Stuck in the Statist Box
by Jacob G. Hornberger
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
The latest political controversy in the Christine O’Donnell and Chris
Coons race shows how conservatives, liberals, and, yes, Tea Party types,
still operate within the box of statism.
The controversy involves whether public schools should be teaching
creationism or evolution.
Coons says that they should be teaching evolution because it is a
scientific fact and should not be teaching creationism because that would
violate the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.
O’Donnell says that public schools, being local units, should be free to
teach whatever they want -- evolution or creationism -- and claims that
the First Amendment doesn’t prohibit such teaching such doctrines at a
local level.
Yawn!
Just like the welfare-state way of life and warfare-state way of life,
all of us have been born and raised under the system known as public
schooling. Thus, like Social Security, Medicare, the drug war, and
foreign empire, public schooling is accepted by most people as a
permanent and ordinary feature of American life, with no one except
libertarians questioning the legitimacy of its existence.
Thus, the endless controversies that rage between conservatives and
liberals (and Tea Party types) is over how to run the public schools, not
over whether they should be abolished. Of course, the public-school
controversies are always politicized, given their nature as a
governmental institution.
In fact, the reason the Constitution enters the controversy is because
public schools are government schools. The Constitution prohibits the
state from establishing a religion. Thus, since children are in
government schools by virtue of the state’s compulsory-attendance law,
the state is prohibited from using the schools for purposes of religious
indoctrination.
The irony is that while conservatives and liberals (and Tea Party types)
generally understand the virtues of separating church and state, they are
unable to bring themselves to apply the same principle to education
that is, a separation of school and state -- a complete end to all
governmental involvement in education, as in religion.
Why do they have trouble breaking out of the statist box and raising
their vision on education to a higher level -- toward a total free market
in education?
The answer lies in public schooling itself. Through the 12 years of
enforced regimentation, it inculcates a mindset of conformity among the
students, one that ensures that the 18-year-old will look upon his
government with a deep reverence and never challenge the political order
of things at a fundamental level, e.g., by questioning why it’s necessary
to have institutions like public schooling, Social Security, Medicare, a
military empire, etc.
Thus, the political debates and controversies inevitably occur within the
statist box: how to fix or reform the socialist, interventionist, and
imperialist programs, but never asking the most important question: Is
this a legitimate function of government in a free society?
The real beauty of having a young, captive audience for 12 long years is
that over that long period of time the state is able to mold children’s
minds into accepting a false notion of what it means to be free. If we
were to travel to, say, North Korea and ask the average person, “Do you
consider yourself free?” the answer would be, “Yes, of course I’m free,”
and the person would genuinely mean it. The primary reason for this false
conviction is the many years he spent in the government’s schooling
system.
It’s really no different here in the United States. With the exception of
libertarians, the average American will respond in the same way as the
North Korean citizen, perhaps even embellishing his answer with: “Thank
God I’m an American because at least I know I’m free.”
The biggest benefit of public schooling then, from the standpoint of the
state, is reflected in the point made by the German thinker Johann von
Goethe: None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe
they are free.
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2010-10-20.asp
--
Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups.
For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum
* Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/
* It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls.
* Read the latest breaking news, and more.
