Split Thread Does compulsory schooling equate to slavery? (Split from: "Liberal Fallacies" thread)

[A'isha]

How's that for a wild misrepresentation? I responded to a mistaken account of the historical origins of compulsory schooling.

Except bruto's statement wasn't a "mistaken account of the historical origins of compulsory schooling", and your reply had nothing to do with what bruto was actually saying. You were doing a classic ad hominem, associating modern compulsory school attendance in 21st Century industrialized nations with the completely irrelevant religious indoctrination efforts of Reformation-era Lutherans.

 

[A'isha]

The irony is so rich.

And not just for that reason. Malcolm is straight-up arguing that child factory labor in the early 1800's wasn't really all that bad, while modern American public schools are actual child slavery.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Except bruto's statement wasn't a "mistaken account of the historical origins of compulsory schooling", and your reply had nothing to do with what bruto was actually saying. You were doing a classic ad hominem, associating modern compulsory school attendance in 21st Century industrialized nations with the completely irrelevant religious indoctrination efforts of Reformation-era Lutherans.

I did ask for an expansion of his claim, and then, since s/he mentioned "historical evidence" related some actual history of the origins of government schooling. Where's the ad hominem? I did not call him "bigot" or "racist" or "incoherent", to mention just a few of the ad hominem attacks people in this forum have directed my way. .

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

The irony is so rich.

Was Slavery a Good Thing? Examining Doug Wilson

If you can quote it then it must be true. Right Malcolm?

Is that your assertion? Or does your ability to quote some ridiculous argument trump any argument any opponent makes?

Please try to make sense.

 

[Belz...]

And not just for that reason. Malcolm is straight-up arguing that child factory labor in the early 1800's wasn't really all that bad, while modern American public schools are actual child slavery.

I hope you're not genuinely surprised.

 

[A'isha]

I did ask for an expansion of his claim, and then, since s/he mentioned "historical evidence" related some actual history of the origins of government schooling.

And since bruto wasn't talking about the "history of the origins of government schooling", your post was pretty much irrelevant. As for some "historical evidence" of the kind of thing bruto actually was talking about, you can always ask Malala Yousafzai.

Where's the ad hominem? I did not call him "bigot" or "racist" or "incoherent", to mention just a few of the ad hominem attacks people in this forum have directed my way. .

I never said it was an ad hominem directed at bruto.

 

[RandFan]

Is that your assertion? Or does your ability to quote some ridiculous argument trump any argument any opponent makes?

You didn't make an argument. You posted a quote and two links. That you can quote something doesn't make it true. That some person claims that child labor was not as bad as people thought is as valid as some person who claims that slavery wasn't so bad.

 

[RandFan]

I did not call him "bigot" or "racist" or "incoherent", to mention just a few of the ad hominem attacks people in this forum have directed my way. .

Pointing out that your remarks are bigoted and incoherent isn't ad hominem.

 

[jimbob]

Malcolm,

The vast majority of parents have their children's welfare as their main concern. However a significant minority don't.¹
The citizens of a democratic state can decide that a system is needed to protect vulnerable children.² There doesn't need to be any profit motive involved in this.³
In poor families, children could even think that they should work to help support their family financially, even though that might be against their own interests.⁴ We tried child labour in the 19th century and it wasn't good.⁵ Compulsory education arose in part to protect children from this.⁶

1. Same for teachers and other system insiders. The issue boils down to who besides parents shall determine how people shall spend the time between birth and age 18. This is what the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel's shills defend. In Hawaii, juvenile arrests FALL when school is NOT in session. Juvenile hospitalizations for human-induced trauma FALL when school is NOT in session.
2. That was not how compulsory schooling policies entered the statute books. Compulsory schooling originated in theocratic indoctrination and anti-Catholic bigotry.
3. Great! Try suggest that teachers in government schools work donate their time and that the NEA, AFT, and AFSCME donate contract negotiation and enforcement services.
4. Benjamin Franklin attended school for two years and apprenticed. Richard Arkwright was homeschooled. Thomas Edison was homeschooled and began work at 14. Cyrus McCormick was homeschooled. David Farragut joined the navy at 9, went to sea at 11, and commanded his first ship at 15. Please read Ted Kolderie's 2001-Jan. Minnesota Journal article on adolescence.
5. Compared to what? Why does on-the-job training not qualify as "education"?
6. The winners write (and teach) History. One more reason to oppose policies that restrict parents' education options.

You might have a point if children had to attend a particular school. In the UK this is not the case, and I believe this is true in much of the US).

