Quotes of the Day: On the separation of school & state [updated]

"The Government knows Maori and Pacific achievement is abysmal, a stain on the promise of opportunity for all, but they are so focused on helping the unions they have forgotten about the 1500 kids whose lives are being turned around by Partnership Schools. ... Today’s announcement on Partnership Schools shows the juvenile and callous nature of a Government led by ex-student politicians."
~ David Seymour

"Labour is putting politics, and paying back teacher unions, before the needs of pupils.
"All the schools, their staff and most importantly their pupils face uncertainty and the knowledge they could be axed at the whim of the minister.
"He might give Davis and Jackson some wriggle room by renaming three schools to allow them to continue, but what about the other schools and more importantly the pupils who are succeeding after failing at conventional schools?"
~ blogger HomePaddock

"I want every child in [the country], especially the children of the poor, to be able to go to a better school than they do today. And I think separation is the way to do it."
~ Marshall Fritz

"Quite the opposite of feeding inquiry, the true purpose of state schooling, easily established by reading the words of its founders, was always control. The common school removed from discussion many aspects previously universally inseparable from the project of acquiring an education. Compulsion government schooling was never a mechanism of defending freedom but one of truncating it."
~ Alan Schaeffer

"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 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."
~ Alan Shanker, late president, American Federation of Teachers

"A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another; and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the dominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, an aristocracy, or a majority of the existing generation; in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body."
~ John Stuart Mill

"Where once a tyrant had to wish that his subjects had but one common neck that he might strangle them all at once, all he has to do now is to 'educate the people' so that they will have but one common mind to delude... Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the ... people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system."
~ publisher & author Richard Mitchell

"The shocking possibility that dumb people don't exist in sufficient numbers to warrant the millions of careers devoted to tending them will seem incredible to you. Yet that is my central proposition: the mass dumbness which justifies official schooling first had to be dreamed of; it isn't real. ... Growth and mastery come only to those who vigorously self-direct. Initiating, creating, doing, reflecting, freely associating, enjoying privacy; these are precisely what the structures of schooling are set up to prevent, on one pretext or another. ... Who besides a degraded rabble would voluntarily present itself to be graded and classified like meat? No wonder school is compulsory."
~ award-winning teacher John Taylor Gatto

"The purpose of Compulsory Education is to deprive the common people of their commonsense."
~ writer G.K. Chesterton

"Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening."
~ US Commissioner of Education Willliam T. Harris

"In all countries, in all centuries, the primary reason for government to set up schools is to undermine the politically weak by convincing their children that the leaders are good and their policies are wise."
~ Marshall Fritz

"If it's wrong, and it is, for the government to intrude into the churches of our nation, to reshape and affect their basic doctrine and teaching, then it is just as wrong for that same government to be the sponsor of the worldview and values of 90 percent of all our nation' s children. - Joel Belz

"If it would be wrong for the government to adopt an official religion, then, for the same reasons, it would be wrong for the government to adopt official education policies. The moral case for freedom of religion stands or falls with that for freedom of education. A society that champions freedom of religion but at the same time countenances state regulation of education has a great deal of explaining to do."
~ philosopher James Otteson

"The more subsidised it is, the less free it is. What is known as "free education" is the least free of all, for it is a state-owned institution; ... and cannot possibly be separated from political control."
~ writer Frank Chodorov

"Wherever is found what is called a 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."
~ former British PM Benjamin Disraeil

"It is out of character for [any] country that prides itself on intellectual freedom to put the education of its young in the hands of the state."
~ writer David Kelley

"Don't wait for the perfect moment to break free -- there isn't any. Don't let officials, relatives or anyone else intimidate you into sacrificing your children. If you want to help public schools, give them your money, give them your time, give them your house and your car -- but don't give them your kids. There's a world of support out there for home schoolers. If you can't home school, find a decent private school and sacrifice for your kids' education like you would for that fancy car you want or that vacation or entertainment centre or big house. Whatever you'd sacrifice for the thing you most want in life, sacrifice ten times as much for your children."
~ Tammy Drennan

"The only persons who seem to have nothing to do with the education of the children are the parents."
~ G.K. Chesterton

And finally,

"Only a system of state-controlled schools can be free to teach whatever the welfare of the State may demand."
~ former American educator Elwood Chubberly

FURTHER READING:

• "To achieve [the necessary educational revolution] would be a monumental job, which would take decades. A part of the job, I want to recommend one specific step to improve our schools: close down the teachers colleges.
  "There is no rational purpose to these institutions (and so they do little but disseminate poisonous ideas). Teaching is not a skill acquired trough years of [these] classes ... Teachers must be masters of their subject; this -- not a degree in education -- is what school boards [and parents] should demand as a condition of employment.
  "This one change would dramatically improve the schools. If experts in subject matter were setting the terms in the classroom, some significant content would have to reach the students, even given today's dominant philosophy. In addition, the basket cases who know only the Newspeak of their education lecturers would be out of a job, which would be another big improvement.
  "This reform, of course, would be resisted to the end by today's educational establishment ..."
  Why Johnny Can't Think - Leonard Peikoff, AYN RAND CAMPUS
• "If formal, reality-oriented, intellectual education is an 'imposition' on childhood, it is an imposition that has long since been removed. "
  The False Promise of Classical Education - Lisa Van Damme, OBJECTIVE STANDARD

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