One trend that has been a big push in recent weeks is – for obvious reasons – homeschooling. And those who run the education system in North America (and I presume, in other places) are worried that if youngsters learn at home, they’ll be less prone to teachers’ ministrations. Kids will start to think for themselves. This must be resisted because it undermines civic spirit, apparently, according to this Harvard Review article:
She views the absence of regulations ensuring that homeschooled children receive a meaningful education equivalent to that required in public schools as a threat to U.S. democracy. “From the beginning of compulsory education in this country, we have thought of the government as having some right to educate children so that they become active, productive participants in the larger society,” she says. This involves in part giving children the knowledge to eventually get jobs and support themselves. “But it’s also important that children grow up exposed to community values, social values, democratic values, ideas about nondiscrimination and tolerance of other people’s viewpoints,” she says, noting that European countries such as Germany ban homeschooling entirely and that countries such as France require home visits and annual tests.
Here’s another gem:
She concedes that in some situations, homeschooling may be justified and effective. “No doubt there are some parents who are motivated and capable of giving an education that’s of a higher quality and as broad in scope as what’s happening in the public school,” she says. But Bartholet believes that if parents want permission to opt out of schools, the burden of proving that their case is justified should fall on parents.
The problem with this article is that the author of the piece appears oblivious to parents’ worries about the poor quality of much public schooling in the US. There is also the default assumption that the State is entitled to impose a certain view and set of aptitudes and attitudes on children and that the burden of proof is on those who want the family, not the State, to be the primary decision-taker on education. An article in Reason magazine last year also directly challenged the idea that homeschooled kids are less likely to be well-adjusted adults. (Like with all these issues, there are clear exceptions, such as with children who are maltreated by parents, etc).
I will be interested to see if any of you fine Samizdata commenters have been schooled at home for any part of your time, and what your experience has been.
In times of crisis, certain viewpoints are challenged. Now is such a time.
noting that European countries such as Germany ban homeschooling entirely
I did know that. I also know which German government introduced the ban.
Best tweet regarding this story:
“Harvard Magazine has a cover story on the dangers of home schooling and suggest a presumptive ban. In the cover image they misspelt arithmetic.”
Yeah, I saw that, bobby. Unfortunately the illustrator will dodge the bullet by saying that it’s a joke at the expense of barely literate homeschooling parents.
One of the points that this article rams home, e’en to the brain dead, is why government education is so bad.
It’s not simply that government education suffers from all the traditional inefficiences of socialist production – no price system, no competition, producer capture, political control.
It’s that the object of the exercise is not, and explicitly not, to ram large quantities of useful practical information into children, nor to teach them skills, nor how to learn, nor to enthuse them to enjoy learning. It’s to brainwash them with political dogma.
If they can’t read, write or do arithmetic it’s not exactly a feature, but it’s certainly not a bug. Education for the child’s own practical and intellectual benefit was never the objective in the first place.
That’s why homeschooling is the work of the devil. It defeats the whole purpose of education.
‘Education’, is the word not derived from Latin ‘ex’ (‘out of’) and ‘ducere’ (‘to lead’) (see ‘Duce’), implicitily ‘to lead out of ignorance’ but in statist reality ‘to lead out of reason’?
I am last person to sneer at spelling and other such – but then my state school did not teach me such things, in fact it taught me nothing at all. I was taught to read by Mrs Williams (with some help from her cat Pushkin) in a village a couple of miles from here. My parents (reactionary-running-dogs that they were) were upset that I could not read – and so sent me to Mrs Williams.
What state education for? The founder of the system that now dominates the United States, Horace Mann of Massachusetts, was not in the habit of pretending that his system (adopted in Massachusetts in 1852) would dramatically improve literacy or anything like that – what his system was pushing a certain POLITICAL outlook.
This is what the lady in the article means by “democracy” – she means producing young people who see the GOVERNMENT as the solution to various “social problems” via its spending and regulations. And the lady fears that people who are Home Schooled might come to the view that government spending and regulations make society worse rather than better.
It is as simple as that. As brutally simple as that.
Governor John Jay of New York mused that a state education system (he did not create one – but he wanted to) would enlighten the young.
Governor Jay also believed that a government prison system (rather than hanging for a major offence and flogging for less severe crime, but still one that violated the body or property of someone else – which is what New York used to do) would reform criminals.
I wish John Jay could come back to this Earth – so I could show him how much “enlightening” and “reforming” is going on in New York schools and prisons.
Will anything be learned from the virus – will people turn away from the leftist schools and universities?
I doubt it – but it would be nice to think so.
