Compulsory Schooling is Child Imprisonment, Part 1
Imagine: You receive a letter from a government agency demanding your attendance at a "Citizen's Training Program" for one year.
You are to report each day, Monday through Friday from 7:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. to sit in a room with 20 other adults who have received the same letter, to be taught whatever it is the government thinks you ought to learn in order to be a good citizen.
What the f** is this?* you wonder, as you read the letter. I have things to do, places to go, people to be with! I don't want to go to this stupid training program.
Too bad. The letter says that you must attend, or else you will be heavily fined and possibly imprisoned.
You scan the letter, and each paragraph is more outrageous than the last.
You will be given days off, but only on the agency's schedule. Otherwise, you will not be allowed to take a day off unless you can provide a doctor's note to prove you were ill. Furthermore, you will not be allowed to leave your assigned training room without permission from an instructor, even to use the restroom.
You will not be allowed to study what interests you or sparks your passion; you will study the one-size-fits-all curriculum that the government agency has designed. This curriculum includes some subjects that you are already well-educated about, and other subjects that you will need more time to learn than is allowed in the training program. Regardless of your level of competence with any subject, you will be made to study the material at the exact scope and pace dictated by the curriculum.
The training program will have certain rules and standards. It will be the purview of the instructors and administrators of the program to interpret these rules and standards, and if you are found to have broken them, you can be punished with forced isolation, forced labor, sanctioned violence, or confiscation of your belongings.
You will receive no compensation for your time.
Your work in the training program will be assessed and graded. If you do not keep your marks above a certain level, you will be forced to repeat the program again next year.
And you will be given assignments to take home each night and on the weekends, so that the majority of even your leisure time for the next year will be devoted, whether you like it or not, to completing the training program.
When you have completed the program, you will be given a piece of paper that states that you have graduated from the compulsory training program that all adult citizens must complete. Employers will check your application references to be sure you have completed the program, but it will not make you more competitive in the job market; you will have spent one year of your life to receive training that puts you on exactly the same training level as every other person in society.
The program is "free of tuition", but you will pay for it via taxation for the rest of your life. If you elect not to participate in the state sponsored program, you must enroll in a private sector equivalent, which must be approved and licensed by the same government agency that is sending you this letter. The private sector program will charge you an arm and a leg to enroll with them instead of with the state sponsored program, but this will not get you out of having to pay for the state sponsored one through taxes until you die.
What would you think if you received such a letter? What would you do?
Chances are, you would be furious. You would think that the government agency had no right to demand this of you, and you would be right.
If a foreign government required this of their adult citizens, most of us would consider that government a tyranny.
And yet many of us don't think twice about a similar government scheme which forces the most vulnerable members of society to attend compulsory training programs, not for one year, but for twelve of the most formative years of their lives.
Yes, I'm talking about compulsory K-12 schooling. Both public schools and private schools that are forced to run their operations by state guidelines fall into this category. And it's nothing more than child imprisonment.
In prison, an inmate is:
- Forced to remain in the facility for a fixed sentence
- Not permitted to leave without administrative approval
- Not allowed to see their family or loved ones throughout the duration of the sentence without special dispensation
- Subject to search and seizure of belongings at the guard or warden's whim
*Not allowed to exercise the right to free speech - Controlled by the prison schedule and not allowed to participate in any unapproved activities
- Forced to get permission before leaving one room and going to another
- Subject to constant surveillance
- Subject to a lengthening of the sentence if rules are broken or standards are not upheld
- Told when to eat, sleep, socialize, play, work, or use the bathroom
In a compulsory school, a child is:
- Forced to attend for a fixed term
- Not permitted to leave without administrative approval
- Not allowed to see your family or loved ones throughout the duration of your fixed term without special dispensation
- Subject to search and seizure of belongings at the instructor's or administrator's whim
- Not allowed to exercise the right to free speech
- Controlled by the program's schedule and not allowed to participate in any unapproved activities
- Forced to get permission before leaving one room and going to another
- Subject to constant surveillance
- Subject to a lengthening of the fixed term if rules are broken or standards not upheld
- Told when you may eat, sleep, socialize, play, work, or use the bathroom
The only real difference seems to be that a prison inmate is presumably in the situation he is guilty of committing some heinous act, while a child is completely innocent, and is only in the situation he is in because the government said he must.
And before you go ranting in the comments section about how I'm anti-education, let me clarify. I am very, very pro-education. And I'm not against schools, either.
Education is great. Schools can be excellent places to receive education. What I object to is the compulsion factor.
This is Part 1 of a multi-part series. Here is Part 2.
I love you, Steemit!
Hi! I'm Leslie Starr O'Hara, but my friends call me Starr. I live in the mountains of North Carolina and I am a FULL TIME WRITER who doesn't wait for the muse to show up before getting to work! I write humor, essays, and fiction here on Steemit and elsewhere.
This is a very interesting Part 1 of your article. A few thoughts come up. I never thought of it fully like that but it is interesting to think of it like imprisonment in a very raw way. I am starting to homeschool my 5 year old which I believe is much better at this age right now to allow her spirit and her energy to be a bit more free. I don't think that at 5 you need to sit down at a desk for 6-8 hours a day and get very little play time.
However some people don't have the choice to homeschool like I do. It just isn't financially possible for them, I am sure this has been thought about. I think that if they did think about it the way you outlined they may be more hesitant and at least aware of what their decisions were actually like.
The other thing that crossed my mine was...really in a sense school I suppose is just getting them set up for jobs. What I mean by that is that I know many many people, and come from a family of people that don't love their jobs. They have timelines, they have lots of aspects of their jobs that they do not like, they have to be somewhere and a certain time every day (monday to friday), or be on call during hours they would rather be doing something else. So really it is just a horrible cyclical cycle. It starts as imprisonment and keeps going. I will also read your other posts now, but after reading this this is what I thought of.