Should one wish one can homeschool one's children* or one can send them to private schools.

What is important is that the children get an education of an approved standard.




*There is a family in my village who do this (they are Jehovah's Witnesses, and I suspect the education is more biased than the state provision)

 

[gsmonks]

Why the quotation marks? I did not write " 'tax' = 'theft' ", I wrote "a tax is a State-mandated surrender of wealth". Money does not have to pass through the treasury to qualify as a tax; corvee labor is a tax. I did not write " 'school'='slavery' ", I wrote "compulsory, unpaid labor is slavery". That's a plain definition, not a redefinition. Compulsory school attendance is (a) compulsory and (b) a surrender of time. Just like compulsory plantation labor.
There's no redefinition involved here.

Hey, I've read something like this before! What was it . . . oh, yeah, Orwell's 1984.

Taxes are things we pay so that we can have roads, schools, drinking water that comes out of a tap, electricity that comes out of the walls and lights your home . . .

I happen to like paying taxes and don't begrudge paying taxes one bit. Why would I? Our taxes are what stand squarely between us and the Dark Ages.

 

[RandFan]

I wrote "compulsory, unpaid labor is slavery". That's a plain definition, not a redefinition. Compulsory school attendance is (a) compulsory and (b) a surrender of time. Just like compulsory plantation labor.
There's no redefinition involved here.

Chores are (a) compulsory and (b) a surrender of time. Most children in parochial schools are not there simply because they want to be. Their parents compel them. In fact, most if not all K-12 education is (a) compulsory and (b) a surrender of time.

Therefore, following your logic, K-12 education is de facto slavery. School = slavery is a fair inference based on your definition.

 

[Minoosh]

Had I grown up in that world I would not have gotten an education.

OT: I can't stop wondering why the kid on the left in the miners' photo is smiling.

On slavery: Just being a child is slavery in a way. Sending a kid to a voucher school is still making him go to school. Even with no compulsory school, someone besides the child is generally going to be calling the shots.

IMO it's not teachers' unions that most undermine progress - it's the informal union of students who have gotten pretty good at resisting instruction. Gross generalization: American kids in general are not driven to compete academically. Default behavior is to socialize and play with their phones. (Hmm - where do they get that?) In addition there is a strongly anti-intellectual streak of large segments of the population.

I wish there were more-substantive threads on education at JREF. It would be nice to see problems discussed, solutions proposed, data evaluated. Even if you're one of the posters who think that universal compulsive schooling is slavery, it isn't going to disappear overnight, so my question is along the lines of, what actions should parents/politicians/school systems pursue? Stating that in theory society would work better if compulsory education were abolished doesn't address that.

 

[Belz...]

You might have a point if children had to attend a particular school.

Or if they had to sleep on campus for the rest of their natural lives.

Or if they were beaten up on a whim.

Or if they didn't get to leave and get a job when they became adults.

Or if they were considered property.

Really, state-mandated schooling is the opposite of slavery: it gives children professional education that will allow them to have jobs and carve their own destiny later on. It empowers them in a way home schooling almost never can.

 

[jimbob]

OT: I can't stop wondering why the kid on the left in the miners' photo is smiling.

Possibly because of the novelty of being photographed?

Or if they had to sleep on campus for the rest of their natural lives.

Or if they were beaten up on a whim.

Or if they didn't get to leave and get a job when they became adults.

Or if they were considered property.

Really, state-mandated schooling is the opposite of slavery: it gives children professional education that will allow them to have jobs and carve their own destiny later on. It empowers them in a way home schooling almost never can.

True

 

[RandFan]

I wish there were more-substantive threads on education at JREF. It would be nice to see problems discussed, solutions proposed, data evaluated.

Malcolm, perhaps if you were not provocative people would take you seriously. Many of us value the education we received from state run schools. Completely dismissing state run schools as nothing more than slavery to enrich unions, well, that looks to many of us like screw poor people so the rich can get richer.

You've never explained how I would have gotten an education given that my father had no money and would have preferred that I stay home and work on the farm. When you ignore the plight of the poor it's very hard for me to take you seriously. State run education has been a god send for many poor people.