As for why such institutions always become leftist indoctrination centres – see the First Law of John O’Sullivan. Anything that is not explicitly right wing will always be taken over by the left. “We should be more moderate and be open to new people” always ends up as “DEATH TO THE WEST!
John O’Sullivan, like all the leading Conservative thinkers of Mrs Thatcher’s time, would not be allowed into the present British Conservative Party – “Central Office” being a classic example of his First Law.
To use the language of the left (which the “Diversity and Inclusion” crowd at Central Office should love) they have “internalised the ideology” of the left and are an example showing the “ideological hegemony” of the left.
They are also an example that just sending your children to (very expensive) private schools does not mean they will not be brainwashed with leftism (“social reform”, “social justice”). Sadly many (although not all) private schools are interested in getting young people into “good universities” (meaning leftist ones) and “good jobs” – meaning jobs in the government bureaucracy and the bureaucracy of the “Woke” Corporations.
Remember that private schools and even, supposedly, profit seeking Corporations are not immune from O’Sullivan’s law. Imagine, for example, what Walt Disney (who only died in 1966) would think of the sub Marxist scum who dominate the Disney Corporation today – and, sadly, this Corporation is typical.
So if you are confident of what you believe and why you believe it – then teach your principles to your children, teach them yourself.
Of course your children will challenge your beliefs – and so they should! But if you make the case yourself at least your principles will be presented – if you trust a school to do this you are kidding yourself.
That part of the article hit me between the eyes, hard. Never have I thought of government’s right to educate children. Obligation or duty, maybe. But now we’re giving it a right? That statement is an iceberg–a little word above water, and a leviathan of consequences beneath.
I’m not sure what you’d find in the general case, but the home schooled kids I’ve run across over the years are leaps and bounds ahead of their state school counterparts in every discernible dimension, including socially. Some of this has to be selection bias on the part of the parents, but I’ve always been suspicious of the particular gaps in economic and historical knowledge you find among state school graduates.
The late John Taylor Gatto wrote some good books on the genesis of US compulsory education, and there are some embarrassing details which have been forgotten over time.
The Babylon Bee did it as satire back on March 31:
“Teachers Urge Government To Reopen Schools Before Students Learn To Think For Themselves.“
I read recently – but do not recall the URL – that many children are enjoying the discovery that the syllabus that took a whole day (plus travel there and back) at school can be got through in a couple of hours at home. If the lockdown eases enough to let children spend the saved time with their friends, I could see them getting keen on it.
Although it will be least mentioned, I believe what most troubles Bartholet and her ilk about the streamed-lesson style of home schooling is that everything the teacher says to the children can be seen and replayed by their parents.
If schools and universities have no way to
indoctrinateteach students without their parents (and legislators) seeing all, that might of course prove true.This, from Lee Moore, nails it.
Modern education (especially in the US judging by the PISA stats) is not about enabling people to help themselves, but about making people subservient to the State.
I understand the Scientologists have a number of homeschooling courses and resources.
Okay, maybe I don’t note something, please help me:
Is Democracy it reelly the first thing that cames into your mind if you think about Germany?
As a German for myself, I have no idea how the others think about us. I assume not that good, honestly. 🙄
As far as I note, much of the arguments againts HomeSchooling does not argue that the kids are uneducated, but the lack of contact with childeren of the same age. The question must therefore be, have home schooled persons more or less problems with social interaction?
Thats a empirical question, but I think, the best answer cames from the concerned self.
We always found that home-schooling was required as an addition to the kids’ education.
They received adequate education in STEM from their schools, from what I could see. Their education in history was lacking. Their education in what I would term sociology – politics, philosophy, and life – was usually just plain wrong.
So, many times, homework hour wasn’t devoted to math tables or mole calcs. It was “here’s our Constitution – read it and we’ll discuss it.” It was “she said what about welfare?” It was “no, slavery wasn’t invented here.”
I learned to respect slightly over half of the kids’ teachers, and despise slightly less than half.
And I learned that you don’t need to home-school completely. You just need to pay attention and fill in and be willing to tell your kids how to judge who they can trust.
“As far as I note, much of the arguments againts HomeSchooling does not argue that the kids are uneducated, but the lack of contact with childeren of the same age.”
It’s sometimes brought up, but in most normal situations isn’t a big concern.
The big problem is that not all parents have the welfare of the kids at heart. Sexual, physical, or emotional abuse by parents, religious indoctrination, cults, parents who are mentally ill in various ways, and parents who are simply not competent to do the job. Can you imagine it possible that some people might not be suitable or qualified to teach in a school? Socialists, communists, jihadists, environmentalists, and radical feminists all have kids too. Can you imagine what their kids would be learning? Likewise criminals, alcoholics, drug addicts, and so on.
