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To: TomSmedley
What, pray tell, is a "janissaries"? Or what are "janissaries"? Anyhow, it's not important. North Carolina has 38,000 homeschoolers? That's great! Guess what, NC statists? Children aren't "products." And they certainly aren't "creatures of the state." They really don't owe anybody anything. They don't "owe" the state a workforce. Government is the servant of the people. People aren't the servants of government and parents will educate their children as they see fit. And apparently 38,000 or so parents don't see public education as a good enough educational option for their kids. Do you know what all this concern about regulating homeschoolers leads to? School-to-Work and a planned economy. How can we "the state" entrap homeschoolers into the same life-long learning,womb-to-tomb, government-controlled, wage-slavery as our public school kids? Just because some parents are smart enough to leave the system, doesn't mean that their children should suffer the same fate as government-educated children.
31 posted on 12/06/2001 5:09:47 PM PST by bettina0
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To: bettina0
What, pray tell, is a "janissaries"?

The Ottoman empire levied a tax in children on Christian villages. Every year, a certain percentage of the young men were rounded up and sent to Istanbul where they were circumcised, made to recite the magic words that turned them into muslims, and trained in martial disciplines. They were the slave soldiers/administrators who made the empire viable. They propped up the system that oppressed their families and enslaved them.

I think the closest parallel to the yeni cheri (Turkish: new troops, anglicized as janissary would be the TAG ("talented and gifted") programs which cull out the kids whose brains have survived the statist indoctrination so far, subject them to more intensive attention at "governor's schools," and use them as future "leaders." Supporters of the status quo.

35 posted on 12/06/2001 6:27:13 PM PST by TomSmedley
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To: bettina0
The Janissaries were an elite army corps maintained by the Ottoman Sultans. They originally were "recruited" from Christian minorities or prisoners of war, converted to Islam, and specially schooled for service. They eventually got to be more trouble to the government than they were worth, and in 1826 the Janissary force at Istanbul was massacred in a mutiny, and the corps was officially disbanded.
37 posted on 12/06/2001 6:49:46 PM PST by thulldud
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