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.
1. YOUR comment was topically irrelevent to THIS thread.
2. Neither education nor immigration are even remotely irrelevent TODAY, though the former is the ONLY relevent topic of THIS thread.
* George Washington, in a letter to John Adams, stated that immigrants should be absorbed into American life so that "by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people."
* In a 1790 speech to Congress on the naturalization of immigrants, James Madison stated that America should welcome the immigrant who could assimilate, but exclude the immigrant who could not readily "incorporate himself into our society."
* In 1802, Alexander Hamilton wrote: "The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family."
* Hamilton further warned that "The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others, it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. It has been often likely to compromise the interests of our own country in favor of another.
"The permanent effect of such a policy will be, that in times of great public danger there will be always a numerous body of men, of whom there may be just grounds of distrust; the suspicion alone will weaken the strength of the nation, but their force may be actually employed in assisting an invader."
* The survival of the American republic, Hamilton maintained, depends upon "the preservation of a national spirit and a national character." "To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens the moment they put foot in our country would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty."
We are not a nation of immigrants. We are first and foremost a nation of laws. The U.S. Constitution does not say that the paramount duty of government is to "celebrate diversity" or to "embrace multiculturalism" or to give "every willing worker" in the world a job. The Preamble to the U.S. Constitution says the Constitution was established "to provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty."
As our Founding Fathers recognized, fulfilling these fundamental duties is impossible without an orderly immigration and entrance system that discriminates in favor of those willing, as George Washington put it, to "get assimilated to our customs, measures [and] laws."
A NATION OF LAWS by Michelle Malkin
I posted to a poster that did a Libertarian Party ping, pay attention.
I didn’t single out the immigration thing, someone else did, pay attention.
everyone needs to read The Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto and A Thomas Jefferson Education by Oliver Van DeMille...
You posted it to me - and I am telling you - pay attention to what you post, and what posts you respond to.
Pay attention - and be courteous - you may learn something. (Or, you may chose not to - your decision.)
I don't know if I can agree with that statement.
Democracy is the precursors to Socialism, which leads then to communism.
So shaping voters seems like a standard goal of democracies.
Constitutionally Republics, like the United States, function in a totally different manner.
The 10th Amendment specifically gives the Federal Government no say in education, it belongs to the state.
We weren’t filled up back then, my interest is in revealing to people what the little libertarian party of less than 226,000 registrants really represents since most people don’t know.
People need to learn what the leftist part of the little libertarian party is, meaning they need to see the platform, because libertarians will BS them until the cows come home.
Well, since you keep referencing me...I’ll respond since I’m that poster...there was a ‘libertarian ping’ by a poster on this thread as a opposed to a ‘libertarian “party” ping’ and you posted about there platform, which included immigration.
You posted it to me - and I am telling you - pay attention to what you post, and what posts you respond to.
Pay attention - and be courteous - you may learn something. (Or, you may chose not to - your decision.)
Where did I post to you before 33?
Yeah, you jumped in and starting going off about immigration and since you were posting to me I started responding after the second time you pinged me.
I replied to your post #15. I merely stated that I was pinging myself - but, not because of what you posted. I am truly interested in this subject, but found your post not quite (at all) in line with my understanding of the Libertarian thinking. Tha’s all.
I corrected you by pointing out that I did not do a “libertarian Party Platform ping" after that I don't know what you started posting about.
Good post.
The quotes in my tagline ref affirm that the goal has been all along . . . prying children loose from parents; watering down to preventing significant parental influence and brain washing the cogs in the globalist wheels toward the tyrannical world government.
If you haven’t, please read the quotes from 1900 to present—or at least a quote or two per screen full.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/religion/2130557/posts?page=81#81
Government is primarily involved for the purpose of indoctrination. Education is secondary.
I like the sheepdog, sheep, wolf story every time I read it.
I also like Yorkie.
I don’t think brittleness is particularly necessary. We CAN walk on by without getting our egos in a fluff.
When released the parent should be required to register as a child abuser, have to permanently wear a tracking device, and never be allowed within 100 yards of any child.
These people are the the reason that we have lost most of our freedoms & liberties. They are a far worse enemy than any foreign entity.
Now you are posting odd, nothing in post 50 is about yorkie.
Nothing against you - just your #15 post, and I see that you aren't exactally 'forever friends' with other posters, by reading your following pings posts.
LOL!
You were the one lecturing me for no reason.
Thanks, my friend. After reading some of the posts by this poster, I have decided it is no longer possible to have a cognizant conversation with such.
Time to turn in - have a wonderful Tuesday!
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