There are good people who do a good job of teaching their kids, and yes, there is a degree of opposition from the Establishment because they’re not learning the party line. (Although I think that concern is overblown – parents should be teaching their kids in parallel with the state system, and using it as an opponent in free debate. The arguments for free speech apply double in education.) But there are also people who I think even we would agree are incredibly bad people to be a child’s only source of information about the world. Diversity of viewpoint is key.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Teachers are paid by parents to educate their kids. Parents have legal control over their kids, and how they are educated. If I hire you to teach my children, I get to decide how you do that.
I would no more choose to continue to employ a teacher who teaches my kids the standard progressive rewriting of history than I would continue to employ a gardener who shouted “fuck America” as a ritual every two minutes while trimming my hedges.
Teachers can go out and wear vagina hats and praise Che all they want, on their own time. Not on my dime.
You seem to think that, since free speech means “free from government pressure”, once you gain government employment you are free to say anything. It doesn’t work like that.
Couple things here.
1. Anyone who starts out talking about government’s *rights* – can and should be ignored. They don’t know what they’re talking about. Government has not right. We may have granted the government the privilege of educating our children, we certainly didn’t agree that it has a right to.
2. The quoted section above – she’s ignoring the times when the community values inculcated into school children, the democratic values of the time, were about discrimination and intolerance of other people’s viewpoints. And that’s even accepting that modern government schooling teaches non-discrimination and intolerance. Which it doesn’t. Its very much about intolerance towards anything except a very narrow set of beliefs.
“You seem to think that, since free speech means “free from government pressure””
Free speech does *not* mean free from government pressure! It means free to all viewpoints!
To give a rounded education, and to prepare someone for entering the outside world, you *have* to introduce them to the arguments of their enemies, in the form their enemies will present them. To exclude any viewpoint from their education is intellectual protectionism. Gazelles and Dodos.
You should be paying teachers specifically to introduce your kids to ideas and beliefs from the entire spectrum of society, especially those you don’t agree with, and not in crippled form, but with the full strength of argument of a believer. “I should like to see the teachers of mankind endeavoring to provide a substitute for it; some contrivance for making the difficulties of the question as present to the learner’s consciousness, as if they were pressed upon him by a dissentient champion, eager for his conversion.” That’s a real education.
And all that is on top of a demonstrated massive ignorance of what homeschooling is and who is doing it in the US. Its so poor that, and I hate to do this because it taints those who managed to acquire a brain despite all the obstacles in their path, its a standard example of ‘fucking millennial’ work. She has her worldview and she has never bothered to check the ‘facts’. Never bothered to see if the things ‘that are known’ are actually true. So she vomited this minimum effort article out in order to meet a deadline.
NiV : “Free speech does *not* mean free from government pressure! It means free to all viewpoints!”
I confess that I find this rather puzzling.
The thing of value that NiV seems to be lauding is open-mindedness, or that element of it that consists of being open to communication from others, including communication which you may find unsettling.
To be sure this is a valuable frame of mind, but it is not the same thing as freedom of speech, as usually understood. And that is indeed speech (and reception thereof) free from government pressure. Viewed from a legal perspective, that’s pretty much all there is of the concept; though philosophically one would sweep in coercion by private actors too.
There is obviously a tangential connection between freedom of speech and openness to other people’s communications – the latter is not practicable if the former does not obtain. But they’re not the same thing.
It is a strange idea that home schooled children are poorly socialized. Children should spend most of their time with adults, learning to be an adult, not with children learning to be a child.
And to do that, I’ll let them watch CNN. I will not hire, as their full-time teacher, one of that enemy.
Is there a public-school curriculum anywhere in the world that does this? Which presents, for example, the arguments of climate alarmists and deniers, of “system of white supremacy” theorists and “race realists”, of Keynesians and Hayekians, of “patriarchy theory” and “men’s rights”, with evenhandedness or at least with intellectual detachment?
Because my public school education was quite the opposite. If I had not been a reader I would not have known that there were even any controversies about public policy ideas. In US public schools all social issues are presented as settled matters, with factual well-known “correct” answers (and those correct answers are ALL progressive answers).
And this is different from school how?
In every American state, home schoolers are required to conform to a state-specified curriculum, although the parents can supplement it, and the students must pass state-written examinations.
Socialization is an issue, but in every American state, home-schooled children have the right to participate in extracurricular activities like band, theater, and sports.
What a crock of shit.
I know that teachers add some non-essential material, but the idea that is the main focus is dogma is a purely politically motivated idea, that is obviously contradicted by any school you actually go to. It doesn’t convince people — it makes you look like you are in the tin foil hat territory.
