The Gang or Us?
Cookie cutters, suburban domiciles, and textbooks provided by the State are engraved with the stale bacteria known as commonplaceness. Cookie cutters are designed to mold raw materials to one prescribed shape and size. How boring. Suburban domiciles are mass produced to reduce the cost of quickly expanding across former deserts. Great for affordability, horrendous for standing out in our universe. Our enemy, the State, has had a stranglehold on individuality since it was a zygote. Statehood and individuality are inherently at each others' throats. The former demands, at gunpoint, uniformity and mediocrity of services. The latter permits herd thinking, but thrives when host to sundry strains of dissent. The public school system in the U.S. is an abject failure. No controversy here. In this discussion, let us prioritize the mal effect this has on our ideas over the economic disarray it displays.
There is no positive reason to have a system of State sponsored schooling. The commissar, or lobbyist, responsible for maintaing the status quo is acting either in ignorance, or malevolence. Either she does not know that she is suppressing the human spirit, or she is proud of the fact. The secular humanists worship the State. Like any other religion, secular humanist adherents have texts considered holy. In this case, it is those anointed for distribution to our children by the State's high priest of schooling. Revisionist historian Jeff Riggenbach notes the constricted view of history this leaves us.
Wendy is damned to have her world view highly influenced by an institution that wants her no different then the other cogs. She may have wanted to explore art, theoretical mathematics, Eastern mysticism, Austrian Economics et cetera. Her wants are for not. She gets the same recipe as the rest of us, the glory of the State. Why is there order? The State. Why is there respect for contracts? The State. How should security and law be provided? The State. What about the roads? The State. To think otherwise is sacrilegious.
If we abolished the State today, thought would be freed. The diversity of ideas would be expressed in the varying schooling methods of local communities. There would be more home schoolers, cooperative based teaching, private schools, religious schools et cetera. The specifics are questions for entrepreneurs to pursue. With certitude, I can say that we would have ranging opinions on history, science, mathematics, art and so forth. This would promote the investigation of truth. Which one is right? Which schools have the most voluntary consumers? Who gets to select what we learn, the gang or us?
If State theft and transfer of wealth is an inseparable part of your ideology, fret not. There is a plan for you as well. If we abolished the schooling bureaucracy, we would see the same advancements in education as listed above. Sponsoring students with scholarships (reduced tithes), from the State, to attend these myriad schools is a better alternative to the status squo.
The first option would be better for lack of theft. Furthermore, we must end the State.
Post Scriptum:
Recall the book review I did of legendary polemicist Murray Rothbard's Education Free & Compulsory. If nothing else, I want you to read his analogy of State education
One of the best ways of regarding compulsory education is to think of the almost exact analogy in the area of that other great educational medium- the newspaper. What would we think of a proposal for the government, Federal or State, to use the taxpayers' money to set up a nationwide chain of public newspapers, and compel all people, or all children to read them? What would we think furthermore of the government's outlawing all other newspapers, or indeed outlawing all newspapers that do not come up to the "standards" of what a government commission thinks children ought to read? Such a proposal would be generally regarded with horror in America, and yet this is exactly the sort of regime that the government has established in the sphere of scholastic instruction.