A Compulsory Deprivation of Liberty

The thrust of this paper concerns the blatantly undemocratic American practice of forcing young people into governmentally controlled institutions of learning, colloquially known as schools. What is at stake in the debate over compulsory schooling is nothing less than access to the same defining democratic right that the authors of The Constitution clearly recognized as the foundation from which a truly free society is spawned: the individual right to the pursuit of Happiness. Intrinsically imbedded within the pursuit of Happiness is the right to freely pursue knowledge.

Mandatory schooling violates, to the highest degree, the autonomy of the individual to seek and define knowledge for him/herself. Parents are stripped of the basic right to decide the fashion and context their children are to learn about the world. When one can see through the rich lexicon of professional educators and politicians concerning the seemingly axiomatic contemporary idea that mandatory schooling is a social necessity, the root "need" for obligatory schooling becomes crystallized in its ugly reality.

The intentional manipulation of young minds to conform to an orthodoxy of intellectual exploration, relative attainment, and future implementation is a glorious example of the weighty and inevitable consequences generated by granting large government the political equivalency to a parents domain over its child. In order to run a smoothly functioning government while simultaneously protecting the interests of those in power, the most powerful mechanism for control that governments may exploit is that of the collective minds of its general public. Like a parent imposing to what their child may appear to be arbitrary rules and regulations, so follows the state's complexly veiled justisification for mandatory schooling. The idea that the state and the state alone knows what is best for its citizenry extends into the historically dangerous realm of belief where the actions of government are blindly accepted and excused as necessary steps taken in the name of progress and the collective good.

In the case of mandatory schooling, government is granted the singular, god-like role of purveying purportedly undisputable historical facts and social nuances to its assumedly ignorant students. Americans largely justify their willing participation in compulsory schooling through the belief that schools serve as the only available avenues for equipping children with the proper tool belts of knowledge required to have a chance at succeeding in society. Understandably fixated (sometimes obsessively so) on the potential social and economic consequences of a deviation away from the attainment of those emblems of propriety that are high school diplomas, parents and educators often lose sight of the true role schools are meant to fill as institutions of learning. This collective myopia-more focus on the potential end than the temporal means-leaves deep, long-term scars on the inevitable victims, the students. Mandatory schooling is more than just an abstract representation of unadulterated social injustice. As we shall see, young people, and, transitively, society as a whole bear the brunt of the diverse side effects arising from forced institutionalized education.

A Few Side Notes

Before moving forward, I feel that a few qualifications must be made to help sharpen the focus of my critique. First and foremost, the purpose of this paper is not to vilify public school teachers, nor is it blaming most other education or political officials for the abhorrent practice of forced learning. It has been my experience that the majority of public school teachers enter into the profession with the noblest of intentions. It is, in fact, only through the efforts of those superior teachers that make schools bearable or worthwhile for most students.

Nor is this paper stuck in the romanticized world of conspiracy theory. I do not presuppose any notion of dark sunglass-clad, faceless, omnipotent government administrators sitting at a roundtable pushing the buttons that tune society to their selfish wishes. The reappearing theme of "social control" does not simply refer to the deliberate serving of one group's agenda through the subjugation of others. While the conscious direction of interests must always be navigated through a given medium, the kinetic energy that fuels the social control produced by compulsory education is very subtle and difficult to manifestly define. Social control, as defined in this paper, is the terminology used to describe that subtle, yet extraordinarily potent deliberateness of purpose generated by a government vested with too much power. While not always explicitly stated, this paper's central grievance is with the system that allows for such resultant mass arbitrariness of policy, depriving people of the unalienable right to be left alone.

Rather than running the risk of repeating myself, it should be noted that most of the proposed correlations made in the following sections between mandatory schooling and social malignancies are not always directly or singularly linkable, nor are there any objectively empirical or diagnostic methods to prove my assertions. I have based my claims on twelve years of personal experience as a student, seven years of working with children of all ages in programs inside and outside of school, and, of course, on my own formal research.

I make no fanciful assumptions that say, for instance, the correlation between school and substance dependency exists in a vacuum, isolated from other contributing environmental factors. However, I do maintain that schools serve as fertile breeding grounds for the essential ingredients required to create dependent, apathetic, nihilist, and fatalistic personality types.