In fact it is the reverse. Homeschooled students get the party line, as decided by their parents. And nothing else.
School children get a range of views. Sure the Lefty tree-huggers are dominant, but there’s plenty of Libertarians like me out there saying the direct opposite. They get optimists and pessimists. Religious and non-religious. Those that value conformity and those that value individualism. Those that love rules, and those that don’t. We have to also remember that students are most formed politically when they are older, and that senior secondary school teachers are far more diverse than primary (there’s just not that many super lefty types that get Maths and Physics degrees).
Also, and this is just as important, students in schools get to meet a range of fellow students. That’s where they actually pick up their values. Teachers can spout all they like, but mostly they’re ignored. Home schooled students are mostly without this too.
I never knew the political opinion of a single one of my teachers. Not one. They might have told me, but I didn’t care.
Two points, Chester. Firstly, in every school I’ve taught in, global warming is considered a proven scientific fact, no debate entertained. That’s indoctrination straight up.
Secondly, from practical experience, the thing that public school opponents get wrong is that the schools are commiting sins of omission, not commission. It’s not what they tell you, it’s what they don’t tell you, and that is much harder to see at a glance.
The nicest thing I can say about my school was the age of the text books. The embarrassed teacher explaining we hadn’t run out of oil after all still stays with me along with realising the guilt for African slavery was deliberately being pushed despite the West being the only society to halt slavery by inventing machines…..
In the USA, at least, that’s a very rural/conservative viewpoint.
The liberal/urban view is that kids need time to “be kids” and live with and as kids.
All I’ve been able to figure out about this is that perhaps the liberal outlook is so negative and cynical that they believe that the adult life the kids will grow into will be so horrific that they deserve at least some small respite before the hell begins, whereas rural/conservative people approach that life more eagerly, with high expectations.
When I look back on my ,very distant, school days, one thing that stands out is the absolute snail’s pace at which the learning took place. I was a slightly brighter than average kid but not a genius by any means, but I think that I could have learned stuff at a very significantly faster pace. There is also the issue of learning masses of stuff that has little relevance to real life.
bobby b: An alternative theory is that the liberal outlook is one that considers most adults to be stupid and ignorant and therefore best treated as if they were children, with actual children being treated as young children of approximately half their actual age.
Then there’s the propaganda used to turn parents against homeschooling and toward public (US sense) schools:
+ Socialization is much more important than education.
+ What you know doesn’t matter nearly as much as who you know.
+ Smart kids will learn no matter what; dumb kids will fail to learn no matter what.
+ Kids who don’t go to public schools – especially homeschooled kids – will grow up to become lonely miserable FREAKS.
+ Finally, they’re not ‘your’ kids – they’re society’s kids, kids who belong to the government. It “Takes a village” and all that.
That’s the one I find most offensive. Children do not belong to the government, or to “society”. We should start with the assumption parents have the best interests of their children at heart, and we should only intervene when it becomes clear that’s not the case.
Chester Draws:-
“School children get a range of views”.
To use your own phrase, what a crock of shit.
“To be sure this is a valuable frame of mind, but it is not the same thing as freedom of speech, as usually understood. And that is indeed speech (and reception thereof) free from government pressure. Viewed from a legal perspective, that’s pretty much all there is of the concept; though philosophically one would sweep in coercion by private actors too.”
That’s a specifically American perspective, because of the First Amendment. The constitution only constrains the government, but this only constitutes free speech so long as one accepts a second axiom, that the government has a monopoly on the use of force. If only the government can use force, and the government is forbidden from abridging free speech, then society as a whole is forbidden from abridging free speech.
When Facebook and Twitter ban political views they don’t like, that’s an abridgement of free speech, but not by the government. Political correctness, where people tell you “You can’t say that!” is an abridgement of free speech, but not by the government.
The First Amendment has fooled Americans into thinking that because they have protection from government interference, they therefore have protected free speech, and moreover, they have been fooled into thinking government is the only threat. This is the ‘vulgar dread’ of the above passage.
Free speech is a requirement of good decisionmaking and accurate understanding. It is the immune system that cleanses our body of knowledge of error. It is our safeguard against cults and political and religious demagogues. It is our defence against oppression and enforced orthodoxy. And the need and duty to protect it applies to society as a whole, not just to government. It applies to all of us.
“Is there a public-school curriculum anywhere in the world that does this? Which presents, for example, the arguments of climate alarmists and deniers, of “system of white supremacy” theorists and “race realists”, of Keynesians and Hayekians, of “patriarchy theory” and “men’s rights”, with evenhandedness or at least with intellectual detachment?”
Yes! Exactly! And having just seen how dangerous and stupid such one-sidedness is, why would you repeat their mistake?
