Category: The Case Against Public Education (Read Online)

  “I consider myself pretty conservative, but hearing what I’ve heard is alarming!” The man had called in to a popular American radio talk show to register his outrage at the conversation taking place between the show’s guest and its sympathetic host. What alarmed him was that two seemingly sane men were openly discussing the unthinkable, namely that the fundamental problem with public...

  Wherever is found what is called paternal government, there is found state education. It has been discovered that the best way to insure implicit obedience is to commence tyranny in the nursery.[i] Benjamin Disraeli, June 20, 1839    I begin this book—part obituary for a great civilization, part wistful dream of a future one—with Disraeli’s pithy account of the meaning of government...

  But Rhea was subject in love to Cronus and bare splendid children, Hestia, Demeter, and gold-shod Hera and strong Hades, pitiless in heart, who dwells under the earth, and the loud-crashing Earth-Shaker, and wise Zeus, father of gods and men, by whose thunder the wide earth is shaken. These great Cronus swallowed as each came forth from the womb to his mother’s...

  All men who have turned out worth anything have had the chief hand in their own education.[i] Sir Walter Scott   i. A Shot Across the Bow   Here, stated as directly as possible, is my thesis: If the institution of government-controlled education is allowed to survive, all efforts to resuscitate the inert bulk of modern civilization will fail. It is time...

  The issue at hand is of the utmost importance, as we are talking about the most determinative institution in any society. It therefore behooves us to quit our stale practical realm for a moment—our degraded reality of teachers unions, political correctness, relativism, entitlements, and the trashy combination of exhibitionism and voyeurism that we pass off as culture—and breathe the fresh mental air...

  When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain, Before high piled books, in charact’ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain; When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of...

Thank goodness my education was neglected. I was never sent to school…it would have rubbed off some of the originality (if I had not died of shyness or been killed with over pressure).[i] Beatrix Potter   Of all the arguments public school advocates have used to hoodwink generations of parents into condemning their own children to years of state-controlled subservience training, one of...

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,...

  Were we directed from Washington when to sow, & when to reap, we should soon want bread.[i] Thomas Jefferson   i. Standards vs. Standardization   As in most areas of late modern politics, wherein the “liberal” and “conservative” factions of the progressive ruling elite fight their turf war over the future of a general population for which they have little or no...

  The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all, it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.[i] H.L. Mencken   A loving mother teaching her child to read would never be so foolish as to cordon off an arbitrary...