Edited to make clear I was referring to Malcolm. I too would be interested in such discussions.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

You might have a point if children had to attend a particular school. In the UK this is not the case, and I believe this is true in much of the US). Should one wish one can homeschool one's children* or one can send them to private schools. What is important is that the children get an education of an approved standard. *There is a family in my village who do this (they are Jehovah's Witnesses, and I suspect the education is more biased than the state provision)

I agree with most of this.
Homeschooling regulations vary widely from State to State. Some States require that one homeschooling parent have a teacher's license. Usually, it's union-dominated Boards that award these licenses. Policies that restrict tax subsidies to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel (the "public schools") reduce options. It can be hard to sell steak if the butcher down the street is selling tax-subsidized hamburger, if your customers have been taxed into poverty to subsidize the "free" hamburger, and if the brother of the proprietor of the "free" hamburger shop supervises the Health Department inspectors.

Across US States, There is a clear and strong (for a social science) negative correlation between school district size and NAEP 4th and 8th grade Reading and Math scores. According to Caroline Hoxby, urban polities with several small school districts achieve higher performance at lower cost than similarly-sized urban polities with city-wide school districts. I have consistently argued that overall system performance improves with every expansion of the range of education options available to parents and students. I support tuition vouchers, tuition tax credits, charter schools, small school districts, "virtual" schools, credit-by-exam, and Parent Performance Contracting.

The State cannot subsidize education without a definition of "education". Mostly, the current operational definition of "education" in the US elevates process (certified teachers, hours of school attendance) over performance (student test scores).

Children are NOT standard. Given a tax-supported education subsidy, I would prefer either minimal standards (standardized tests of reading vocabulary and reading comprehension (any language) and Math) or so many "standards" that no one can achieve them all and parents could choose from a menu of possibilities.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

... Completely dismissing state run schools as nothing more than slavery to enrich unions, well, that looks to many of us like screw poor people so the rich can get richer.

That better describes the current State-monopoly system. Assignment by district, magnet schools, G/T classes and policies that restrict parents' options for the use of the taxpayers' age 6-18 education subsidy to schools operated by dues-paying members of the NEA/AFT/AFSCME cartel harm poor people far more than they harm children of wealthy parents, who can afford private school tuition or a mortgage in a district with decent schools. Children of poor parents get Detroit Public Schools.

...You've never explained how I would have gotten an education given that my father had no money and would have preferred that I stay home and work on the farm.

That's what Cyrus McCormick did. Ben Franklin learned to read at home and attended school for two years, between age 12 and 14 iirc.

... When you ignore the plight of the poor it's very hard for me to take you seriously. State run education has been a god send for many poor people.

When you ignore the many references I have made to the benefits that poor people get from competition in education services, it's had for me to take you seriously. Political control of school harms most the children of the least politically adept parents.

 

[The Don]

That's what Cyrus McCormick did. Ben Franklin learned to read at home and attended school for two years, between age 12 and 14 iirc.

You're right Benjamin Franklin has 2 years of formal schooling. OTOH his parents were very interested in his education and it was only a lack of money which meant that prevented him attending more years. He apparently acquired his learning through independent reading which meant that he had access to books and was allowed the time to read them.

He was also an exceptional individual, most people of the time who had little or no schooling remained functionally illiterate.

 

[A'isha]

You're right Benjamin Franklin has 2 years of formal schooling. OTOH his parents were very interested in his education and it was only a lack of money which meant that prevented him attending more years. He apparently acquired his learning through independent reading which meant that he had access to books and was allowed the time to read them.

He was also an exceptional individual, most people of the time who had little or no schooling remained functionally illiterate.

And, given the exponential increase in the rate of knowledge, the fact that Franklin was able to self-educate like that does not in any way mean that children today can do the same thing. It is, in fact, literally impossible - as both James Burke and Stephen Hawking have pointed out, there's just too much to learn, and even approaching a fraction of it requires a specialized organized approach.

EDIT: And even if it weren't, it's pretty much a recipe for...well, what it was back in Franklin's own time: creating an educated, elite upper class of people who have the leisure and money to devote to their studies, and a massive underclass of poor workers who were pretty much doomed to an endless cycle of uneducated illiteracy. You know, exactly the kind of massive social imbalance that compulsory schooling corrects, as Malala Yousafzai talked about in her speech.

 

[catsmate]

Does compulsory schooling equate to slavery?
No. Not in any universe that I'm aware of. Hell, a reality where is Randi is Chief Forensic Sorcerer of London is more reasonable.

And even if it weren't, it's pretty much a recipe for...well, what it was back in Franklin's own time: creating an educated, elite upper class of people who have the leisure and money to devote to their studies, and a massive underclass of poor workers who were pretty much doomed to an endless cycle of uneducated illiteracy. You know, exactly the kind of massive social imbalance that compulsory schooling corrects, as Malala Yousafzai talked about in her speech.

Perhaps some people like the idea of such massive social imbalance?