Public
Schools and the Assault on the Family
by Sheldon Richman
[This article appeared in the February 1996 issue of Freedom Daily.]
Imagine that
you wanted to subvert the institution of the family. What would be the best way
to go about it? Well, how about this? You force parents to surrender to the
state the power to make all the big decisions about their children's education.
You would make the following announcement to the parents of America:
"Until
now, you have had charge of your children's education. But the matter is too
complex in today's world. Perhaps in a simpler time such decisions could be left
to parents. But things are now more complicated. Expertise is needed. Beginning
today, we, the state authorities, will determine the course of your children's
education. We will decide at what age your children will start school. We will
decide which state operated school your children will attend and what they will
study. We will decide how many hours a day your children will spend in school;
how many days a week; how many weeks a year; and how many years. We might change
those things anytime. Right now, your children must start school at age 6. But
later we may decide that school should begin at an earlier age, say, 3. We may
begin by letting your children attend the school closest to your home. But we
may later decide that, for the sake of a great social purpose, your children
will be transported many miles to another school across town. Parents who wish
to send their children to a non-state school or who wish to teach their own may
request permission to do so. If we find that the alternative education meets our
standards, we will grant permission. But that permission can be withdrawn
anytime we decide that the alternative is substandard. Two more things: This
education will be free (not counting the taxes you pay). Second, if you fail to
comply with these rules, we reserve the right to take your children from
you."
The
authorities have never expressly said that to the parents of America. But they
might as well have. The results are the same. Beginning in the latter half of
the 19th century, an elite group of intellectuals, wielding
government power and working at the state level, imposed that system on the
United States. With time, that system became more and more centralized. Local
community schools increasingly came under the direction, first, of large
consolidated school districts and education bureaucracies in the state capitals,
then of Washington, D.C.
Education was
once the province of the family. It did an admirable job. American society
before 1850 (excluding slavery) was the envy of the world. Its economic growth
was unprecedented. Its population was highly literate. European visitors, such
as Alexis de Tocqueville and Pierre du Pont de Nemours, noted the Americans'
erudition and wisdom. Tocqueville could not believe how small a presence the
government had in America; he observed that the people of America could go long
periods without seeing an officer of the state. He also marveled at how
Americans readily joined together to form voluntary associations to accomplish
what they could not do individually.
Thus, state
schooling did not arise to fill a deficiency in the people. It arose, rather,
because in the unplanned order of a
free society people were doing too good a job of educating and nurturing their
children and facilitating their growth into independent, competent, and moral
adults.
In the eyes of
some, this had to be stopped. Why? Because the elite and the parents held two
conflicting views about education. For the elite, what was lacking in the
parents' approach to child raising was a sense of national purpose, a vision of
the child as future foot soldier, civil servant, or industrial cog in the great
national machine. Under the tutelage of their parents, children would grow up
preoccupied with their work, their families, their neighbors, and their
communities that is, with their myopic lives. Without the proper guidance, they
would not heed the call of the Grand Cause. Parents were seen as a bad
influence. In the 19th century, that was thought to be particularly
true of Irish Catholic immigrant parents, who, unless the state intervened, were
likely to raise up Irish Catholic children.
Lest anyone
think this is all an exaggeration, read what some of the proponents of
government schooling had to say. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration of
Independence, called for government-sponsored education as soon as America
became a nation. Rush said:
"Let
our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public
property. Let him be taught to love his family, but let him be taught at the
same time that he must forsake and even forget them when the welfare of his
country requires it."
Rush praised
the schools of his day for making up for the deficiencies of parents.
Archibald D.
Murphey, founder of the North Carolina public schools, had this to say:
"In
these schools the precepts of morality and religion should be inculcated, and
habits of subordination and obedience be formed [in children]. . . . Their
parents know not how to instruct them. . . . The state, in the warmth of her
affection and solicitude for their welfare, must take charge of those children
and place them in school where their minds can be enlightened and their hearts
trained to virtue”.
Edward Ross, a
19th century sociologist, put it this way: "Copy the child
will, and the advantage of giving him
his teacher instead of his father to imitate, is that the former is a
picked person, while the latter is not." It was Ross who said that the
school's task is to gather "little plastic lumps of human dough from
private households and shape them on the social kneading board."
The founder of
what was then called the common school movement was Horace Mann, the first
secretary of education of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Declaring that "children
are wax", Mann pronounced that "we
who are engaged in the sacred cause of education are entitled to look upon all
parents as having given hostages to our cause."
This kind of
sentiment continued to be voiced in the 20th century. For example, the New
Hampshire Supreme Court in 1902 stated:
"Free
schooling . . . is not so much a right granted to pupils as a duty imposed upon
them for the public good. . . . While most people regard the public schools as
the means of great advantage to the pupils, the fact is too often overlooked
that they are governmental means of protecting the state from consequences of an
ignorant and incompetent citizenship."
The U.S.
Bureau of Education in 1914 issued a document that said: "The public
schools exist primarily for the benefit of the State rather than for the benefit
of the individual." Even the landmark 1925 U.S. Supreme Court case,
Pierce v. Society of Sisters , which forbade the states from outlawing
alternative schooling and opined that "the child is not the mere
creature of the State," added ominously: "[T]hose who nurture
him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to
recognize and prepare him for additional obligations." In other words,
the court was saying, he is not only a creature of the state. As late as
1981,William H. Seawell, a professor of education at the University of Virginia,
said: "Public schools promote civic rather than individual pursuits. . .
. We must focus on creating citizens for the good of society. . . . Each child
belongs to the state."
From many
quarters we hear laments about the decline of the family. Few,
however, have been willing to entertain the possibility that government
schooling is in large part to blame. Apologists for
government schools in fact argue the decline of the family has caused the
deterioration of the schools! But as Charles Murray has noted with
respect to communities, when an institution is systematically stripped of its
functions, the institution, having lost its reason for being, withers.
Raising
children is the key function of the family, and education is a key component of
raising children. If parents and children are removed from the driver's seat and
the state is anointed with decision-making power over education, we should not
be surprised to see the family fall into disrepair. In a recent fascinating
talk, Allan Carlson of the Rockford Institute reported on demographic research
indicating that fertility rates fell when governments imposed so-called free and
compulsory schooling. That is, parents devalue having and raising children when
the state usurps their role as education decision maker. If that is so, it's
more evidence of how a presumptuous government sucks the life out of civil
society.
Mr. Richman is
senior editor at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., and the author of
Separating School & State: How to Liberate America's Families.