Here are a few interesting quotes. Let's see if any of you out in Facebook Land or Blog Land agree:
"That erroneous assumption is to the effort that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence....Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues, and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else." - H.L Mencken, The American Mercury, April 1924
“Our schools have been scientifically designed to prevent over-education from happening…The average American [should be] content with their humble role in life, because they’re not tempted to think about any other role." - U.S. Commissioner of Education William Torrey Harris, 1889
"A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation, in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by natural tendency to one over the body." - John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
"Academies that are founded at public expense are instituted not so much to cultivate men's natural abilities as to restrain them." -- Baruch Spinoza (1632 - 1677)
So, do you agree, or not so much? Is public education really just a way for the government to produce cookie-cutter citizens who can't think for themselves?
If so, what are the implications for your family, if any? It's a controversial subject, sure, but discussion and learning are the best parts of this online world we're all a part of.