You should, as parents, want to see your kids exposed to all sides and taught to analyse them with even-handed intellectual detachment. To impose your own biases is as wrong and dangerous as them imposing theirs. Indeed, it is exactly the same behaviour as the public schools, with exactly the same motive, just seen from the other side. They are just like you. You are just like them. Everyone thinks it would be so much easier to run the world if opposing doctrines were not taught, if the opposing arguments could be silenced or excluded, or only revealed in crippled form. It’s a bad idea.
The state does it because the state is made up of people just like us, and we as a society do not fully understand why free speech is so necessary. We don’t even really understand what free speech is. Hence the way people say “Of course I believe in free speech! But ‘free speech’ doesn’t include [insert list of stuff-I-don’t-like]!” And it is of no use to replace a state education that does not believe in free speech with a homeschool education that does not believe in free speech. That just puts parents in the place of the state – an unelected government of two with near absolute power, and all the dangers thereof. And many parents are as bad or worse.
“That’s the one I find most offensive. Children do not belong to the government, or to “society”.”
They don’t belong to their parents, either. They belong to themselves.
The liberal/urban view is that kids need time to “be kids” and live with and as kids.
And yet the way kids’ time is structured is so regimented that they don’t have time to be real kids.
Deep Lurker:
I went to government school, and grew up to be a lonely, miserable FREAK. But then, that might have something to do with my mom likely having had an undiagnosed mental illness.
You should, as parents, want to see your kids exposed to all sides and taught to analyse them with even-handed intellectual detachment.
I don’t feel like I got that at school, and I graduated 30 years ago.
I learned a lot of the non-STEM stuff from reading the World Book Encyclopedia and the back issues of Reader’s Digest and National Geographic that my hoarder mom had saved, and felt like school was really really slow.
While public schools (at least in the US) invariably fall prey to this error, homeschoolers are free not to do so. They can present any point of view they wish; they have no need of public school teachers and politicized curricula to do this.
As one small anecdotal example, I know a couple who are homeschooling their three children. In addition to teaching them all the normal academics, and how to run a farm, they are systematically exposing them to various religious beliefs (actually taking them to services), despite the fact that they themselves are atheists. And so far as I know none of their children has ever set foot on public school grounds.
The Insta-Professor has just contributed his own brand of sharp, no-nonsense commentary.
(Illustrating my prior comment) it would obviously be inconvenient to teachers if teaching that racist war-criminal Churchill is less important than Bob Geldorf were seen by parents, not just pupils – h/t Guido. (The visibility to Boris, whose hero Churchill is, might not be that convenient either.)
Long ago, teacher organisations described letting the public know school results as “disseminating ignorance”. I don’t know quite what terms they will choose for the public being able to see first hand the teaching their taxes pay for but I suspect it will be similarly Orwellian.
Speaking of Orwellian, they could always channel Nullius in Verba and call it an affront to their free speech for the public to ask better value for their tax money. Anyone who recalls Nullius’s comments in the thread of this post will find NiV’s comments above mere repetitions. Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength – and at-teacher-pleasure indoctrination of compelled-to-attend children at the cost of their compelled-to-pay-taxes parents is free speech. 🙂 Anyone who wants my assessment of that claim is welcome to read my comments in that thread – no point repeating them here. 🙂
Not that I’m complaining about having been prompted to write them there, or others here. Dominic Cummings’ extensive experience of the UK education department has clearly given him no small contempt for its politicised uselessness, so as, if and when the government ever gets a round tuit, things may happen there. At that time (if it doesn’t start earlier due to remote schooling effects), many members of the public will encounter suchlike Orwellian arguments in PTA meetings and other venues, so it is prudent cognitive diversity that one has met them and thought about them.
It just occurred to me – are we talking across each other here? When I say public school, I am using the US version of the term – a school funded by local taxes and operated by the (mostly local) state, free to any taxpayer in the district.
In the UK those are called private schools, yes?
Chester:
I’d like to know where you live.
Judging from conversations i had with English people younger than me, that is definitely not the case in England. (It’s not that they told me so, it’s that they demonstrated it when they opened their mouths.)
Ted:
I did, but was in high school more than 30 years ago, in Italy.
My math+science teachers were fascists, my Latin+Greek teacher was married to a locally-prominent Christian Democrat, and my Philosophy teacher was on his way to becoming a Senator for the Communist Party. The other teachers, i don’t know. The point is that they could not do any propaganda because they had to get along with each other.
Incidentally, my Philosophy teacher taught us for only about one year, since he was often on leave due to political duties. One year he was replaced by a Catholic priest. 🙂
Niall: I am afraid that your last paragraph is impenetrable for me.