Adherence to the Tribe:

Schools make two central, non-negotiable demands upon students. The first demand is an unquestioning, blind faith that the state will always act in the best interest of its students. The idea that, somewhere in Washington, benevolent government officials have created a master, universally applicable blueprint for the equal access to prosperity and achievement is a major tenet of American tribalism. Schools operate as the institutional mediums for inundating students with this tribal ethic. Within the schooling inundation process lies the covert propagandist ideal that there exists a universal American code of ethics, values, morals, and shared experience. The thorough manipulation of students into acceptance of this code allows schools to safeguard their ideological borders against attacks by insurrectionary thinkers who challenge the state's supposedly divine intentions. Without diving into lengthy detail of the actual method, it is my belief that the controlled socialization process within schools is stained with ulterior motives.

Similarly, the second demand schools make is a fundamental re-organization of students' individual identities to fit the institutional mold. As is the case with many public schools in the District, uniforms are now required to help mute students' physical differences. The schooling apparatus runs smoothest when diversity of opinion is low. Potentially divisive topics like racism and sexism are thus-for all genuine intents and purposes, save for those rare gutsy teachers-structurally corrosive to the utopian homogeneity schools strive to achieve, and therefore ignored. Social insulation is given high priority within schools.

A recent case in Brockton, Massachusetts serves as a good example. A fifteen year-old boy from South Junior High School was barred by the schools' administration for wearing women's clothing. Only through intervention by the courts was he able to return (The Washington Post, October 13, 2000). Far from being non-partisan, the school in this example actively enforced popular moral sentiment.

The Benefits:

Were significant economic interests not served by the maintenance of mandatory schooling, it is highly unlikely the impetus to impinge upon the liberty of others would be viewed as culturally imperative. This is a rather self-evident concept that does not need to be broken down into great detail. Apart from the admittedly abstract argument stated thus far, it is a tangible fact that the following parties are dependent upon the maintenance of mandatory schooling for their economic livelihoods.

1. Teachers, educational experts, education boards, teachers unions, school psychologists and nurses, universities that provide teaching degrees, standardized testing preparation companies, etc.
2. Janitors, building inspectors, corporations with school lunch contracts, school bus drivers, the makers of school bus's, etc.
3. Companies that make calculators, publish textbooks, design schools, make pencils, blackboards, etc.

The list could obviously go on and on. I will let it rest as an umbrella statement that the vast internal and external capital schools generate turn the wheels of law in a specific direction conducive to substantial profitability.

The Social Ramifications of Compulsory Schooling:

In any society, the mass-confinement of people is the harbinger of backlash. As a general historical theme, the overt social isolation of large groups of people is the inevitable precursor to widespread social dislocation. The collective muting of voices from popular discussion will always serve as the breeding grounds for contempt and unrest among those imposed upon. This archetype of gross social malady is no more vividly exemplified than in the institution of modern American schooling.

Disillusioned with the world as it is presented daily in school, students look for outlets to escape the barrage of indoctrinated banality thrown at them for seven and-a-half hours a day. (Note: the students referred to in this section are meant to mostly include students in their teenage years). The institutionalized rhythm of the school day and the monotony of the assigned tasks leaves students itching for a way to bring meaning to, or at least find a means to briefly escape from, the dreary confines of their school existence. Most students seem to recognize the Barmecidal banquet that is school, but few possess the courage, support, know-how, or ability to articulate their hostility necessary to remedy their situation.

One of the most significant lessons that students extract from attending many years of school is that dependency-emotional dependency, intellectual dependency, and provisional self-esteem-is the natural, age-appropriate way to attain their goals (Gatto, 1992). Bells signal the beginning and ending of all work, no matter how important. Students must be granted permission to use the bathroom, eat food, and (god forbid!) walk outside by ones self. Like soldiers in the military, students fall into the hypnotic state of having their movements and actions choreographed and constantly assessed for errors.

