The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life — by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past — and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort.
The academia-jet set coalition is attempting to tame the American character by the deliberate breeding of helplessness and resignation — in those incubators of lethargy known as "Progressive" schools, which are dedicated to the task of crippling a child's mind by arresting his cognitive development. It appears, however, that the "progressive" rich will be the first victims of their own social theories: it is the children of the well-to-do who emerge from expensive nursery schools and colleges as hippies, and destroy the remnants of their paralyzed brains by means of drugs.
The middle class has created an antidote which is perhaps the most hopeful movement of recent years: the spontaneous, unorganized, grass-roots revival of the Montessori system of education — a system aimed at the development of a child's cognitive, i.e., rational, faculty. Applying this method involves the teacher in viewing the child as having an inner natural guidance for his own perfect self-directed development. The role of the teacher is therefore to watch over the environment to remove any obstacles that would interfere with this natural development. The teacher's role of observation sometimes includes experimental interactions with children to resolve misbehavior or to show how to use the various self-teaching materials that are provided in the environment for the children's free use.
The purpose of education is to train young people how to use their minds, to use their capacity to think and reason. A proper education provides students with knowledge of the facts, and more importantly, knowledge of how to gain new facts in order to live and pursue values.
Public education, by definition, cannot meet the goals of a proper education. Because the state funds public schools, it not only provides the facilities housing the students but it determines the content taught in them. As such, children in such schools learn what the state determines they should learn, with all of the ideological biases that advocates of public schooling endorse. Under state-subsidized schooling, students don't necessarily learn facts, and how to acquire new knowledge; they learn state-sanctioned facts, and state-sanctioned methods of acquiring knowledge.
Public schools are controlled by the government and subject to all the ills of government bureaucracy and power. Private and home schools are run, in varying ways, by parents. Private schools are dependent upon the satisfaction of parents in order to remain in business. They do not control the children in their care. Instead, families retain their authority and hire the schools for certain aspects of raising their children.
Basil Venitis favors ending government involvement in education. Any influence by the state over education corrupts its goals, and therefore the ability of its graduates to think and reason. Only a full separation of education and state allows for parents to choose how best to equip their children to function in the world. Anything less is a violation of the parents', and child's, rights.
National standards and testing cannot overcome the deficiencies of schooling, which are rooted in the public education system's power and incentive structure. National standards would strengthen government power over education while weakening schools' direct accountability to parents and taxpayers. Centralized standard-setting will likely result in the standardization of mediocrity rather than establishing standards of excellence. While proponents of national standards point to the variation in local standards, the rigor and content of national standards will face pressure to scale down toward the lowest common denominator, undercutting high quality standards.
Basil Venitis, an Athenian orator, points out Fourth Reich is standardizing mediocrity. Some argue that Fourthreichian standards are necessary because state standards vary in quality. But the same pressures that detract from the quality of many state standards are likely to plague Fourthreichian standards and would be entrenched in a less-responsive and less-accountable Fourthreichian bureaucracy. As a result, the rigor and content of Fourthreichian standards would tend toward the average among states, undercutting states with higher quality standards like Germany and UK.
Curricula is typically designed around standards and tests. With the Eldorado of Corruption now backing Fourthreichian standards and tests through Fourthreichian funding, Brussels is becoming increasingly involved in what ultimately determines curriculum. As a result, Fourthreichian standards would increase conformity in education, which would fail to meet the diverse learning needs of children.
Some argue that standards are necessary so that parents can understand how their children compare to other students across Fourth Reich. But the meaningful information that parents need is already available. What has been missing in some cases are clear reporting of data to parents and the ability of parents to act on it. Information is useful to parents only when they can act on it. Empowering Fourthreichian parents to hold schools accountable through school choice is a crucial element in improving educational outcomes.
Venitis asserts that a real public school is not defined by who owns it, but by universal access and accountability to the public for results. It matters little whether public schools are run by a school board, a group of parents, a teachers union, a company, or a church. Once public money flows to private schools, they are no longer really private. The government's hooks will be firmly set to brainwash and dumb down the kids, in the name of public accountability. Vouchers open the door to government control of private schools. Private schools are already regulated by every State, but they are not as regulated as public achools. If the voucher plan is ever embraced in a big way, we can expect elaborate criteria for determining which schools may accept vouchers.
Public schools dumb down the curriculum, in teaching pseudoesteem over knowledge, in challenging Graecoroman notions of truth and virtue, and in convincing children that their parents are not to be trusted. It is an insidious bargain that encourages young people to stop thinking for themselves in exchange for living in a statist world in which they will never be held accountable and will never be expected to care for themselves.
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