Last week, two important things happened: I graduated college (please, hold your applause) and I finished another essay by Murray Rothbard, “Education: Free and Compulsory.”
It was quite the coincidental time to finish reading this. Though my formal education is not over (as of now, I plan on going to law school in a few years), I’m done with it for now, and I’m off to the real world.
“Education: Free and Compulsory” is in layman’s terms, as many of Rothbard’s essays are, and is only a little over 50 pages, so if you’re interested in reading the whole thing, I strongly recommend it, even if you’re new to the Austro-libertarian world. You can find a free PDF and/or MP3 file here or you can purchase a copy of your own for $7 at the Mises Bookstore.
The essay presents Rothbard’s case for the ideal education, which he argues is one-on-one between student and teacher and, of course, is neither forced upon parents or publicly funded. Rothbard, then, goes on to outline the history of compulsory education, first throughout various European countries, then in the United States.
My Personal Interest in Education
Personally, I’ve always found the topic of education interesting. Both my parents, believe it or not, are public school teachers. Public school is all I knew growing up. It wasn’t until I got to college that I came across ideas that challenged my understanding about the government, as well as education in itself.
Don’t get me wrong. Though I don’t believe in public schools, I’m still confident that my parents are good teachers. I see first-hand how much they actually care and how hard they work to do their job.
There are good teachers out there, for sure, though they’re often drowned out by the bad ones. And operating under such an inefficient bureaucracy, the good ones aren’t rewarded. Instead, they have to deal with more and more pointless paperwork and State-induced nonsense.
This is what I try to tell my parents all the time – that if schools were all private, they would be rewarded for being good teachers. They wouldn’t have their pay grade determined by a formula. Instead, they could bargain for more because they would be extensively more valuable than the bad teachers.
Now that the graduation parties have ended, the consequent number of celebratory beverages have been consumed and I’ve had adequate recovery time, I now have time to sit back and reflect on my own educational experience from K-12 to college.
Having made the mistake of going into debt for a college degree (something I feel that public education definitely encouraged me to do) and being aware of my experiences learning on my own – reading books, watching lectures on YouTube and listening to podcasts – compared to what I learned in the classroom, I’ve noticed obvious flaws in our education system, not just in the fact that it’s fed by an extortion racket, i.e., taxation, but also merely by the way it’s organized.
Education today, from kindergarten to graduate school, isn’t really focused on learning. It’s focused on certification. And instead of encouraging students to think critically, schools on all levels are more concerned about avoiding conflict and encourage students to take things for face value.
And, of course, education has long served as a safe haven for so-called “intellectuals” who seek to preserve their alliance with the State. A vast majority of these “intellectuals” are leftists and though worse at some institutions than others, they are not afraid to indoctrinate.
The Perfect Education
It’s clear to me and many others that our current education system is not ideal. What, then, is the ideal education?
As I said earlier, Rothbard argues that one-on-one education is the best possible educational arrangement, dramatically better than education in a classroom. This way, a child’s education can be geared to that child’s ability, interests and pace.
Keep in mind: Rothbard is explicit about not limiting education, which would pertain to the activity of learning in general, just to formal instruction. Formal education, more specifically, is the instruction that teaches “intellectual knowledge.” That is the focus here.
I agree with Rothbard. With a teacher of equal merit, a one-on-one education would be better than one in a classroom. I think it would be hard to dispute that. The student would certainly get more out of it. However, Rothbard contends that:
“…any pace that the teacher sets in a class wreaks an injustice on almost all; on the dull who cannot keep up, and on the bright who lose interest and precious changes to develop their great potential.”
Unless, by “teacher,” he specifically means the teachers imposed by the State and not just teachers in general, even those that may preside over a class in a purely private education system, I disagree.
An “injustice” must be something in disagreement with one’s rights. I’ve made an effort previously to make it clear that things like education, healthcare or a job are not rights. Rights come from self-ownership and only require other people not to do something to you, such as murder you, steal from you or enslave you. Rights don’t demand that other people provide anything for you unless they voluntarily agreed to do so by entering a contract.
We don’t say it’s an injustice when someone who can’t afford the highest quality clothes or house results to mediocre clothing and a mediocre house.
Education is similar. Not everyone, even those relatively well off, could afford the time and money necessary for a personal teacher for themselves or their child. There simply aren’t that many teachers in supply.
Classroom or group education isn’t perfect, but it’s better than no education at all. Under a private education system, it would likely be more affordable than a one-on-one education.
Of course, having read Rothbard, I highly doubt he was arguing that the perfect education, in any way, was a right. So, I guess my issue is only one of word choice. The point he’s likely trying to make, I agree with.
Compulsory Education
But describing the ideal education is far from the main point of the essay. Most of the essay is pretty much a history lesson, leading us through the dark history of compulsory education.
“What is compulsory education?” you ask.