Students are slowly transformed into endless depositories of information, told in coded language that they must accept and memorize information rather than take the time to fully process or cognitively understand it. Teachers command the innately pedantic position analogous to the "All-Seeing Eye", represented on the back of the dollar bill. Hovering in supreme wisdom and knowledge above the stacked bricks of the pyramid below, the eye of the teacher is the sole source of illumination casting light into the darkness of ignorance. The pyramid (school) is the superlative structure-the bastion of culture and accomplishment within an otherwise flat desert. Over the course of time, students are subliminally admonished that being an autodidact (building one's own pyramid) is a useless distraction from being fed the "important" information teachers and teachers alone have the adroitness to impart. The deceptive illusion that the pyramid is the lone station for knowledge within the vast, complex desert is never, under any circumstances, to be validated as true, lest the pyramid's bricks become insubordinate and crumble to the sand.

What most schools seem to do best is create a learning structure that is wholly irrelevant and inapplicable to life outside the classroom. This deleterious severing of the analytical from the personal leads students to search for their own truths. To combat the dryness of their academic lives, many students deliberately search out the "raw vitality of experience" that is noticeably absent from school.

Thus, this search for alternatives often causes students to turn to dangerous outlets such as drug and alcohol abuse, high-risk sexual activity, and eating disorders. Less physically harmful activities like watching too much television and becoming apathetic to the plight of those less fortunate than themselves can be looked at through two different lenses in relation to school.

1. Out of a reaction to the aforementioned harmful characteristics of schools' infrastructure: the deliberate shedding and outright rejection of the schooling dogma.
2. As a symptom of the highly dependent generic student schools produce: the implementation of incidentally learned behavior extended to life beyond school.

Without going into unnecessary detail regarding the associations between school and each specific self-destructive behavior, it is more important to understand the basic idea that students are potentially negatively impacted from two directions.

Mandatory Schooling's Past:

John Taylor Gatto, New York City's teacher of the year for 1991 had this to say in his acceptance speech about his role as a teacher:

"Over the past twenty-six years, I've used my classes as a laboratory where I could learn a broader range of what human possibility is-the whole catalogue of hopes and fears-and also as a place where I could study what releases and inhibits human power. During that time I've come to believe that genius is an exceedingly common human quality, probably natural to most of us." (Gatto, 1992)

Gatto then proceeds to reveal in detail his staunch position that schools are little more than institutions of social control and also retards the mature development of genius inherent to most children. After many years as an extremely "successful" teacher, Gatto is one day met with a stormy revelation. "Was it possible that I had been hired not to not to enlarge children's power, but to diminish it?" (Gatto, 1992). Gatto's lucid articulation of why schools serve to warehouse, rather than educate children must be looked at from a critical historical perspective. What are the origins of our current system of rigid adherence to educational orthodoxy?

Schools have been part of American society virtually since its inception, but were not treated as the central arena for education or growing up until roughly 1848. Prior to 1848, schools were not compulsory, and did not abide by a national curriculum as they do now (Llewellyn, 1997). Schooling as we know it today was forged out of a reaction to the two "Red Scares" of 1848 and 1919, when there was widespread panic among the country's power-elite of revolution by the industrial poor. Partly too, the large influx of Catholic Slavs, Celts, and Latin immigrants in the 1840's led "traditional" American families to seek a means to suppress the change that was sweeping the nation. A third contributing factor was the threatening dispersion to these same "traditional" Americans of African-Americans throughout society in the aftermath of the Civil War (Gatto, 1992).

Do Schools Really Want You to Learn?

It is the lifeblood of any habitually partisan bureaucracy to value regimented standards over individual preference and choice, and the American public schooling system is no exception. It is one of the central arguments of this paper that independent and questioning minds pose the most terrifying threat to institutionalized schooling. Analyzing the methods of social control that schools practice will help elucidate the proof of this argument.

As a pivoting point for understanding where schools generate their power as mechanisms for social control, one must accept the notion that much of this power is couched in schools' authority to judge and define its students.

