America’s Founding Father knew that forcible education was incompatible with freedom.

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Do not forget that government schools were made possible by adopting  both the 1st and 10th plank of the communist manifesto.
~MFP

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If we care about freedom, we should reject compulsory schooling. A relic of 19th-century industrial America, compulsory schooling statutes reduced the broad and noble goal of an educated citizenry into a one-size-fits-all system of state-controlled mass schooling that persists today.

 

Horace Mann, the designer of the nation’s first compulsory schooling law in Massachusetts in 1852, saw taxpayer-funded, universal compulsory schooling as a way to mold children into moral, democratic citizens. He famously said: “Men are cast-iron, but children are wax.”

Despite the fact that he homeschooled his own children, Mann built the Prussian-inspired foundation for the modern government schooling apparatus, cementing education’s enduring association with schooling. His biographer, Jonathan Messerli, writes of Mann: “That in enlarging the European concept of schooling, he might narrow the real parameters of education by enclosing it within the four walls of the public school classroom…”

Founding Father of Forced Education

For Mann and his colleagues, compulsory schooling represented a dramatic leap from the Founding Fathers who influenced their vision. Thomas Jefferson, for example, recognized the essential connection between education and freedom, writing in 1816: “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”

Jefferson supported a decentralized framework of education, free to the poor; but, unlike Mann, he recognized that making such a system compulsory and government-controlled would be a threat to liberty. Jefferson wrote in 1817: “It is better to tolerate the rare instance of a parent refusing to let his child be educated, than to shock the common feelings and ideas by the forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.”

Despite Jefferson’s warnings, compulsory schooling laws were enacted and expanded during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, mandating school attendance under a legal threat of force. Some 20th century education philosophers and social reformers, like John Dewey, aimed to lessen the impact of forced schooling, striving to make classrooms and curricula more relevant to children’s experiences and more hands-on and experimental.

What these well-meaning reformers often ignored, however, was the inherent conflict between freedom and compulsion in mass schooling. One cannot be truly free within a mandatory, coercive system of social control.

In 1962, just over a century after the initial onset of state-controlled compulsory schooling, Paul Goodman wrote his scathing treatise, Compulsory Mis-education, describing the key failures of compulsory schooling. He wrote that “education must be voluntary rather than compulsory, for no growth to freedom occurs except by intrinsic motivation. Therefore the educational opportunities must be various and variously administered. We must diminish rather than expand the present monolithic school system.”

 

Even as social reformers ranging from A.S. Neill (Summerhill, 1960) to John Holt (How Children Fail, 1964; How Children Learn, 1967) to Ivan Illich (Deschooling Society, 1970) wrote about the serious problems with forced schooling, compulsory education laws tightened and expanded worldwide in the latter half of the 20th century.

The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child (adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1989 and ratified later by all UN member nations except for the United States) asserts: “The child is entitled to receive education, which shall be free and compulsory.” According to the U.N. every child has a right to a forced education, mandated by law and compelled by the state.

Empowering Parents

Today, as compulsory schooling consumes more of a child’s life than ever before, beginning in toddlerhood and extending into late-adolescence for much of each day and year, many parents and educators are recognizing the disconnect between forced schooling and freedom. Increasingly, they are choosing – or creating – alternatives to school.

A rising number of “free schools” and Sudbury-type democratic schools, like those promoted by A.S. Neill, are opening nationwide, enabling young people to direct their own education free from coercion.

Homeschooling is booming, and the philosophy of unschooling, or self-directed education, advocated by John Holt and others is growing in popularity and influence. Lawmakers in some states are urging a repeal of antiquated compulsory schooling laws, and are re-empowering parents with more education choice measures.

These are promising signals of a quiet exodus from mass schooling, as more people realize that freedom and compulsion make strange bedfellows.

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald has a B.A. in Economics from Bowdoin and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard. She lives in Cambridge, Mass. with her husband and four never-been-schooled children. Follow her writing at Whole Family Learning.

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.

Two years ago, Raleigh, North Carolina, was expecting a severe ice storm and some minor accumulation of snow. For those living in the Northeast that is just a typical Tuesday. But for those of us living in North Carolina, it is a reason to go into full panic.

The Price of Milk 

So I decided to leave work a few hours early in order to beat the storm. Before leaving, however, my wife texted me and asked if I could stop on my way home and pick up some milk.