The kind of education that the young should get (in addition to ‘hard’ subjects such as logic, math, and the hard sciences) but will hardly ever get in schools controlled by the ruling class:
From Tom Wolfe’s I am Charlotte Simmons, quoted by Ed Driscoll.
Modern Brits and Americans treat their own people like the Romans treated the Greeks. Only worse, because afaik the Greeks were not indoctrinated into deferring to the authority of the Romans.
“Speaking of Orwellian, they could always channel Nullius in Verba and call it an affront to their free speech for the public to ask better value for their tax money.”
??!
I’ve got no objection to people asking better value for their tax money. I’ve got no objection to people using alternatives to the state. I’m simply pointing out that a reflexive anti-government stance doesn’t on its own fix the problem of biased education and indoctrination because a lot of parents are even more biased.
The people raising kids today are the young Millennials. Socialist parties still get votes. In the US, Hillary nearly got voted in as President, and getting on for half the population hate Trump with a loathing verging on insanity. Can you imagine the result of having such a person in sole charge of your education?
When designing measures of social control, everybody does so with the implicit assumption that people like themselves will be in charge of deciding the rules. Right-wingers naturally extol all the benefits of being able to give their kids a right-wing libertarian education, and prevent them being taught only left-wing authoritarian ideas. And that’s great. I’m all in favour of any measure that increases libertarian education. But you must always, always, always conisder the effect of your enemies getting hold of the same mechanism. It also allows left-wing authoritarian parents to protect their kids from right-wing ideas, to teach them to hate them. Antifa parents. Trump-deranged parents. Corbynite parents. Radical feminist parents. And that’s not so great.
What I’m saying is that you haven’t solved the real problem, which is that most people in society are not libertarians. Handing the education of the next generation from one set of (mostly) non-libertarians over to another set of (mostly) non-libertarians doesn’t solve anything for the vast majority, and in many cases makes things worse.
Consider for example one alternative, that libertarians set up private schools teaching libertarian values. You get all the advantages of scale, the ability to select the best qualified and confirmed-non-criminal teachers, you get the market-led judgement by results, and you have a way for a small number of libertarians in this generation to influence a larger number in the next.
The answer to government rations tasting disgusting is not for everyone to become a subsistence farmer, raising their own pigs and chickens, growing their own vegetables in the back garden, but to have food provided by the free market, competition raising quality and lowering prices. It’s a lot more efficient, allows for a better-balanced diet, and is safer.
Lee Moore wrote:
‘Education for the child’s own practical and intellectual benefit was never the objective in the first place.’
and I disagree. In various Western nations with which I am familiar, the public schools started out with these goals very-much in mind. I’m minded of the various directions of public education in the UK, including grammar and charter schools, the demanding standards of many public schools in the US, and the rigidly-streamed education system of the Netherlands – at least until the 1970s. All these systems started out with the premise that a quality education was the key to success and advancement in life and they put that into their pupils with vigour.
I can’t put my finger on just when precisely the direction changed, maybe those who had children in schools at the time can describe it more accurately.
As bobby b. notes, the home used to be/should be an integral part of schooling, both socially and intellectually. My parents took an intensive interest in the education of both my brother and myself, my dear old Dad (MHRIP) would often sit and do my homework with me, make me read to him or describe to him what we were learning. I’m sure many parents did not do that, back in the day, but I’m also sure that many did.
Today, I’m not so sure.
Regarding political indoctrination, I can well-recall that, at my all-boys school in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, discussion of political and social issues was frowned upon and masters never, ever spoke about politics – and this in a time when political issues were very-much in the forefront in the UK. The idea of expressing an opinion about just-about any social or political issue was completely-unheard-of – it just wasn’t done. We didn’t get a ‘range of views’ – we got no views at all, this was felt to be outside the school’s remit.
Again, when did that change?
llater,
llamas
Not quite sure why, after stating that…
philosophically one would sweep in coercion by private actors too
…I am thought to need a lecture on the possibility that private actors as well as the government might restrict free speech.
Anyhow. Private threats to free speech do not consist in people who own walls declining to let you scribble on them. Facebook and Twitter do not prevent you saying what you like, full stop. They prevent you saying what you like on their privately owned platforms. That certainly restricts your power to broadcast your speech, but it doesn’t restrict your liberty to speak.
You can only reasonably complain that Facebook and Twitter are restricting your freedom of speech if they offend against your natural, legal or property rights, or use the government’s coercive power to shut you down. (Which they may do, but I don’t know how, if at all, intellectual property law deepens their moat.)
