The Nine Assumptions Of Public Schooling

[Doh!-Nut]

As Stephen Arons, the legal scholar from the University of Massachusetts, told an audience at the Hawthorne Valley School a while back: "Centralized control of government schools creates the appearance of a Unity which is refuted by the growing mass of families who have removed their children from public or private schooling and have begun to educate them at home. Requests for homeschooling thus heighten public confusion about which beliefs are really valid expressions of community sentiment. The ideology of public schools is put into sharp relief by homeschooling conflicts."



At least 9 major assumptions describe the perimeter of the public schooling ideology. Together they warrant a general distrust of parents and they arise from a view that there is one system of values that is best for everyone. The State will prescribe this value code for all. Taken together the assumptions form a kind of civil gospel in which significant dissent is pronounced unacceptable to the State, the political system and the national culture as it is presented by the State.



====================================================



The Nine Assumptions of Modern Schooling



====================================================



Government school is the essential force for social cohesion. It cannot happen any other way. A bureaucratized public order is our defense against chaos and anarchy.



The socialization of children in groups monitored by state agents is essential; without this, children cannot learn to get along with others in a pluralistic society.



Children from different backgrounds and from families with different beliefs must be mixed together. Robert Frost was wrong when he maintained "good fences make good neighbors."



The certifiable expertise of official schoolteachers is superior to that of lay people including parents. The protection of children from the uncertified is a compelling public concern.



Coercion in the name of liberty is a valid use of state power. Compelling children to assemble in mandated groups for mandated intervals with mandated texts and overseers does not interfere with academic learning.



Children will inevitably grow apart from their parents in beliefs as they grow older and this process must be supported and encouraged. The best way to do this is by diluting parental influence and discouraging the children's attitudes that their own parents are sovereign in either mind or morality.



The world is full of crazy parents who will ruin their children. An overriding concern of schooling is to protect children from bad parenting.



It is not appropriate for any family to unduly concern itself with the education of its own children, but it may expend unlimited effort on behalf of the general education of everyone.



The State has the predominant responsibility for training, morals, and beliefs. Children schooled outside government scrutiny frequently become anti-social and poverty stricken.





John Taylor Gatto, 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year, was the keynote speaker at SepCon'95, the first annual conference of the Alliance. In 1998, he was the recipient of the Alexis de Tocqueville Award for Excellence in the Advancement of Educational Freedom. This essay is reprinted with permission from his book of essays Notes on Education, Schooling and Curriculum.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This article is copyrighted by The Education Liberator, the monthly publication of the Separation of School & State Alliance. Permission is granted to freely distribute this article as long as this copyright notice is included in its entirety. The Separation Alliance can be reached online via email (separate@SepSchool.org) or www (http://www.SepSchool.org), voice (559-292-1776), or conventional mail (1071 N. Fulton Ave., Fresno, CA 93728).

[Doh!-Nut]

Every assumption smells like crap to me.

[SirPostAlot]

Doo!-Nut, some of those 9 are actually trueishly stated...Like the background one and the parenting badness are very true. Public schools are there for poorer people, middle class, and upper class (if they all choose to go)...also, public schools are great because they have shown that discrimination (racial, sexist) are over. I read somewhere that women were treated poorly until public schools showed the way to equal life. Look at some foreign contries (Iraq) were woman are treated poorly. They don't have public schools like we do.



I say that "every assumtions smells like perfume"



~*~My Opinion~*~



Please!! DO not argue in this...say things peacefully, as i did!!

[flavaoftheweak]

i agree with every ASSUMPTION and yes that word has a P in it. thank you. i agree, i agree, i agree.

[Gostridah]

Some of those make sense, while others inspire the word... bologna. I mean, it's not like they're utter nonsense, but it's all theory that doesn't work out so nicely, plus they take potential flaws of alternative systems and make them huuuge. As if home-schooling would automatically result in anarchy, prejudice, bad education, close-mindedness, abuse and lack of social skills. Please.

[CheshireCat]

I think thats crap.

[Doh!-Nut]

I say that "every assumtions smells like perfume"



~*~My Opinion~*~



Please!! DO not argue in this...say things peacefully, as i did!!

Do you honestly think people would be confused it's not an opinion? Come on, it's no fun when I'm the only one debating. Where's the fire? The passion? After 12 years of compulsory education you would think it would be an issue for every teen.

As if home-schooling would automatically result in anarchy, prejudice, bad education, close-mindedness, abuse and lack of social skills. Please.

That's precisely the point Gostridah! And yet the NEA (National Education Association) is working dilligantly to illegalize homeschooling.

i agree with every ASSUMPTION and yes that word has a P in it. thank you.

You honestly believe flava that:



"...Coercion in the name of liberty is a valid use of state power. Compelling children to assemble in mandated groups for mandated intervals with mandated texts and overseers does not interfere with academic learning."



I pity the thought. I've read the Constitution. Have you?

[Doh!-Nut]

I read somewhere that women were treated poorly until public schools showed the way to equal life. Look at some foreign contries (Iraq) were woman are treated poorly. They don't have public schools like we do.

The mandated schools were Prussian in origin and routinely tried to indoctrinate Catholics, Jews, and Irish into the ways of "proper Protestantism." Funny women didn't get the right to vote until 70 years after schooling became mandatory.



And are you equating the problems in Iraq with a lack of public schools?

[Doh!-Nut]

Then again...doesn't anyone see the problem of a government organization teaching you how you should view government?

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 forcible asportation and education of the infant against the will of the father.

-- Thomas Jefferson

Schools have not necessarily much to do with education... they are mainly institutions of control, where basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.

-- Winston Churchill

When school children start paying union dues, that's when I'll start representing the interests of school children.

It's time to admit that public education operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve: It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy.

-- Albert Shanker (Former President of the American Federation of Teachers)





:'(

[flavaoftheweak]

wow, let me refrase. i agree that all the assumptions are true. i do NOT agree with that they are good or not. i feel that they are true, and strongly state the way school is, how it is run, etc. i think its all awful, but then again, it is the truth.



and which part of the constitution might you be talking about?

[Doh!-Nut]

which part of the constitution might you be talking about?

The good part?



Anyway the NEA must be stopped.

[Doh!-Nut]

Academic Fences:



Equally as deplorable as the intentional limiting of students to only pursue their education's to a prescribed height is the deliberate erection of academic barriers. The "academic fence" refers to schools' careful choices to teach some subjects and ideas over others. Within the schooling framework, only certain subjects are given the stamp of permissibility, and students are given no choice in the matter. Schools generate an academic tunnel vision within their students by focusing on an appallingly narrow range of subjects. The belief that schools seek to foster within their students-that what subject matter they learn in school is inherently more valuable and important than subjects that fall outside the schooling realm-is vital towards controlling students' minds.

One cannot stand on two legs and be a complete person without the dilligent and sometimes even arduous reading of difficult human concepts.



Philosophy, Religion, History, Economics, Politics, Literature, Poetry, Theology, Music, Art.



What do we have in school? Scarce history and literature. Music and art as mere electives.