By raising the price of milk, Walmart gave people proper incentive to ration their consumption.

I stopped at the first three grocery stores along the way, only to find all three completely sold out of milk. Despite the impending panic, neither store increased its prices for things like milk and bread.

Walmart, just down the street from the third grocery store I visited, was my last hope. I figured that if Walmart was sold out of milk, I would go home empty-handed and the family would have to make do with what we had left in the refrigerator. Well, at least until the ice and snow melted, which, fortunately, in North Carolina would be in about two days.

I walked into Walmart and made a beeline for the dairy case only to find it empty. Walmart, too, had sold out of milk. It, too, didn’t increase the price of its milk, selling it for its normal price of $2.79 per gallon.

But wait! Next to this empty dairy case, I saw another dairy case with a sign taped to the door. Behind the door with the sign taped to it were dozens of gallons of milk.

What did the sign say? “The price of Maola Milk is temporarily $6.50/gallon.” That was more than double what Walmart normally charged. I happily grabbed a gallon from the case, paid for it, and made my way home.

The Morality of Price Gouging

For most people, the higher price Walmart charged for this milk was an obvious affront to decency; a blatant example of a greedy corporation “gouging” its customers in a time of crisis and need.

 

I see it differently. I was grateful for Walmart because by raising its price for the Maola brand milk it thwarted the greedy customers who, without consideration for others, snatch up two and three gallons. This is what happened with the Walmart brand milk and the milk sold in the other three stores I visited. By raising its price for Maola brand milk, Walmart gave people proper incentive to ration their consumption of it. They left plenty of the Maola brand milk for people like me who couldn’t make it to the store earlier. They didn’t do so out of concern for my welfare, but out of concern for their own welfare.

As an economist, I teach students about the benefits of what is derisively referred to as price gouging and why allowing prices to increase before and after a natural or man-made disaster is beneficial to those most in need. I am often asked something to the effect of, “How would you feel if it happened to you?” Well, it has happened to me and this is just one example of that.

Sadly, most of the time I experience the opposite: wasting time waiting in line to get some good, or not getting any at all because the price wasn’t permitted to rise.

Consider the water shortage currently plaguing residents of Texas and the overtly hostile backlash against those who raised the price of things like bottled water. Does this action hurt Texans, dumping on people who literally and figuratively are struggling to get their heads above water? Or do these higher prices benefit them, especially those most in need, by relieving them of having to deal with greedy hoarders, thus lessening the harsh realities of an immediate shortage of fresh water at their disposal?

Allowing prices to increase before and after a disaster is beneficial to those most in need.

I am often asked something to the effect of, “How would you feel if it happened to you?” Well, it has happened to me and this is just one example of that.

Sadly, most of the time I experience the opposite: wasting time waiting in line to get some good, or not getting any at all because the price wasn’t permitted to rise.

Consider the water shortage currently plaguing residents of Texas and the overtly hostile backlash against those who raised the price of things like bottled water. Does this action hurt Texans, dumping on people who literally and figuratively are struggling to get their heads above water? Or do these higher prices benefit them, especially those most in need, by relieving them of having to deal with greedy hoarders, thus lessening the harsh realities of an immediate shortage of fresh water at their disposal?

 

Not only does the higher price of water deter greedy people from indiscriminately hoarding what limited supply of water is currently available in that immediate area, it creates the incentive for people in places like Austin, Dallas, Norman, Oklahoma, and Little Rock, Arkansas to shift supplies of water from those areas where it is plentiful, to the Gulf coast areas of Texas where it is desperately needed. Without the reward from charging higher prices, most won’t do it.

For those who argue that people in areas not affected by the flooding should, out of kindness, voluntarily transport supplies like water to the devastated areas for free, or for at most the price they paid for it, why haven’t you done so? Why are you waiting for others to act on what you apparently regard as morally superior behavior?

Oh, and for the record. When I scanned the gallon of milk at Walmart, the price I was charged was $3.18, the normal price. Did this Walmart simply forget to change the price in its computer system? Or was the manager aware that a simple sign stating the price had doubled was sufficient to deter hoarding by customers?

Mark Steckbeck

Dr. Mark Steckbeck is an Associate Professor of Economics at Campbell University. 

This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.