More than 15 years ago I was invited to London for a nationally televised debate with Robert Reich, a well-known Stanford scholar (not to be confused with Robert Reich the former Clinton cabinet member) who had written extensively on why homeschooling was so dangerous, and needed to be heavily regulated if not outlawed.
It wasn’t a fair fight, not because I’m an expert debater, but because he’d never met anyone like me. What he insisted was a bug was actually a great feature of homeschooling. His concern was that children who are homeschooled receive only a narrow education wherein those in charge of the child’s education simply pass on their convictions to their students.
He expected, I suspect, for me to argue along these lines- that homeschooled children are socialized often with others of differing views, that at least good homeschooling parents lay out a buffet of ideological options. He expected some version of “I get where your concern is coming from but you don’t understand how it really works.”
What he got was “Of course. That’s pretty much the point.” Worse still, he found himself hoisted on his own petard. I said words to this effect, “Your fear is that my children will be given only one perspective. That homeschooling leaves room for narrow options and bigotry. So your solution is to require everyone to get the approval of what is taught from the government. This is your solution to maximizing freedom.”
He was arguing that we have to make little fascists of the kids, lest they should become fascists. I went on to suggest that I really felt no need to use the government to force him to teach his children what I believed. I wasn’t trying to regulate how he raised his children. He was trying to regulate how I raise mine. Who, I asked, is the fascist here? Who has the more narrow perspective?
Just as Thomas Sowell pointed out the incongruity of the left arguing the rich are greedy for wanting to keep what is theirs but the left is not greedy for wanting to take it from them, so educationally, what makes education grounded in liberty “tyrannical” is it allows our children to escape the clutches of tyrants.
The dispute isn’t ultimately over competing theories of what should be taught. It is over competing theories over who should have authority over the training of children- parents, or bureaucrats. We would all be better off if we understood that the argument often isn’t the argument but is instead a disguise for the power grab. (See climate change, the scamdemic and assorted other lefty fever dreams.)
The answer is holding on to the jurisdictional boundaries God established for us. God didn’t command the state to educate our children. He commanded parents to education their children. He didn’t give the state the power of the chalk board but the power of the sword.
Every educational system will in the end teach its students to worship. Christians are called to teach their students to worship the living God. State schools in the end are designed to teach students to worship the state.
Excellent summary of what the government is striving to do. Make children worshippers of the state and not the one true God.