TheAgitator.com
An Early Case for Private Schooling
Wednesday, July 14th, 2004Here’s a paper on the impracticalities and futility of public education, and on how crime and “the production of great men” varies in states with public school systems versus states that rely on private and home schooling for primary education.
Publication date: 1886.
I have always wondered why you never seemed interested in our educational system Radley.
A little over a year ago I pulled my two teenage kids from school and began homeschooling them. After some research I was quite horrified the restrictions some states put on your right as a parent to educate your own children.
Luckily I live in Michigan, where homeschooling is looked upon favorably.
That is a fascinating link. Good find!
Education Reform circa 1886
This is fascinating, an 1886 paper extolling the virtues of private schools and homeschooling over public school. In order to…
Sounds interesting, I’m going to read this at work since I don’t want to waste time at home.
I’m not big on assumptions but why do I think it compared the public schools of the 1886 NYC overloaded with immigrants and the private education one received in New Jersey and home schooling of Lancaster County PA. I’ll be back…
not sure i agree that the proper function of an education system is “the production of great men” - sounds a bit niestzche-like for me, kind of like it doesn’t matter if it produces hundreds of duds so long as we get one napoleon.
Also, i have to question whether parents are the best judge of what should be taught to their children, i don’t like that children can be indoctrinated into whatever religious whim their parents hold. Ban all religious education until a child reaches the age of consent.
favourite bit of the article:
“Our towns and cities swarm with policemen; our prisons, workhouses, and reformatories are crowded almost to suffocationwith impecunious thieves, robbers, and cut-throats, while gilded crime goes unpunished, and moneyed malefactors without number strut our streets with heads erect, spit upon the law, laugh justice to scorn, and fatten upon their ill-gotten millions, while multitudes of their wronged and ruined victims are lodged in almshouses and lunatic asylums, or seek refuge from so sad a fate in the still more horrid doom of self-destruction.”
so nothing new there then..
Wade I think youâd love my plan for education in America. Remove all children from their parents as soon as theyâre born and place them in Education Centers, where they can be raised by professionals. We isolate them from the dangerous ideas of parents. Just think what kind of nation we could build if we had a system like that!
We have a system like that. Parents who are so self absorbed that they send their kids off to day care as soon as maternity leave is over and then bus them off to public school for a so called education. I’ll stick with the family envolvement…Thank You
Marcus Aurelius, in a part of the Meditations where he is saying what he learned from various people in his life, says:
“4. From my great-grandfather, not to have frequented public schools, and to have had good teachers at home, and to know that on such things a man should spend liberally.”
BTW, I would bet that the author of this paper really isn’t concerned with all them poor folks. They need to get into the factories and fields, so the quality of their education doesn’t really matter.
I’d bet he’s more concerned about the education of the upper classes.