My wife read a fascinating column in the Boston Globe yesterday that she kindly forwarded to me. "Big Brother at School", by Jeff Jacoby, addresses the amazing shift in attitudes in our country regarding whose responsibility it is to educate our children. The first paragraph begins with a quote.
"FREEDOM of education, being an essential of civil and religious liberty . . . must not be interfered with under any pretext whatever," the party's national platform declared. "We are opposed to state interference with parental rights and rights of conscience in the education of children as an infringement of the fundamental . . . doctrine that the largest individual liberty consistent with the rights of others insures the highest type of American citizenship and the best government."
Staggeringly, this quote is from the platform adopted by the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago. Unfortunately, the quote is from 1892. I can't even imagine today's Republican Party making such a strong statement in support of a parents right (yea, responsibility) in the education of their child.
Instead, we live in a day where many increasingly look to someone else to relieve them of their responsibilities. Health insurance too expensive? Demand the government provide it! Worried about education outcomes? Implement federal mandates to ensure that "no child is left behind". "Parenting" your child too demanding? Let someone else be the heavy. I'll just be his/her best friend. In the meantime, as the column notes, we certainly wouldn't want to try to "impose" our values or beliefs on our children. Oh no! They should be able to decide for themselves.
One of the reasons I enjoy reading homeschooling blogs is the reassurance I receive that there really are other parents out there who realize that their children are their responsibility. Don't get me wrong. There are many many parents who send their children to public or private schools who feel the same way. I'm not judging them at all here. But it sure does feel like we, regardless of our educational choices, are in the minority.
I've often talked about the "pendulum" effect in any trend. In business, the pendulum swings from "focus on your core" to "diversify" and back with amazing regularity. Swings from left to right and back are pretty consistent when looking at the political landscape.
I hope that this particular pendulum is about to turn and start heading back toward "personal responsibility" again.
In the meantime, thanks to all of you who realize that in your own lives already. I'll close with another quote from the column:
"Free men and women do not entrust to the state the molding of their children's minds and character. As we wouldn't trust the state to feed our kids, or to clothe them, or to get them to bed on time, neither should we trust the state to teach them."
UPDATE: The link to the article in question has been fixed.
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3 comments:
I like the quotes.
There is a line: "Knowledge is power." One of the things I've speculated is that homeschoolers will have more influence than public educated people on society over the next couple. Because our children have a much better education they will have greater ability to persuade and encourage others to take certain actions.
Yes, it is our responsibility to educate our children, whether they are in school or at home. It is easier to blame someone else if our children do not succeed.
So Chris, the Carnival of Homeschooling calls you Russ. You don't mind if I call you Russ too, do you? Thought not.
I too hope that the pendulum will start to swing in the other direction. And this hope is not totally without grounds.
Have you ever heard of the book Generations, by Strauss and Howe? This book, written in the early '90's, proposes a theory about generational change in America. In a very tiny nutshell, they proposed that there are four generational archetypes that follow each other in a roughly 80-to 90-year cycle. At any given time, there are about three "generations" living in different stages of their adult lives. These three adult generations each have their own generational outlook and mood; and in combination, they create an environment in which the fourth generation is raised. Then everyone ages 20 years and the next generation is brought up in a different environment, since everyone has aged and taken their generational outlooks to the "next life stage".
And what Strauss and Howe predicted in the early '90's was that the (then-unnamed) Generation X-ers are of the generational archetype that most values personal freedom. The archetype is the most entrepeneurial in outlook; it doesn't respect bureaucracy; it doesn't much respect any authority; it takes risks. It also can't stand the previous generational archetype in the cycle, which tends to be way too idealistic and narcisistic, to the point of divisiveness and (occasionally violent) faction.
I don't know how close to the truth Straus and Howe are. It's easy to be tricked by confirmation bias into believing plausible-sounding garbage. But given that it's fifteen years or so since they wrote the thing, their predictions have held up pretty well; Boomer would-be-reformers fought over the schools, so they could use them to impose their agendas; and the X-ers have been increasingly responding by leaving the schools entirely. According to Generations, this plays exactly to type. And as the X-ers continue to age into mid-life, their "don't tread on me" views will tend to gain political and social strength.
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