Compulsory education is exactly what it sounds like – mandatory. In all 50 states, children are required to attend school by law. If they don’t, their parents are held liable and punished. There are provisions for home schooling and private schools are available, of course, but both are highly regulated.
Some states regulate these things more than others. Nevertheless, parents who choose to homeschool their kids or send them to private school are still forced to pay for public school through taxation.
And since private schools are having to compete against public schools, who are not determined by market forces (they can operate at a loss because they’re paid for by involuntary taxation), that only complicates the private school market. It makes private schools more scarce and more expensive, further incentivizing parents, especially those with lower and even middle-class incomes, to settle for State-provided education.
When they’re forced to pay for public school already, have to jump through regulatory hoops if they choose to educate their children privately and face an even higher cost for it, State education is hard for parents to turn down.
And if they don’t send their child anywhere, they face legal trouble. Either way, they have to play by the State’s rules.
Compulsory education, therefore, whether given the home/private school option, tends to remove masses of children from their parents and deliver them to the State. This gives them considerable influence over the way they think and act. Ultimately, it eliminates diversity, manufactures conformity and breeds loyal subjects willing to sacrifice their time, money and even their lives for their rulers.
Think I’m crazy for that assumption, but what incentive does the State have to induce its students with healthy skepticism? In other words, why the hell would the government ever introduce any child to any perspective that views the ruling regime as wrong?
My experience in public education was one of being taught to take things like democracy, taxation and foreign intervention at face value as goods rather than being encouraged to think critically about the current system.
It wasn’t until I took my education into my own hands that I discovered that democracy is not as good as they make it out to be, taxation is unjustifiable and total war, in which innocents are sacrificed for some other cause, is awfully wrong.
No matter what your experiences in public education were – if you had any – the debate here ultimately comes down to one question: Who should have say in a child’s life - his or her parents? Or the government? It seems to me that the answer is the former.
The Protestant Push
So where did this horrible idea of compulsory education come from?
According to Rothbard, compulsory education can be traced all the way back to Sparta, where children were seized and educated in barracks. A similar system was advocated for by Plato in “The Republic.”
In Europe, compulsory education came to fruition through the protestant reformation. This was an interesting realization for me. I grew up in a protestant church (currently, I’m between denominations, you could say). I had no idea protestants, including John Calvin and Martin Luther, had such a large role in using the State to require education.
Luther founded the Saxony School Plan, which served as the education system for all protestant German states. Calvin forced children to attend public schools he established in Geneva. Even John Knox, founder of the Presbyterian Church, attempted to establish compulsory public schools in Scotland, but failed.
The Prussian Model and Its Influence in America
In 1717, King Frederick William I of Prussia started the first national compulsory education system in Europe. This was followed up by his son, Frederick the Great, and his great-grandson, Frederick William III.
Under Frederick III, semi-religious private schools were abolished, and all education was placed under the Minister of the Interior. This all came hand-in-hand, of course, with ardent militarization and a mandatory draft.
This system was rooted in totalitarian rule yet looked to as inspiration by American education professionals and trade unions. The Public Education Association of Philadelphia praised the Prussian model in a report in 1898.
This report advocated for only allowing for private schools if they followed State-imposed requirements and setting up schools for those who skipped ordinary school, i.e., truants, whose students would be forcibly removed from their parents if they didn’t comply.
The Educationists and Egalitarianism
Many of these “educationists” as Rothbard calls them, were egalitarians. Some, including Frances Wright and Robert Dale Owen, were socialists. The two opened a newspaper together to advocate for their compulsory education system.
According to Rothbard, “The major aim of the plan was that equality be implanted in the minds, the habits, the manners and the feelings, so that eventually fortunes and conditions would be equalized.”
The two essentially suggested that the State should remove all children from their parents at the age of two and raise them away from their parents. Their plan had considerable influence in the thinking of the educationists at the time.
Some of the educationists came together to use propaganda to push for public schooling and then managed to gain positions on state boards of education, superintendents and in training institutions for teachers. This way, they were able to push for compulsory education.
This is far from the whole of the information Rothbard included in his essay. Rather, these are what I felt were the key points highlighting the dark history of compulsory and public education.
It’s enough to show that compulsory education has almost always been associated with some form of totalitarianism. It’s rooted in the idea that the State knows better for the child than the parents, something I firmly disagree with.
At the end of the day, the most important thing to learn from this is to not depend on the classroom for education. Educate yourself. Allow yourself to think. Embark on a quest for knowledge beyond what’s directly in front of you.
Today, we have so many recourses on the internet, such as e-books, podcasts and video lectures, that there’s almost no excuse to not learn for yourself. Of course, I’m sure that if you’re here, you probably already understand this.
I’m not a parent. Not yet. And hopefully I have a few more years until that time comes around. But when that time does come, no matter what circumstance I’m in, I plan on at the very least instilling in my children that important virtue – thinking for themselves and not blindly trusting any institution, especially not the State.