The Final report of the Commission on industrial relations is a large government report from 1915. It has a disturbing section on education [emphasis added]:
All minors entering industry after 14 years of age are entitled to further aid from organized society in order to enable them to complete their vocational and cultural education. This is possible only through the establishment of compulsory daytime continuation schools of at least five hours per week at the expense of employers, and night schools.
This is supposedly about helping people. Why is compulsion the only possible way to help people?
These schools, in order to be of value, must be compulsory upon all minors in industry up to at least 18 years of age.
Why? No reasoning is given.
Our children need to know more as to their economic value, and more of their social duties and responsibilities. The schoolhouse is the place where much of this should be taught, in order that the duties of honorable citizenship shall be appreciated. Real social service is the highest attainment the individual can aspire to reach. All education is of value in life and the State should properly be held responsible for the education of her children, in order that the best possible use shall be made by the greatest possible number of the opportunities of life as they present themselves from year to year.
This says the State owns "her" children and must educate them to appreciate their social duties so the best possible use of their lives can be made.
This is really scary... And lots of it has now been implemented in today's "public" (state) schools which indoctrinate children on a massive scale.
The report also states:
The minimum amount of education which any child should receive is certainly the grammar school course, yet statistics show that only one-third of the children in our public schools complete the grammar school course, and less than 10 per cent finish high school.
How things change in 100 years! Now our society takes k-12 schooling for granted without much thought.
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This is a free speech zone (or TAZ---temporary autonomous zone)(
alot of old doccuments contain what contain what i and some others consider outdated or antiquated terminology -- i can barely remember them (eg 'all men are created equal'--no womyn, and most likely no blacks, indians, propertyless people, catholics, irish, italians, muslims, hindus etc were considered 'men'.).
Talking about 'real social service' similarily---what is that---registering people to vote, registering them to vote green, libertarian, democrat, republican or telling them not to register because if then you are being complcit with a corrupt political system? do people who join the army (perhaps because they didn't school or college, or because they would be prosecuted for some minor illegal drug or sexual involvement and go to jail unless they enlisted) or those who are 'war resistors' and dont't join doing 'real' service? does some church volunteer get counted as doing real social service by doing day care/tutoring if they also break some rules and provide 'real social service' by providing drugs to youth maybe in exchange for sex?
People do take k-12 schooling largely for granted today though there are some dissidents---free schools, unschooling, home schooling, truancy...
Of course for the state to make this compulsory is authoritarian, and by having a state chosen, sanctioned and required curriculum is a form of intdoctrination. Basically decided compulsion was neccesarry (or at least from a pragmatic view of somethin g that could be implemented) to make sure one did not end up with a nation with 'feral' (wild ) children, or various sects which practiced cannibalism, slavery, and viewed anyone not a member of their sect as a resource to be exploited as desired or eliminated as a toxic heathen.
Nowadays the state allows some modifications or different interpretations of manadatory shool rules--people can choose their own curricula up to a point (they still must know some basic math, science, history, engish language, government and civics, etc. but the rest is up to them including nothing more) and homeschool or start their own school with its own schedule.Some can select their own curricula---eg do 100% science or 100% learn technical trades.
The state replaced th kinds of authoritarian, compulsory indoctrination practiced by traditional familes. Back in the day, for example, at times two men or women or a white protestant and a black or jewish person could not marry, but now they can and in many or most compulsory school curricula this is taught and indoctrinated. In traditional cultures the opposite view was 'fed to or shoved down people's throats or their minds. Perhaps its a choice of the greater of two evils (the state being greater in size, or some other criteria---than small cults of dissenters. In the past if indians saw some corporate polluter show up on their territory they'd be taken out (and this still occurs some places in the world, and usa has its own 'ecoterrorist' types who while not indegenous in g eenral act similarily to corporate polluters). Nowadays polluting corporations have the state on their side--people have been indoctrinated to know its compulsory to follow the laws respecti g corporations 'rights'.)
Personally, theoretically, i dont care however people school their kids or themselves so long as it doesn't interfere with me---eg if they learn in their own communities (by either choice or compulsion--- but babies and children often don't have much choice---they just absorb what is around them and dont really know much about any other choices) that they have the right to exploit or destroy me or my terrritory, then even if it is compulsory and authoritariasn i reserve the right to keep those communities off my territority, even if this means wiping them off the earth or indoctrinating them to follow my rules---ie dont do a single thing that bothers me on my territory--even play music if i dont like and can hear it.
If an authoritarian governemnt is required to force enemy fascist types to leave me alone (perhaps by locking them up) then i support the govwernment on that. (ideally there would be no government, but this is not an ideal world, and sometimes government coercion and force is preferable to that of small minded, pea brained idiotic ideological dogmatists who want governm ent to leave them alone so they can be the big fish in a small pond and force and coerce and indoctrinate their little cult. They tend also to be hypocrites---hate government when it tells them to send their kids to school for example and tell them they can't dump trash in local rivers, but then treasure their government bestwoed property rights which allow them to shoot anyone or anything that ventures on their porperty.)
I'm not sure what the point of that essay was---perhaps involuntary response like farting. nothing deep, or new, or innovative but it just comes out (sortuh like those people with some sort of disease that causes them to swear all the time). alot of religious people and political idoelogues (marxists, anarchists and anarchocapitalists, libertarians, greens...) can't seem to help repeating these old 'truhs' all the tiem. 'god loves you'. 'i want real freedom to do what i want which is not what the governments want but instead is what my small group of pea brained closed minded peers and close knit community who want to be free to do what they know is best as told to them by god---they know god tells them the real truth about what they want to do, and also there is n other source of truth like the government, or scientuists or anything. They know because they learned about the true god from the internet. (thye also pointed iout that the internet was invented by god, as described in the bible--and not by scientists---who basically lie by pretending they discovered it themselves without god'd help.)
> I'm not sure what the point of that essay was
what essay does "that essay" refer to?
> People do take k-12 schooling largely for granted today though there are some dissidents---free schools, unschooling, home schooling, truancy...
truants generally don't dispute the legitimacy of k-12 schooling.
like thieves don't generally dispute the legitimacy of laws against stealing. thieves mostly aren't stealing-legalization-advocates. and truants mostly aren't education reformers.
many homeschoolers and unschoolers just think that lifestyle is right for them, rather than better for everyone.
and even most of the people with really negative opinions about schools do school-at-home type stuff and also think their kid needs to be educated until he's 18.
and of the few people who want to get rid of public (government) schools, most of them still totally accept similar k-12 schools as a good idea. they more often think stuff like: government schools are low quality, badly run, waste money, etc, and the state shouldn't have the opportunity to indoctrinate people.
where are the (other non-TCS) philosophically sophisticated challenges to k-12 schooling? about actual educational philosophy and principles!