Academic Ceilings:

While some students may outperform others, they can only outperform them to a finite degree. Ingenuity and entrepreneurship-the backbone of American democratic ideology-exist only as far as school boards deem permissible. Smart students are taught "their place" is at the top of the student totem pole, but no higher. Logically, any social system fueled by oppression must develop some form of stratification process to simultaneously appease and control the masses. "Academic ceilings"-the capping-off of educational achievement-fulfill this need through the use of a structured judgment scale. High-performing students are granted the relative privilege of being able to reap the fruits of their labor after graduation by gaining improved access to colleges. So long as they perform within the prescribed bounds-regardless of how limiting those bounds might be-of the school structure, good students are eventually rewarded.

On the flip side, low-performing students are placed in direct comparison to the students who excel. As a means of satisfying the need for deciding students' rank and future social position (tangible social control), schools must employ a universal system of judgment and comparison. Anything that penetrates the academic ceiling is beyond comparable judgment, and therefore a threat. Learning above or beyond the field of structured learning disturbs the fragile nucleus of the schooling matrix, which is predicated upon the labeling of young people with the socially accepted brands of success and failure.

In order for schools to function at all, they must be ritualistically embedded in structure and format. Students must successfully assimilate the notion that the be-all and end-all of their educational experience is defined by accessing a passport up or down the schooling social ladder (otherwise known as attainment of a letter grade). It is of the utmost importance that schools make these academic ceilings seem justified to its exceptionally talented students by promising a future payoff. Students must be continually admonished not to look for a more engaging or demanding educational experience outside of the school walls. Extraordinarily bright and motivated students can only be allowed to pursue their education's within the curricular schooling framework, lest they come to find the hidden truth that, thus far, school has been providing them a grossly inadequate, narrow, and virtually intellectually useless education.

Academic Fences:

Equally as deplorable as the intentional limiting of students to only pursue their education's to a prescribed height is the deliberate erection of academic barriers. The "academic fence" refers to schools' careful choices to teach some subjects and ideas over others. Within the schooling framework, only certain subjects are given the stamp of permissibility, and students are given no choice in the matter. Schools generate an academic tunnel vision within their students by focusing on an appallingly narrow range of subjects. The belief that schools seek to foster within their students-that what subject matter they learn in school is inherently more valuable and important than subjects that fall outside the schooling realm-is vital towards controlling students' minds.

The fact that school boards are granted the right to define what is and is not important enough to teach leaves the gate wide open for the serving of personal interests. Students are stripped of the liberty to challenge what school boards choose to allow as fact or fiction. A recent case in Kansas regarding the barring of teaching the scientific version of creation is a prime example. In corroboration with parents, the school boards in Kansas chose to impose their orthodox religious beliefs upon their students regarding the "true" tale of creation, and thus depriving them the right to learn about the nearly universally accepted scientific theory. Monolithic school boards that are granted the awesome power of deciding truth and fiction and defining morality inevitably corrode classrooms that are designed to be non-partisan.

There is no shortage of other examples. Throughout the course of my high school career, various cities throughout the greater Boston area were banning or attempting to ban classic books like Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, The Color Purple, Beloved, and Catcher in the Rye. What school boards and powerful Parent Teacher Associations (PTA's) generally label as the courageous "moral shielding of youth" is, in reality, almost always synonymous with censorship. What occurs is a struggle between parents and school board members with opposing views and interests over what should and should not be admitted into curriculums. The more powerful majority is allowed, if it so wishes, to re-invent history, science, mathematics, and literature for their own selfish ideological interests. As homeschooling proponent Grace Llewellyn writes, "The most constant and thorough thing students in school experience-and learn-is the antithesis of democracy" (Llewellyn, 1997). This cultural myopia is the most visible, conscious, and active of the leverage tools that schools use to take educational liberty out of the hands of its students.

Academic Leashes:

Upon passing through the doors of almost every public high school in the District of Columbia on any given morning the first thing a visitor sees is line of students waiting to have their belongings inspected by a series of metal detectors, x-ray machines, and uniformed security guards. A brief glance around at the walls reveals several security cameras and large circular magnifying mirrors (the kinds of mirrors small shopkeepers use to keep an eye on would-be shoplifters). Why the deep mistrust and constant surveillance?

