Libertarian ping! Click here to get added or here to be removed or post a message here!
(View past Libertarian pings here)
Posted on 05/11/2009 8:06:40 PM PDT by Conservative Coulter Fan
The United States was founded, formed and grew to international prominence and prestige without compulsory schooling and with virtually no government involvement in schooling. Before the advent of government-controlled schools, literacy was high (91-97% in the North, 81% in the South), private and community schools proliferated, and people cared about education and acted on their desire to learn and have their children learn.
Mr. Matthew J. Brouillette, President of the Commonwealth Foundation in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and former Director of Education Policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, wrote:
From the outset of the first settlements in the New World, Americans founded and successfully maintained a de-centralized network of schools up through the 1850s...
For the first 150 years of America's settlement and the first 50 to 75 years of the nation's existence, government schooling as it is known today did not exist.
Today, few people ask how Americans, without the help of government education, came to tame an unsettled continent and eventually establish the freest nation in history.
Mr. Brouillette goes on to say:
Early America was arguably the freest civil society that has ever existed. This freedom extended to education, which meant that parents were responsible for, and had complete control of, their children's schooling. There were no accrediting agencies, no regulatory boards, and no teacher certification requirements. Parents could choose whatever kind of school or education they wanted for their children, and no one was forced to pay for education they did not use or approve of.
Americans were as innovative about education as they were about everything else. They started private schools, hired tutors, taught their children at home, taught themselves. As the country grew, private schooling of many varieties grew and complemented the many other options.
But there were always the reformers, the people who thought they knew better than everyone else and felt they had the right to force their views on others — by law, if no one would cooperate otherwise.
From the PBS web site:
Public education today is a product of more than a century of reform and revision [mid 1800s to present]. In each era, visionary individuals have taken the lead and transformed the system to meet their ideals.
"Visionary individuals" is an overly nice term for people who consider themselves superior enough that they should have the right to force "their ideals" on all others.
One of these visionaries was Horace Mann, a lawyer from Massachusetts. He's often referred to as the father of public education because he was such a fervent reformer, but there were others before and after him.
Mr. Mann's hometown of Boston was a city of many private schools in the early and mid 1800s — with attendance reported at 96% by a committee commissioned to study the issue.
But high attendance was not the goal of school reformers. Horace Mann helped establish a board of education in 1837, and by 1852, he had his compulsory schools and state schools from elementary through high school.
Power is tempting and many reformers and politicians fell to its lure. One state after another tightened its grip on American education. Parents who refused to comply sometimes found themselves at the sharp end of state militia bayonets.
Once the state grabs power in a particular area, it is only natural that unless people fight back the power will grow and freedom will slowly die. That's where we stand today.
Albert Shanker, former president of the American Federation of Teachers, said this:
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.
But Americans have not surrendered their freedom altogether. 27,000 private schools serve over six million students in America. Nearly two million students are home schooled. Tutoring services and learning centers number in the thousands. Community groups, churches and charities offer free tutoring. Parents pool their resources to run summer schools and special classes for their children.
Much more could be done if parents and students were not trapped in the web of government schooling. As it is, many parents are actually afraid to step into independence. Some are afraid because schools threaten or intimidate them. Some are afraid of the financial responsibility. Many simply are unaware of all the opportunities and possibilities available.
It is our goal to not only explain why government involvement in schooling is detrimental to students, families, society and liberty, but to provide families with ideas and resources to aid their path to independence.
Great post!
The short answer is that involvement in education is the desired result of all that want control of future generations. This has been going on for decades now and the final results are just starting to be understood. (Only by those that actually care it seems...).
Sometimes I wonder just when the desired results of today actually started. Dumb down the public (through public schools) and then start the revolution (wrong kind)... I’m not actually a conspiracy nut (yet), but really starting to wonder what the hell is going on...
Here is the wording from the 2004 Party Platform
Libertarian Party Platform 2004:
Immigration
The Issue: We welcome all refugees to our country and condemn the efforts of U.S. officials to create a new "Berlin Wall" which would keep them captive. We condemn the U.S. government's policy of barring those refugees from our country and preventing Americans from assisting their passage to help them escape tyranny or improve their economic prospects.
Transitional Action: We call for the elimination of all restrictions on immigration, the abolition of the Immigration and Naturalization Service and the Border Patrol, and a declaration of full amnesty for all people who have entered the country illegally.
Amazing, that link you posted takes one to a FR thread with five posters on it that evidently did not think to look at the party platform.
Out of those five posters, 3 of them have been banned, including the guy that posted the thread.
bttt
Good post ping!
I am pinging myself to this link for further research and study - but it won’t be because of your “libertarian Party Platform ping”
All they did was conceal some of their agenda and soften the language so that it would give more wiggle room on forums and when trying to win converts.
After using clear language for so many years this is how they word it in the 2008 platform. Using the smoke screen of being able to stop an individual as an argument that they don't support totally open borders.
Immigration: 3.4 Free Trade and Migration
"We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders. However, we support control over the entry into our country of foreign nationals who pose a threat to security, health or property.
I didn’t ping anyone, I was quoting his ping.
Wow, you posted at me, I didn't post to you until your second post to me.
Wow - GREAT post!
Not only that, but if you add up the first letters of each alternate word, it spells "Paul is dead."
Get lost, straw man.
Get lost yourself, three out of five posters banned on an irrelevant four year old thread that someone linked me to was worth commenting on.
Why can't our nation
read, write, cipher or THINK?
The Underground Grammarian takes on
the American Educational Establishment.
Praised by critics across the nation, The Graves of Academe is Richard Mitchell's angry and brilliant tour through America's bloated public school system--whose mangled, self-serving language and policies would make Orwell wince. Stamped with vintage Mitchell wit and laced with stinging examples from The Underground Grammarian, The Graves of Academe pinpoints the historic sources of the mind-boggling "educationist" bureaucracy and reveals why today's schools are riddled not only with illiterate students but with illiterate teachers and administrators as well.
"Richard Mitchell has done it again. He has loosed his noble lance of hate, fury and wit against the malignant stupidities that infest the world of education. . . . His book should be read by everyone who detests stupidity and who admires that rare virtue called common sense." --Howard Fast
Throw open the borders completely; only a rare individual (terrorist, disease carrier etc.) can be kept from freedom of movement through “political borders”.
Homosexuals; total freedom in the military, gay marriage, adoption, child custody and everything else.
Abortion; zero restrictions or impediments.
Pornography; no restraint, no restrictions.
Drugs; Meth, Heroin, Crack, anything new that science can come up with, zero restrictions.
Advertising drugs, prostitution, pornography; zero restrictions.
Military Strength; minimal capabilities."
Not one of the above was posted in #4's post.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.