Great food for thought. Thanks.
This is a very good way to describe the compolsary schooling system, I don't understand how it's so easy for parents to put their children through this trauma.
Great post @lesliestarrohara
Off to read part 2 now :)
I shall resteem this on Sunday :)
Thank you for writing this interesting analogy! You make a good point and it forces all readers to think and compare. How would we react if adults got a letter about compulsory training?
There are in fact many countries where this happens all the time and is the norm also for adults, Israel being the most well known example. The mandetory training for adults is called military service.
I was going to mention Israel but thought it would detract from my main point.
I agree that it was a good decision to not bring it up in the article. I do think it is appropriat here in the comments though. I do like your analogy but as all analogies this one has some weak points. The fact that it does happen to adults in Israel and many other contries without being called tyranny is probably the biggest weaknes of this analogy.
I enjoy reading what you write!
You're right that most people who are aware of forced military schemes in certain countries don't consider it tyranny. Perhaps that is because they are conditioned to accept it, just as they are programmed to tolerate compulsory schooling. I still call it tyranny! Conscription is slavery.
OMG!
This is so well done. I LOVE how you put it into perspective!
I have been speaking at conferences, writing, doing videos and consulting on parenting, freedom, empowerment, law and more for a while and I also have 3 children.
It is so obvious to me all of this and I have been a huge advocate for unschooling or freedom and respect for children choice and true being.
Thanks for this. It is a mighty fine piece of which I hope many read!
I will re steem it in hopes more people see it and share it also!
Blessings~*~
I have a hard time understanding how anyone who has been through public schooling can be willing to subject their own children to it. Education can be provided so much more effectively at home.
People say that home-schooled kids are missing out on "socialization," and this might be true. Public school is where I learned how to fight, how to stand up to bullies, and how a broken hand and time in detention is the only way to earn security and the respect of your peers. In other words, learning to socialize in public school is a great way to learn how to socialize in a prison yard.
I think for most people it is just an unquestioned fact of life that children must go to school. It's part of the authoritarian religion that most people don't even know they're a part of. But there are many parents also who would like to home educate their children but can't due to life circumstances. I'm going to address this in Part 2, tomorrow.
People say kids learn to socialize in school, but when you're in school, the teacher's always saying "You're not here to socialize!"
Most people are so wrapped up with getting to work and making ends meet that they think "at least I can send my kids to school for free." So they're not likely to think about the fact that they have to send their kids to school, or what the consequences would be if they didn't.
I wonder how people would feel if we were suddenly required to attend a church every Sunday? And we had to produce, on demand, a card documenting our attendance?
Hahahahhaha!
Looking forward to part 2!
Public schools are far too inefficient and politically biased. If I had children, I'd want to homeschool them.
This is a very important topic and a very well written article I've shared it, resteemed, upvoted and I look forward to part 2!
Thank you, @pomperipossa!
You are a new age idiot. Children need to be educated. To not educate your child should get you locked up for cruelty to children. If you want to do home schooling, go for it. That is your choice.
This is an article about nothing. A completely invented BS issue.
We don't need people inventing alleged slights that they can get upset and angry about.
We have real issues that need to be resolved.
Issue one - how to we get people back to using common sense and a basic sense of decency and citizenship, as opposed to inventing alleged slights and going off tilting at windmills??
There are 100 things you could be worrying about and working on fixing that would be better uses of your time
Rant off.
STEEM On!!
I asked my nephew to impart upon me one useful fact he learned in his 12 years of schooling. His response (enter the sound's of crickets) What do you mean?
I'm sure he learned many useful pieces of information. However he needed more instruction to come up with an answer to a very simple and basic question.
He needed me to set parameters, he needed me to be more specific in order for him to formulate a response to a basic question.
He learned in 12 years of indoctrination how to memorize and how to follow instruction's, and not much else. He could have answered 2+2=4. a simple answer to a simple question.
Why was the question met with such confusion? Because it required him to think for him self, for him to determine for himself what he deemed to be useful and impart it upon me. It was met with confusion because in 12 years of indoctrination he had been given very narrow parameters on how to solve problems. The answers were always given and simply needed to be memorized.
This simple question was met with such confusion because in their indoctrination camp's, individual thought is punished. Conformity is rewarded. This simple question was so difficult to answer because he needed me to spell out exactly what I was asking for, so he could search his memory bank for an appropriate response.
You suggest there are 100's of other thing's we could be worrying about and I say name 1 more important than education. Education is not consuming information and regurgitating it on demand at least not to me. Education is teaching others how to solve problem's and how to use that grey matter between their ears.
Interested in finding out just how far along your child is in their indoctrination. Ask them a simple question or to perform a simple task without setting out any guidelines prior. If they need your approval and your instructions for basic question's or task's than you know they are well on their way.
Teach children how to problem solve and to think for them selves and those 100's of other issues you refer to will be dealt with in less time than it takes to read my rant.
Did I say anywhere that they didn't?
wow just wow... So sorry you have to deal with such ignorant, arrogant judgment.
Unfortunately such is the world....All the MORE reason to keep them out of school cause thats how they learn to be. Follow orders, do what ur told and do what everyone else does.
BLAH!
Thank you for calling the author an idiot, thats what the steemit community needs right? It's funny, you say that the article is about nothing, but you seem very upset after reading it.
The only thing you did in your comment was to insult the author and insinuate that she made a claim that she did not make. Maybe you should try to make an argument if you disagree with the content?
You say you want people to get back to using common sense and a basic sense of decency, maybe you shuld start by taking your own advise.
More and more I get to realize and understand this I'm feeling very disturbed. Thank you for good article .