The potential answer is two-pronged. The most obvious answer would appear to be a simple issue of safety and order-maintenance; protecting those students who are in school to learn and teachers who are there to teach from the harassment and intimidator tactics of less motivated students. However, the deeper answer lies a few notches beneath the surface. Contrasting the policies of governmental control over the citizens in centrally planned, totalitarian regimes versus free market, democratic regimes, Milton Friedman writes: "Again it is Communist China and not Hong Kong that has to guard its borders against people trying to get out" (emphasis added) (Friedman, 1994).

While the comparisons between most American public schools and Communist China go only so far, parallels can be drawn between the prototypical schooling infrastructure and the operational tactics of archetypal authoritarian governments. Both schools and authoritarian, undemocratic governments rely on threats, coercion, and propaganda/moral control to keep their proverbial boats afloat.

Threats: students who challenge the rules of schooling are ritualistically threatened and castigated by school staff. Those rebellious students who chose to speak their minds in class rather than stay silent when they feel a teacher is not doing a particular subject the justice it deserves (merely glossing over the Holocaust or America's history of slavery, for instance) are ritualistically lambasted, then removed from class. Students who continue in this vein of behavior are threatened with expulsion, and, more importantly face the intimidating prospect of living with the label of delinquent that appears on their permanent scholastic records. Interestingly, students who are actually expelled are not freed from the watchful eye of the State, but rather fall under more intense surveillance. Expelled students are generally bounced from one school to the next until they are sufficiently tired of fighting a losing battle and work towards safe assimilation within the school system. Or, (in my experience this is the more common occurrence) frustrated and tired, expelled students simply run away and/or drown their confusion and anger within the various confines of dangerous subcultures.

Coercion: students and their parents are coerced into staying in school in a variety of ways. Although still taxpayers, students who drop out of school are sometimes denied the right to participate in school athletics and other extra-curricular activities. Although policies differ in every state and within separate districts, students who wish to leave school must still show documented "proof" of their academic achievements, attendance records, portfolios of written work, and in some cases show these records to certain officials (Llewellyn, 1997).

Propaganda: authoritarian governments who have a vested interest in making alternatives to their rule seem unrealistic and dangerous must use propagandist tactics to inspire both fear and nationalist sentiment within their citizenry. Schools mimic this behavior in seemingly benevolent ways. From an early age students are taught that succeeding in school is their juvenile civic duty. Without striving for success in school, students are told, they will be future strains on the collective moral and economic fabric of America (Gatto, 1992).

Public school proponents often draw the link-usually without regard for the multitude of other contributing factors-between homelessness, joblessness, and substance abuse with failure to complete or succeed in school. While this link may be statistically accurate, it seeks to convince students and their parents that school is the one and only gateway to financial success and overall happiness. As one highly esteemed professor of education at American University informed me: "It only costs $8,000 per year to send a child to public school, but it costs $30,000 per year to keep them locked up in prison." As if the only logical alternative to state-funded education were state-funded incarceration!

Viable Alternatives:

As an overall statement, I do not believe that, if schools were suddenly demolished, all of the aforementiomed of problems emanating from mandatory schooling would be magically washed away in a crystal-clear sea of democracy. But I do stand adamantly firm to the belief that the de-institutionalization of schools and the shrinkage of government would open up the door for progress via a renewed inspection and greater appreciation of the priceless gift of freedom.

Even the most adamant anti-schooling proponent would be hard pressed to argue against the fact that, at the bare minimum, public schools do serve a valuable utilitarian purpose. For close to no money, parents can rest assured that their child will be supervised all-day long in a relatively safe and friendly environment. Parents are relieved to know that, while at work, their child will eat lunch, exercise, socialize with peers, have access to quality educational equipment, absorb some basic group behavior mores, and hopefully learn a little something in the process.

These are all positive features that can easily be implemented outside of the current compulsory schooling realm, and should not overshadow efforts to pursue other options. As Ronald Gross writes, "We have literally schooled ourselves out of our capacity to recognize the presence and validity of non-institutionalized learning" (Illich, 1973). The following suggestions are formatted to deviate as strongly from the negative programmatic flaws associated with government-controlled compulsory schooling, while still providing parents the essential balance to both work and educate their child.