None of which is to say that Facebook and Twitter refusing to let you use their wall to spread your views is a good thing. It plainly offends against the value of openmindedness, and it prevents the spread of certain news and views. A bad thing. But not a restriction of free speech thing.
Llamas, I can remember sitting in my Earth Science classes in the late 70s and being told with absolute certainty that the world was soon to perish in ice and famine, depleted of resources by a greedy white western society. It was going to be time for corporations to quit seeking profits and start making what the Central Committee told them to make, and time for people to stop buying what they wanted and start buying what the Central Committee told them to buy.
We even got to see several clever and entertaining films on the subject.
I am guessing it changed sometime before that.
You failed to absorb the central and eternal truth, Ferox.
Which was not the petty 1970s details about famine and ice, but the need to put the Central Committee in charge.
All things must pass. Except that.
Yeah, it’s funny that with the opposite diagnosis now in vogue, that is still the preferred solution.
When all you have is a hammer …
EDIT: Just found this on Youtube. Brings back memories of passing notes and tossing paper airplanes …
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSDLRm3jhc8&t=150
@bobby b
Teachers are paid by parents to educate their kids. Parents have legal control over their kids, and how they are educated. If I hire you to teach my children, I get to decide how you do that.
Would that that were true. But teachers aren’t paid by parents, they are paid by “society” which is to say the government based on taxes raised from the parents, the non parents, miscellaneous businesses in the district, federal funds raised nation wide and so forth.
Consequently when “society” pays the bills one should not wonder that kids are educated for the benefit of society not for the benefit of the parents or, god forbid, the children.
The best solution is to allow parents to buy the education they want for their children (and the state does have legitimate role here to insist that parent give their children an adequate education since parents do have an obligation to their children). However, since that simply isn’t possible in the current political climate the only really practical solution is to have the state fund education without actually running it.
For example, a practical solution is to change the tax code so that parents can take a $7000 tax credit (perhaps Federal, perhaps SALT) for each child spent on legitimate educational expenses, and then defund the public schools and let them compete for that tax credit.
This gives the parents a great deal more control, though society is still paying for it (via the rules that the IRS would put in place to define “legitimate educational expenses”) but it would be a large step in the right direction reintroducing parental control over schools.
I think moreover this, (or a more dilute version of this) is not impractical in the current political climate. The government have done such a dreadful job educating the children of the poor (a constituency that those who would oppose this desperately need) that it is possible to generate sufficient democratic pressure to make something like that happen.
Of course the countervailing force is the teachers’ unions, an organization that would completely lose any power in such an arrangement, so you can expect to fight it to the death, because their death is what it portends. Were children educated at the direction of their parents we would see a revitalization of the personal responsibility ethic that made america, the rise of useful education over indoctrination (and to be fair, the rise of a class of nonsense education like Intelligent Design, or Madrassas).
It is for this reason that, were you to ask me the most damaging force in the United States today, I would definitely reply “the teachers’ unions.”
(Additional color: I live in the Socialist State of Illinois, a state that has been utterly destroyed financially by the teachers’ union, and one where the governor thinks the solution to massive overspending on teachers’ fat pensions is to raise taxes rather than fix the spending. However, for some reason Illinois also has some of the most liberal laws on homeschooling in the nation. I have never quite understood why this is, but, although I didn’t homeschool my kids, I know plenty of people who did, and they say they can do so in Illinois largely free of state interference. One of life’s great mysteries.)
Okay.. Lets start…
@Nullius in Verba
In the German debatt, the critics of home schooling argue mostly with the rights of the kids.
To be frank, the argument is a good one.
I agree and the parents have to give a good example.
@bob sykes
Thanks!
I can’t imagin that is just good for a child only know the parents.
@Nullius in Verba
That’s a specifically common law viewpoint, since in the common law you have certain rights just so. From the point of view of countries like france, all law has to be in form of a bill.
Maybe, there is a Human right of express… but isn’t that a merely philosophical question?
In common law there are unwritten laws, in natural law, which was spread all over Europe, there were also unwritten laws. In the meantime, natural law has already been called into question.
There is simply no logical explanation as to where these rights should come from. Jefferson apparently still believed in the creator who granted these rights. From today’s perspective, that’s not so clear.
bobby b:
It’s a very strange thing, when I access the article at the Harvard magazine website and any cache such as Google search or the many iterations on the Wayback machine, the word is spelled correctly.
The versions on twitter and those referring to twitter comments that have the word “mathematics” misspelt. I also see the version in the google image searches of the HM article dated more than 24 hours ago, and in scraping sites that republished the article (presumably in violation of copyright) more than two days ago.
I’m inclined to think it is a stealth-edit of the illustration by Harvard, but other commenters (such as on the Ann Althouse blog) suggest that it might be that critics of the article have altered the spelling.)
