Education

This is the number one local issue in every community in America. Education in most communities makes up a majority of the local budget and thus becomes a focal point for disputes and contention.

Is there force initiated in education? Some may be surprised to discover just how much initiated force there actually is.

First, students are forced "for their own good" to attend school in most states. This is clearly initiated force. Most people would say that this is a good thing, but is it really? It's one of those things we take for granted, and no one actually thinks twice about it.

It's hard to find any data at all showing whether or not compulsory education is detrimental. The subject generally isn't studied, but here's what we've been able to find so far. If you can cite any other studies, please contact us.

The National Center for Policy Analysis reports:

• In the 1970s, a federal report called for cutting formal schooling down to two to four hours a day because of the classroom's detrimental effect on children's development.

• In 1991, a U.S. Department of Education official, John Burkett, criticized the "prolonged adolescence" induced by compulsory attendance.

• In Japan, which is often held up as a model for education, attendance in high school is completely voluntary, and there are few problems with violence or discipline.

• However, Japan's junior highs, where attendance is compulsory, are more violent than those in the United States, and the violence is committed by the 7 percent who choose not to continue into senior highs.

Forcing Taxpayers

Where else is force initiated in education? Clearly, it is initiated via the tax system. Everyone who lives in a community is forced to contribute money via taxes to pay for the community's public school system. Yet, many taxpayers don't actually have children of their own in the schools at all! Even when some parents decide they don't like the school system and decide to pull their kids out of the public school to either homeschool them or put them in a private school, they are still required to help pay for the public schools in addition to paying for their own kids' education. Adults who choose not to have kids at all are still forced to help pay for the public schools.

The consequences of initiating force to pay for public schools are much worse than most people realize. 

1. Those who don't have kids in the public schools are being forced to subsidize those who do have kids in public schools, regardless of whether those same public school parents are rich or poor. This captive supply of money reduces incentives to keep school costs under control. It should therefore surprise no one that education costs keep going up and up and up.

2. Forcing others to help pay for your child's education means that those who don't have kids in the schools have a say in what will be taught in those schools. This is clearly detrimental to parents who don't like what non-parents choose for their kids to study.

3. Forcing everyone to pay for public schools regardless of whether they have kids there provides automatic justification for the state and federal governments to step in and "regulate" schools in the name of the public good. The consequences of such programs are usually detrimental in the long run, even though they are usually passed to high acclaim at their creation.

4. When the Federal, State, and Local governments, in combination with teachers unions and education think tanks control the educational environment, it means that parents must necessarily have less and less say over what happens to their kids in school.

Educators have long argued that one of the positive benefits of compulsory education is that high school graduates fare better than non-graduates. But what are the negative consequences? These are always glossed over and ignored, but we ignore them to our detriment.

Have you ever noticed that the overwhelming majority of high school graduates have no clue on graduation day what they want to do with their lives? Supposedly, this is something that they should have been spending time figuring out over the preceding 12 years. Yet, most kids emerge from their compulsory school years with no clear ideas about their own futures. This is a phenomenon that predates the modern high-stakes testing environment, yet the pattern appears to have continued unchanged regardless. High-stakes testing has done nothing to improve the situation, and it quite possibly might be making the situation worse.

This is especially ironic considering that acquiring diplomas from compulsory high schools was originally considered by early compulsory education advocates to be crucially important, thus justifying the compulsion in their minds. Yet today, high school diplomas are considered to be inadequate to the task. Today, the comparison is made between high school diplomas and college diplomas, with the suggestion that a person with "only" a high school diploma is lacking. Is it possible that compulsory education laws have in practice actually undermined their own original justification? Can we expect new laws to appear at some point saying that college education should be compulsory because high school diplomas aren't good enough? Don't be surprised if something like that is proposed at some point. And when it does happen, don't be surprised if it's soon followed by claims that college diplomas aren't enough, that all students should be urged to attend graduate school in order to be adequately educated.

Forcing Students and Teachers

Look inside the schools themselves and you'll see further, massive evidence of initiated force. Students aren't free to decide hardly anything about what they're going to do during the day. Even going to the bathroom requires a pass. No wonder so few of them know what they want to do with their lives once they graduate. How are they supposed to figure this out while all the authority is taken away from them from Day One onward in school?

Students are required by various laws and programs such as No Child Left Behind and the Standards of Learning tests to regularly be studying "for the test." In fact, studying for the test has become so epidemic in public schools that even teachers are sounding the alarm.

The Washington Post published an article in 2001 which showed how this problem is affecting Northern Virginia schools. The first four paragraphs tell the story.

Ace math teacher Bruce Snyder was racking up the accolades. He was a nominee for Loudoun teacher of the year, and, annually, his calculus students scored so high on the Advanced Placement test that School Superintendent Edgar B. Hatrick III singled him out in a speech before 2,000 teachers.

But last month, Snyder left public education to teach this fall at the private Georgetown Day School in the District. His sole reason? The Virginia Standards of Learning tests. 

"Every day you go to work and everything is geared to getting these test scores up, how we can raise those test scores," he said. The exams dominated conversation in the math department office, in staff meetings, in professional development seminars.

"It was SOL this, SOL that," Snyder said. "It was not about 'How are you doing today?' or 'Let's learn something interesting and exciting.' . . . It was just not a healthy environment."

By the way, here's a little food for thought. If you were to take the SOLs as an adult, without taking time to "study for the test," would you pass? If you doubt that you would pass, does this mean that you aren't sufficiently well-educated?

Force, Force, Force!

The more we look at public education in Virginia these days, the more difficult it becomes to find any area of public schools that doesn't initiate force. Unfortunately, public education leaders do not appear to care whether or not all this force is having detrimental effects. They don't even consider the question. Extensive Google searches we performed while doing research for this article found no studies at all that even attempted to measure whether and to what extent damage is being done to students, teachers, parents, or society-at-large because of all this force.

Can you think of other areas of public education where initiated force is involved? And since the party supports the Non-Aggression Principle, what do you believe our position regarding Education should be? Contact us with your recommendations.