With the tide of mandatory schooling expanding to year-round curriculums all across the country-this year, more than 2 million students in close to 3,000 public schools in 41 states will attend year-round schools-the elimination of mandatory education and the erection of legitimate alternatives is an extremely pressing contemporary issue (www.education-world.com). At the same time, there is a growing wave of discontent with the current state of schooling, especially within minority communities. Applied Research Center's (ARC) recently published comprehensive comparative study on the expulsion and suspension rates of black children versus white children found that, on the whole, minority students are disciplined much more often than their white counterparts. In the San Francisco school district, where African Americans make up 18% of the school district, they occupied 56% of the students suspended or expelled (www.goecities.com/thebruinvoice).

Although formal segregation in schools was legally outlawed in the 1960's, de facto segregation permeates most of the communities in America. The traditional argument that racial and economic polarization-forcing students, by law, to attend schools within their community bounds, and therefore likely with members of their own race and class-still the most readily observable and easily provable aspect of schools acting as mechanisms of social control and defenders of the status quo. The steadily increasing homogeneity and partisanship of our classrooms is demonstrative evidence of the tremendous power government wields through the enforcement of mandatory schooling. Even where pluralistic curriculums promote an acceptance of diversity, the absence of real interaction with people from different backgrounds often prevents youths located all-along the racial and economic spectrum from fully developing inter-cultural social skills. This manifest brand of imposed separatism has historically been the chief sparkplug igniting turbulent clashes across cultural lines. Here are a few ways to shore up the void.

1. The Charter School Movement: charter schools operate on a combination of state funds and private donations, and therefore have much greater (but by no means complete) autonomy over their curriculum and structure than do regular public schools. Charter schools may have a specific theme or target population (a creative arts-centered curriculum, or a school for recently adjudicated youth, for example). Charter schools may recruit staff as they see fit, and therefore are capable of adapting to the cultural needs of its students, unlike the ossified practices of public schools.
2. The Homeschooling/Unschooling Movement: it has been proven that children who are homseschooled on average score much higher on standardized tests than do public school students (Llewellyn, 1997). The fundamental idea of homeschooling/unschooling involves parents tutoring their children in the educational basics in order to prepare them for adolescence, when they will have the option of trailblazing their own educational paths outside of any formal schooling arena. Contrary to popular opinion, the basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills students need to become reasonably proficient can be taught to a child in about 100 hours if the student is somewhat eager to learn-whereas schools, in their gross bureaucratic inefficiency, drag out the process over many years (Gatto, 1992). After that, with a reasonable amount of guidance, support, and trust, inquisitive young minds will naturally seek out knowledge without needing to eat from the educational feeding trough of the public school system.
3. The Job-as-School Movement: what better "real-life" preparation can a young person get than on-the-job experience? As many adults can attest to, oftentimes the most valuable and long-lasting educational experiences have taken place at internships and apprenticeships. For especially motivated and focused students who have no time to waste in school, getting a jumpstart on their chosen profession can be a wonderfully rewarding choice. Imagine the advances future scientists of the world could accomplish if they were immersed in their work from age 8 on up instead of 18!

The Worst Crime of All:

No other reasoning is likely to strike as personal a cord within the hearts and memories of those who reduce critiques of the public schooling system in America to over-zealous deconstructionist fiat, than what I believe is the worst consequence of mandatory schooling: forcing children to stay trapped in a classroom on a warm, sunny afternoon. Sound a little sappy? So be it. As more and more children are processed and packaged in public schools every year, America is paying for it in lost innocence. The compulsive demand for higher standardized test scores and tangible "results" of students' progress has led to a noticeable paradigm value-shift from the "childhood years" into the "preparatory years." We are on a slow road to strip the world of its mystery and ever-present adventure in favor of forced utilitarian benefits. Children are being deprived the most basic rights that every kid in the world should be entitled to. The right to act stupid; the right to waste a whole day talking with an imaginary friend under the spindly branches of a tall tree; the right to make, and believe, the ridiculous declaration that "The world ain't so bad." Parents must summon the courage to take their children by the hand and willingly freefall into the uncharted future of learning without an institutional safety net. If we truly desire to provide today's youth with brighter days, we must risk doing the unconventional, the frowned-upon, and the illogical.

References
[Editor's note: References for this article will be posted in mid January 2001]

Copyright 2000, James Pearlstein