My apologies. I do not promise that when comprehensible it will be specially interesting, but here goes.
1) As regards Dominic Cummings and the Department of Education (DfE), scroll down to Part II: Four stories in this.
2) Under the headline “Why do it?” in his long article on how the brexitref was won, Dominic’s point 3 is that Brexit would
so I anticipate some attempt to do something about a department he knows better than most. My ‘get a round tuit’ was a joke (feel free to say it was not that funny) about the possibility that – as, if and when we get past the virus, Brexit and other stuff on Boris’ plate – it is just possible (one can hope) that the current UK government will ‘get around to it’ (i.e., in an ideal world, to vouchers administered by the treasury and the large-scale abolition of the DfE but I am so not holding my breath for anything so splendid).
3) Although I am not at all in agreement with NiV’s comments in the prior thread that I linked to, or the similar ones before mine in this thread, I expect having thought about them to help anyone who must later confront the education establishment’s reaction to the rewiring Dominic hopes for.
HTH. Apologies for anything still unclear.
So they are going to scrap government funding and involvement for both, and abolish a shedload of regulations? Amirite?
https://staghounds.blogspot.com/2017/01/what-is-education-guest-column-by-alan.html
Dorothy L. Sayers wrote an essay during WWII about some of the consequences of the Blitz. She said that a lot of poorer children who had had trouble in school in London were suddenly doing very well when getting tutored or homeschooled or put in smaller classes in villages, while evacuated. She noted that rich kids often got tutored or coached, and that it would make more sense and save more money to have the taxpayer pay for all kids to get coached, and thus be able to learn faster and better. I forget the whole essay, but it seemed to fit well with her essay on teaching kids the medieval trivium and quadrivium.
it would make more sense and save more money to have the taxpayer pay for all kids to get coached, and thus be able to learn faster and better
I don’t think so. Mass production and the division of labour seem to be more effective than hand crafting in most areas, so we should be cautious about junking them for schooling. If you just think of the numbers, if every kid is to have a coach, there’s going to need to be quite a few coaches, and the number of coaches required will mean that all the coaches are going to be called “Mum.” Or “Mom” in the colonies.
The average Mum is not likely to be a better teacher than the average schoolteacher. Unless the curriculum is limited to what Mum does in her day to day life. Mum may be more persistent and committed, but she may just know less algebra.
Classroom teaching can be quite effective, so long as the kids are of roughly similar capability, there’s reasonable discipline, and the teacher is competent. 100 units of classroom teaching to a class of 25, and 3 units per child units of indivdual coaching on whether the classroom stuff soaked in is 175 teacher units. That’s going to be more efficient than individual coaching unless it only takes 7 units of teacher time per pupil to do it individually.
These days we’ve also got videos, Youtube and Khan Academy as well as the classroom.
Clearly a child provided with a full time coach is likely to progress faster than he would in a class of 25. Assuming the coach and the classroom teacher are equally competent. The coach’s lessons can go at just the right speed. Problems and blockages will be identified and dealt with earlier. Staring out of the window will be policed more promptly.
And in some cases – very clever children who are being slowed down absurdly by the pace of the herd, very slow children who can’t keep up with the herd, or unusual childrem who don’t respond well to herd learning – the extra costs of individual coaching may be more efficient despite the loss of mass production.
The way to solve all this is to have a totally free market in schooling and education, partly subsidised by the state if you will. That is the way to discover which mass production methods work well, and which work poorly, and how best to use technology. Which children respond to this or that best. And a free market allows mix and match. This much school and that much coaching and that much homeschooling and that much reading books. All knobs adjustable for each child.
Although a degree of mix and match is already possible for middle class families with a bob or two, for many children the monopoly state school factories absorb way too much of the day with little positive result.
A free market is the answer. It will still result in only a small minority opting to homeschool, but the schools themselves will be better. And there will be much better chances to mix and match school with coaching. I say “will” because I am an optimist 🙂
What a liar she is. Harvard signs off on this while posing as ‘home school friendly’?
This is a smear by Harvard directed at Libertarians as Libertarians are revolutionizing schooling in the US using home schools as the wedge. Home school standards developed by libertarian brainstorm groups have changed government regulations of their own schools like forbidding left ‘social promotion’ and deregulating e-learning.
Here is a widely used libertarian home school site that’s also helping people in Europe change their systems. Check it out.
https://pinellashomeschoolhelp.webs.com/
Pass it on.
Deep Lurker – the “Babylon Bee” gets it right.
It normally does.
Deep Lurker.
The Babylon Bee gets it right.
It normally does.