of discipline it is bound to enforce to the uttermost. For if it does otherwise, it allows men to become different from what in its judgment they should become, and therefore fails in that duty it is charged to fulfill.

If government is made up of powerful individuals organized so as to take and wield power, then the purpose of government education is to form children into beings useful to these people. The courses of instruction, then, are not the purpose of government schools because what and how well students learn doesn't affect these individuals. What affects them is their subjects' attitudes toward their institution, namely, government. The courses of instruction are bait only, specious arguments for the government schools, while their actual purpose is indoctrination. In fact, government schools are, and can not be other than, indoctrination camps, aka. total institutions.

A total institution, ... is an institution where all parts of life of individuals under the institution are subordinated to and dependent upon the authorities of the organization. Total institutions are social microcosms dictated by hegemony and clear hierarchy. The total institution acts as a secret society within the society, one which shapes newcomers willingly or unwillingly into a new and more or less permanent social role.

Wikipedia

Public schooling, like every other human invention, succeeds or fails according as its intrinsic tendency serves its established goal.

Every institution promulgates the implicit assumptions underpinning its existence. Thus, every free-market institution, by attracting resources through competition for voluntary patronage and support, implicitly promotes the principle that individual freedom of choice deserves to determine between winners and looses. Conversely, government schools (which are funded through confiscation and filled through coercion) inure everyone engaged with them to involuntary servitude. This is their elemental and essential product.

From the standpoint of government, its schools succeed because they teach conformity, obedience, and dependence. Those are its purposes, principles and products, not critical or independent thinking, and not adherence to moral principle which would only undermine obedience toward government. Authority is its unspoken justification and end. And government schooling succeeds in these areas regardless of its efficacy in teaching reading, writing or arithmetic simply by being government schools.

Libertarian, Mrs. Isabel Paterson wrote:

Nowhere will there be any inducement to teach the "supremacy of the state" as a compulsory philosophy. But every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later, whether as the divine right of kings, or the "will of the people" in "democracy." Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property, and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey.

The method of delivery is itself the message. The important thing about the product is not its content but where it comes from. Its message: government is necessary.

Government knows that the individual's belief in himself is its natural enemy. Public belief in voluntary, self-regulating human interaction would destroy dependence on coercive institutions. Government schools are monuments to the truth that unbrainwashed people constitute a threat to the governing elite.

Blogger Chris Hedges wrote:

The core values of our open society, the ability to think for oneself, to draw independent conclusions, to express dissent when judgment and common sense indicate something is wrong, to be self-critical, to challenge authority, to understand historical facts, to separate truth from lies...are dying.

They are being murdered.

Once the indoctrination machine was established its control became the obvious goal of all those who would mold the thinking of the subject class. Before the existence of this institution it was necessary to convince, as Thomas Payne succeeded in doing with his pamphlet, Common Sense.

With this institution the emphasis shifted to indoctrination.

Blogger Jim Fedako wrote:

..if your goal is to create citizens who support the collective, and you are not willing to take up arms, you adopt a Gramscian approach and slowly destroy the institutions of free association – of liberty and freedom. You attack the family, the church, etc., in a roundabout way. You employ the strategy of the indirect approach – you indoctrinate the youth. By doing so, you break the bond of parent and child without resorting to loud confrontations and street fighting. You simply use the classroom to define the state and its minions as maternal and paternal figures. Then, you sit back and allow subsequent generations – educated by the state – to chip away at the bedrock institutions over time. Sure, you have the occasional pitched fight, but these only serve as feints covering your flanking maneuvers. Your war is not one of attrition; it is one of subversion and time.

From generation to generation whatever government wishes to instill in its captives is entirely secondary to obedience and dependence. All of government cooperates in the maintenance of government schools , but only the regnant cabal gets to fine tune the program. With a self refreshing supply of captives and nothing so distracting as customer dissatisfaction or competitive choice to threaten it, intellectual fads meet with little resistance.

Physician Stephen La Tulippe wrote:

Since the seizure of our academic infrastructure by 60’s Leftists several decades ago, the system’s core agenda has veered into the wilds of multiculturalism, ethical relativism, and radical egalitarian socialism... And despite the system’s miserable failure at teaching basic academic skills, it is having a raging success at this corrupt new political undertaking.

Whether in the hands of atheistic materialists or authoritarian theists, at bottom the institution is statist, and inimical to the liberal ideal of the primacy of the individual's rights against government encroachment.

Government schools are poison.