Why Governments Control the Schools

Government schools generally promote propaganda that says their goal is to help kids. If that were the real goal, why wouldn't the government dole out money to parents to pay for their kids' learning in whatever fashion the parents choose? Often the first priority of parents isn't learning, it's that they need a babysitter for their kids and the schools are the best way to do that. If that was the real goal though, why wouldn't the government give money to parents so they can choose to stay at home with their kids, or send them to a babysitter of the parents' choosing? Realistically, these are just what people use to justify government schools, not the actual purpose.

John Stuart Mill wrote in his book 'On Liberty' that "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."

The real goal of school then is conformity and obedience to the powers that be, thus government schools.

Frederic Bastiat wrote in his book 'The Law' that "You say: “There are persons who lack education” and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in itself, a torch of learning which shines its light abroad. The law extends over a society where some persons have knowledge and others do not; where some citizens need to learn, and others can teach. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in this second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property."

The need for education is what is sold by the government, but what the people buy is government control of the minds of children.

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