The following is an interview I conducted with Kyle Rearden, which premiered live on August 2nd, 2015. The topic was homeschooling.
Being a former homeschooler, Kyle shares his insight on why you should homeschool your children, how to go about doing so, and the benefits that you and your child(ren) will see by conducting this form of direct action.
Below, you will see my re-written introduction to the broadcast, which focuses on the grievance of public schooling. Please enjoy.
Click here for the full broadcast.
Homeschooling is simply defined as, “the education of children at home by their parents.” Sounds dangerous, doesn’t it? Well, dangerous enough that the State has taken upon itself the duty to regulate the education of your children and tell parents what they can and cannot do, and, in some states, force them to jump through many bureaucratic hoops to even be legally able to do so.
On that note, various tax farms across America have also claimed the right to seize your children if they deem YOU, the parent, UNFIT to determine what is best for your child.
As Melissa Harris-Perry, an authoritarian host on MSNBC stated in April of 2013, “We have to break through our private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families.” She continues on saying that once we realize this we’ll make better investments in our children and in our community.
She later defended her statement by saying:
“This is about whether we as a society, expressing our collective will through our public institutions, including our government, have a right to impinge on individual freedoms in order to advance a common good. And that is exactly the fight that we have been having for a couple hundred years.” [Emphasis added]
Looking at the fact that homeschooling has been criminalized by many State legislatures, it’s quite easy to tell that the State, as well as Harris-Perry, view it as threat to the establishment, and rightfully so; either that, or they see parents as unfit to educate their child and that it must be under the direction of the almighty government or it won’t be sufficient.
So, why would the government view homeschooling as a threat to their existence?
First, we need to ask the question, "what is government schooling?"
Simpy put, it is a compulsory indoctrination camp. It is based off of the Prussian model, whereby Pavlovian training is used to condition children. A national curriculum is also utilized, inculcating a strong national identity and also the implementation of the “bell” system, a form of “time control”, that has consistently been used by authoritarian regimes throughout history.
It trains children to obey authority; it molds them into being good, obedient tax slaves; it destroys critical thinking and imagination.
It puts the State in direct control of your children for 13 years and, unfortunately, the time they spend in these compulsory indoctrination camps, in most cases, is more than is spent with the parents themselves.
Even worse, the military recruits high school aged children to be the State’s trained mercenaries.
It's also worth mentioning that the history taught in public schools is inaccurate, watered-down garbage. If children were taught the truth about the Anti-Federalists, the outright democide of the Indians, and about the true nature of the State, then this authoritarian institution would be viewed as some ridiculous folk superstition.
As Edmund Burke stated, “Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it,” and any public schooler is doomed from the start unless they pursue real truth on their own, which is a rarity.
If you also look at the focus of public schools, you can easily see that the intention isn’t to educate. Rather, the goal is for the children to memorize pointless facts up until the day of the test, and to make the schools look good on mandated standardized testing.
The even scarier aspect of public schooling is that they don’t teach children morals, values, or ethics. Anything moral, virtuous, or ethically sound is instantly met by many angry parents.
Just imagine, if Johnny came home from school and told his parents that they should stop paying taxes because taxation is theft, and it is a violation of the non-aggression principle.
You could expect Johnny’s and the other parents whose children attended that lecture, being the mindless statists they probably are, to be outraged. That may be a bad example, and rather unlikely, but you get the point.
Empirically, public schooling has been used as a tool by authoritarian regimes to ensure control of the coming generations.
Here in America, these indoctrination camps are bathed in the country's Founding. As Dr. Murray Rothbard notes, in his book, Education: Free & Compulsory:
“The issue which has been joined in the past and in the present is: shall there be a free society with parental control, or a despotism with State control? We shall see the logical development of the idea of State encroachment and control. America, for example, began, for the most part, with a system of either completely private or with philanthropic schools. Then, in the nineteenth century, the concept of public education changed subtly, until everybody was urged to go to the public school, and private schools were accused of being divisive. Finally, the State imposed compulsory education on the people, either forcing children to go to public schools or else setting up arbitrary standards for private schools. Parental instruction was frowned on. Thus, the State has been warring with parents for control over their children.”
Dr. Rothbard was, and is, certainly correct.
He also correctly states that:
“The compulsory state system already developed was grist for the totalitarian mill. At the base of totalitarianism and compulsory education is the idea that children belong to the State rather than to their parents. One of the leading promoters of that idea in Europe was the famous Marquis de Sade, who insisted that children are the property of the State.”
Moving forward, there is also another negative when it comes to public schooling. When children are disinterested, and with good reason, a lot of teachers and school counselors will attribute that to some sort of a mental condition and recommend the student see a psychologist or a therapist. Many times, the children are prescribed Adderall, Ritalin, or any number of the legally sanctioned amphetamines. Public schooling definitely serves as a drug pusher for Big Pharma.
Additionally, Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) is a government sanctioned non-profit that indoctrinates children into the police state. Their own “About” page, states that one of the key purposes of the program is to “humanize” the police. It also encourages the Soviet-style act of getting children to snitch on their parents.
One of the most difficult things that I personally had to do was debunk almost everything I was taught in school. It took me 3+ years (and is still ongoing) to flush out all of the nonsensical propaganda that was inculcated in me. It certainly increased my opportunity costs significantly.
Lastly, the conditions in prisons versus schools are scarily similar. The only two differences are that the schools control the mind and the prisons control the body, and prisoners stay over night. They also both utilize LOCKDOWNS.
Public education is surely one the most dangerous detriments to Liberty.
Shane is the founder of Liberty Under Attack and host of LUA Radio, a live show that airs every Thursday and Sunday at 7pm CST on the Freedom Phalanx Radio Network. He is a free market anarchist committed to providing solutions to his listeners and readers, so that they can create the freedom they desire in their own lives, RIGHT NOW, despite the State.