[CyberCowboy777]

The battle between parents and the state is over 25 centuries old. Here are some interesting, sometimes quite candid, comments by leaders of yesteryear. These were proponents of Government run education.


"Neither must we suppose that any one of the citizens belongs to himself, for they all belong to the state." — Aristotle (d322 BC)


"Make me the master of education, and I will undertake to change the world." — Baron Gottfried von Leibnitz (d1716)


"Let our pupil be taught that he does not belong to himself, but that he is public property... He must be taught to amass wealth, but it must be only to increase his power of contributing to the wants and demands of the state... [Education] can be done effectually only by the interference and aid of the Legislature." — Benjamin Rush (1786)


"The nation alone has the right to educate children." — Robespierre (d1794)


"The education of all children, from the moment that they can get along without a mother's care, shall be in state institutions at state expense." — Karl Marx (1848)


"The secret of the superiority of state over private education lies in the fact that in the former the teacher is responsible to society... [T]he result desired by the state is a wholly different one from that desired by parents, guardians, and pupils." — Lester Frank Ward (1897)

[justshutupandtakeit]

The quotes are interesting but not proof of anything other than the authors' concern with the state of education as it existed in their times and places.

Actually it is proof that this problem is not one limited to modern times and places but one that has concerned almost all societies at all times and not one of easy, simple solution.